LITMIR.BIZ

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it that, is exactly one hundred paces—a journey of a mere eighty-six meters—from my little shack of a house. At one time, the pub was a portable stall. Every night, Fujii, the owner, dragged the stall from his house and set it up in the space between the two buildings. A few years ago, after a long tiring day, he left the stall overnight. No one complained and it became a permanent fixture. I always count the steps between home and the pub, and then reverse the count from pub to home. Whether we desire to or not, we reach a life steeped in routine by the age of forty. Even if that routine is constant change, it is still routine. The counting prevents me from passing the bar on the way if my mind floats off into another realm of consciousness; while on the way home, especially if I’ve had too much to drink, I know when I’ve reached my haven where I can fling my sack of bones and viscera onto my futon.

      As I walked my usual path, counting the steps in a daze, my life was projected like a film in a shabby theater, empty except for a lone silhouetted figure in the middle seat of the middle row. The theatergoer’s head tilted down, perhaps in boredom, perhaps in fear of what he will see. The film’s first scene is a newsstand—four meters wide, twelve deep, with aisles so narrow a customer must turn sideways to negotiate them. Newspapers are stacked near the front of the stand. The first two rows of shelving hold books and slick magazines. The other two rows are filled with manga comics—their thick, pulpy sheaves of pages bound with lurid covers promising fantasies within. The newsstand’s owner, standing behind the cash register, is a white-collar dropout. Having lost twenty years of his life to the long hours and stress of his automotive sector job, he is still recovering. Unfortunately, his wife left him when he announced he was leaving his high-paying job to work in a newsstand. Because my wife also left me, the manager and I share a common disappointment and humiliation. In my case, the divorce shined a light on my faults. The manager knows which newspapers and magazines I buy, and keeps books from my favorite authors in stock. His happiness comes from these minuscule interactions during the day and if glued together they would form a rough mosaic of his life. Squint softly at it and an image of meaning and significance comes into focus.

      Past the newsstand is a double-sided shop consisting of a fishmonger and a fruit and vegetable stand. The fishmonger is an elderly man, who rarely says a word and communicates by pointing and grunting, nodding and shaking his head. The woman who runs the produce stand never stops talking. The relation between her and the fishmonger is not clear. But there is some connection, as I often catch them in a shared glance. Although it is so furtive, so lacking in definition, I can’t begin to guess what it means. Is it conspiratorial, or shared pity?

      The next scene played out at a pachinko parlor. The patrons stare at their pinball machines, twisting knobs, feeding coins, oblivious to the carnival of noise. I rarely play, perhaps once a year when I’m truly bored. I’m a rather poor player—pachinko requires practice to play well enough to make a profit. But when I do play, I’m fascinated by the path each ball takes, each seeming to have a deliberate purpose. I know each is bound by the laws of physics in the chaotic randomness of a closed system. Yet as the fraud clerk told me, it’s our nature to assign motive and intention to everything.

      After the pachinko parlor, the scene shifted to a bakery and pastry shop. I have only been in the bakery a few times. Despite my lack of patronage, the young women employees, some mere teenagers, all wearing bright pink head scarves, always give me a cheery wave when I pass by even when they are occupied with customers.

      As the film played on at twenty-four frames per second that night, my counting was disrupted, each step echoed and repeated, doubling the count: sixty/sixty, sixty-one/sixty-one. I looked behind me, suspecting someone was following me, but there was only a trio of young women peering into the bakery. A wave of dizziness made me completely lose count.

      Luckily, the bar was only a few more steps and I stumbled in. Fujii greeted me with his usual gusto. He is a few months older than me—we discovered the slight difference one night when I was the only customer and we talked of mundane trivia. A stocky man, bulky with muscle, he looked fit and athletic. He was a star in high school sumo, taking second in the regional tournament his senior year. But he was too short and slight to join the professional sumo. He worked in construction for a while, until he fell and shattered a leg.

      The accident and recovery time was depressing and he became a drunk, a worthless human being—his description, not mine. Then one night he ran into the sumo wrestler who defeated him in the regional high school tournament. The rival joined professional sumo for a couple of years before dropping out and was now a restaurant owner. He had a lot of praise for Fujii: the toughest match he ever had, he claimed, was that high school match. The rival must have seen that Fujii was down-and-out and he offered him a job in his restaurant. Starting at the bottom, soon Fujii was able to do anything in the establishment. After a few years, he started out on his own with his portable stand.

      Fujii, sporting a fresh headband, served me sake and a plate of appetizers. There were other customers in the place, so Fujii was hopping to keep up. With a couple sips of sake and a few bites of the food, I relaxed until I recalled what the art director told me: Mizuno’s mother called and claimed her son was dead. If true, I was being twisted and played with like a child’s toy. I wondered how the chief would take the news when he read my report. Then to top off the day, there was the news of the wife in the old case that was haunting me.

      A great regret in my life was not finding the woman’s husband. Or did I find him? Was he the one behind that wall in the bar? But more than where he disappeared to, I wanted to know why he disappeared. It had to be more than shady business dealings. He was a restless sort, manifested by the number of professional certifications he obtained. The crucial question was: what were the deep-seated reasons for abandoning his wife? He had to know it would hurt her, and he had to know he would suffer pangs of guilt as much as relief. A sudden urge to see the wife got to me. I would tell her all would be fine, even if she couldn’t hear me in her comatose state. I would bring her flowers, and a fortuneteller to read her palm to show her that she still had a long life ahead, full of happiness and good fortune.

      Fujii refilled my sake, replaced my empty plate with a full one, then hurried off to attend to the others, who appeared to be colleagues in the same company. They were boisterous, getting sloppy, but I dissolved their presence from my world with the sake.

      Many cases end with as much unresolved as resolved. Answers may be obtained, reports completed and delivered, fees paid. But what remains are the coals of personal destruction, sometimes to flare up, usually to die out slowly. I always wonder what people think will happen when they find what they’ve searched for. It’s rarely what they hoped. “I just want to know,” they say. But in reality, often it would be better if they didn’t.

      For instance, my own marriage ended without a clear explanation. Like a car with leaky tires, it rolled along bumpily, sluggishly, until all the air was gone and the car, useless, was abandoned on a desolate beach, corroding and rusting, returning to the elemental minerals and organic matter from which it was created. My ex-wife hadn’t run away, hadn’t secretly divorced me, hadn’t killed me in my sleep. She started a business in a different town, finding that to be more enjoyable than my company. Fine, I didn’t want to know anything more.

      I downed a cup of sake as if to toast her and was about to refill it when a hand reached from behind me, took up my flask, and filled my cup. “How about a cup for me?” said a familiar voice. I turned to see the fraud clerk grinning at me.

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