Sputnik Sweetheart (18 page)

“I’m speaking as a teacher here,” I replied, “but especially with children, habitual shoplifting is not so much a criminal act as the result of a subtle emotional imbalance. Maybe if I’d paid a little more attention I would have noticed something. I fell down on the job, definitely. But with emotionally disturbed children there’s not always something outward to go on. If you separate the act from everything else and punish the child, the basic problem isn’t going to be cured. Unless you find the fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will surface later on in a different form. Often children are trying to send a message by shoplifting, so even if it isn’t the most efficient way of handling the problem, it’s important to take the time to talk things out.”

The guard crushed out his cigarette and, mouth half open, stared at me for the longest time, like I was some odd-looking animal. His fingers resting on the tabletop were terribly thick, like ten little furry black creatures. The more I looked at them, the harder I found it to breathe.

“Is that what they teach you in college, in
pedagogy,
or whatever you call it?”

“Not necessarily. It’s basic psychology. You can find it in any book.”

“You can find it in any book,” he said, repeating my words listlessly. He picked up his hand towel and wiped away the sweat from his thick neck.

“ ‘A subtle emotional imbalance’—what’s
that
supposed to mean? When I was a policeman, I spent every day, morning till night, dealing with characters who were imbalanced, all right. But nothing subtle about it. The world’s full of people like that. A dime a dozen. If I wanted to spend the time to listen to each and every one of the messages those people were sending out, I’d need ten more brains. And that still wouldn’t be enough.”

He sighed, and placed the box of staplers back under the desk.

“OK—you’re absolutely right. Children have pure hearts. Corporal punishment is bad. People are all equal. You can’t judge people by their grades. Take the time to talk and figure out a solution. I don’t have a major problem with that. But do you think that’s how the world will get to be a better place? No way. It’ll only get worse. How can people all be equal? I’ve never heard such a thing. Consider this—one hundred and ten million people are elbowing one another out of the way every day in Japan. Try making all of
them
equal. It’d be hell on earth.

“It’s easy to say all these sweet words. Close your eyes, pretend not to see what’s going on, and pass the buck. Don’t make any waves, sing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ hand the kids their diplomas, and everybody lives happily ever after. Shoplifting is a child’s message. Don’t worry about later on. That’s the easy way out, so why not? But who’s going to clean up the mess? People like
me,
that’s who. You think we do this because we like it? You guys have this kind of hey-what’s-sixty-eight-hundred-yen? look on your faces, but think about the people he stole from. A hundred people work here, and you better believe they take a difference of one or two yen seriously. When they tote up the receipts for a cash register and there’s a hundred-yen discrepancy, they work overtime to straighten it out. Do you know how much per hour the women who work the checkout counters make here? Why don’t you teach your pupils that?”

I
didn’t say anything. Carrot’s mother was silent, as was the boy. The security guard had worn himself out talking and sank back into the general silence. In another room a phone rang, and someone picked it up on the first ring.

“So, what should we do?” he asked.

I said, “How about we string him upside down from the ceiling until he says he’s sorry?”

“I like it! Course you know that we’d both be out on our ears.”

“Well, then, the only thing we can do is patiently take the time to discuss the problem. That’s all I can say.”

A person from another room knocked at the door and entered. “Mr. Nakamura, could you lend me the key to the storage room?” he asked. Mr. Nakamura rummaged through the drawer in his desk for a while but couldn’t find it. “It’s gone,” he said. “That’s strange. I always keep it in here.” “It’s very important,” the other man said. “I need it right away.” The way the two of them talked about it, it sounded like a very important key, something that probably shouldn’t have been kept in that drawer to begin with. They rifled through every drawer but came up empty-handed.

The three of us just sat there while this was going on. A couple of times Carrot’s mother glanced at me beseechingly. Carrot sat as before, expressionless, eyes pinned to the ground. Pointless, random thoughts flashed through my head. The room was stifling.

The man who needed the key gave up, grumbling as he left.

“That’s enough,” Mr. Nakamura said, turning to us; in a toneless, matter-of-fact voice he continued: “Thank you for coming. We’re finished here. I’ll leave the rest up to you and the boy’s mother. But get one thing clear—if he does this one more time, he won’t get off this easy. You do understand that, I hope? I don’t want any trouble. But I do have to do my job.”

She nodded, and so did I. Carrot looked like he hadn’t heard a word. I stood up, and the two of them weakly followed suit.

“One last thing,” the security guard said, still seated. He looked up at me. “I know this is rude of me, but I’ll just go ahead and say it. Since I laid eyes on you there’s something just not quite right. You’re young, tall, make a good impression, nicely tanned, logical. Everything you say makes absolute sense. I’m sure the parents of your pupils like you a lot. I can’t really explain it, but since I first saw you something’s been gnawing at me. Something I just can’t swallow. Nothing personal, so don’t get angry. It’s just, something bothers me. But what is it that’s gnawing at me, I wonder?”

“Would you mind if I ask you something personal?” I said.

“Ask away.”

“If people aren’t equal, where would you fit in?”

Mr. Nakamura took a deep lungful of cigarette smoke, shook his head, and exhaled ever so slowly, as if he were forcing someone to do something. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Don’t you worry, though. The two of us won’t be sharing the same level.”

S
he’d parked her red Toyota Celica in the parking lot of the supermarket. I called her over to one side, away from her son, and told her to go on home alone. I need to talk to your son alone for a while, I said. I’ll bring him home later. She nodded. She was about to say something but didn’t, got in her car, took her sunglasses from her purse, and started the engine.

After she left I took Carrot to a cheerful-looking little coffee shop I noticed nearby. I relaxed in the air-conditioning, ordered an iced tea for myself and an ice cream for the boy. I undid the top button of my shirt, took off my tie, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. Carrot remained sunk in silence. His expression and the look in his eyes were unchanged from when we were in the security office. He looked completely blank, like he was going to be that way for a while. His small hands placed neatly in his lap, he looked down at the floor, averting his face. I drank my iced tea, but Carrot didn’t touch his ice cream. The ice cream slowly melted in the dish, but he didn’t seem to notice. We sat facing each other like some married couple sharing an awkward silence. Every time she stopped by our table, the waitress looked tense.

T
hings just happen,” I finally said. I wasn’t trying to break the ice. The words just came bubbling up.

Carrot slowly raised his head and looked at me. He didn’t say a thing. I shut my eyes, sighed, and was silent for a while.

“I haven’t told anybody yet,” I said, “but during summer vacation I went to Greece. You know where Greece is, don’t you? We watched that video in social studies class, remember? In southern Europe, next to the Mediterranean. They have lots of islands and grow olives. Five hundred
B.C.
was the peak of their civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy, and Socrates took poison and died. That’s where I went. It’s a beautiful place. But I didn’t go to have a good time. A friend of mine disappeared on a small Greek island, and I went to help search. But we didn’t find anything. My friend just quietly vanished. Like smoke.”

Carrot opened his mouth a crack and looked at me. His expression was still hard and lifeless, but a glimmer of light appeared. I’d gotten through to him.

I
really liked this friend of mine. Very very much. My friend was the most important person in the world to me. So I took a plane to Greece to help search. But it didn’t help. We didn’t find a clue. Since I lost my friend, I don’t have any more friends. Not a single one.”

I wasn’t talking to Carrot as much as to myself. Thinking aloud.

“You know what I’d really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what’s been lost from the world. I don’t know. . . . Maybe I really don’t want to see that. Maybe I don’t want to see anything anymore.”

The waitress came over, removed Carrot’s plate of melted ice cream, and left the check.

I
feel like I’ve been alone ever since I was a child. I had parents and an older sister at home, but I didn’t get along with them. I couldn’t communicate with anyone in my family. So I often imagined I was adopted. For some reason some distant relatives gave me up to my family. Or maybe they got me from an orphanage. Now I realize how silly that idea was. My parents aren’t the type to adopt a helpless orphan. Anyway, I couldn’t accept the fact that I was related by blood to these people. It was easier to think they were complete strangers.

“I imagined a town far away. There was a house there, where my real family lived. Just a modest little house, but warm and inviting. Everyone there can understand one another, they say whatever they feel like. In the evening you can hear Mom bustling around in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and there’s a warm, delicious fragrance.
That’s
where I belong. I was always picturing this place in my mind, with me as a part of the picture.

“In real life my family had a dog, and he was the only one I got along with. He was a mutt, but pretty bright; once you taught him something he never forgot. I took him for a walk every day, and we’d go to the park; I’d sit on a bench and talk about all sorts of things. We understood each other. Those were my happiest moments as a child. When I was in fifth grade my dog was hit by a truck near our house and killed. My parents wouldn’t let me buy another dog. They’re too noisy and dirty, they told me, too much trouble.

“After my dog died I stayed in my room a lot, just reading books. The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I’d never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We’d just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn’t talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that’s just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

“When I entered college, though, I made a friend, the one I told you about. And my way of thinking started to change. I came to understand that thinking just by myself for so long was holding me back, keeping me to a single viewpoint. And I started to feel that being all alone is a terrible thing.

“Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea?”

Carrot didn’t reply.

“
I
have,” I said.

Eyes wide open, Carrot looked in my face.

“I can’t really say why it’s such a lonely feeling to watch all the river water mix together with the seawater. But it really is. You should try it sometime.”

I picked up my jacket and the check and slowly stood up. I rested a hand on Carrot’s shoulder, and he stood up, too. I paid and we left the shop.

I
t took about thirty minutes to walk to his house. We walked together, and I didn’t say a word.

Near his house was a small river, with a concrete bridge over it. A bland little thing, really, less a river than a drainage ditch that had been widened. When there was still farmland around here it must have been used for irrigation. Now, though, the water was cloudy, with a slight odor of detergent. Summer grasses sprouted in the riverbed, a discarded comic book lay open in the water. Carrot came to a halt in the middle of the bridge, leaned over the railing, and gazed down. I stood beside him and looked down, too. We stood like that for the longest time. He probably didn’t want to go back home. I could understand that.

C
arrot stuck a hand inside his trouser pocket, pulled out a key, and held it out toward me. Just an ordinary key, with a large red tag on it. The tag said
STORAGE
3 on it. The key for the storage room that the security guard, Nakamura, was looking for. Carrot must have been left alone in the room for a moment, found it in the drawer, and tossed it into his pocket. This boy’s mind was a bigger enigma than I’d imagined. He was an altogether strange child.

I took the key and held it in my palm and could feel the weight of the countless people that had seeped into it. It struck me as terribly wretched, dirty, small-minded. Flustered for a moment, I ended up dropping the key into the river. It made a tiny splash. The river wasn’t very deep, but the water was cloudy, and the key disappeared from sight. Side by side on the bridge, Carrot and I gazed at the water for a time. Somehow it made me feel cheerful, my body lighter.

“It’s too late to take it back,” I said, more to myself than to him. “I’m sure they have a spare somewhere. It’s their precious
storage room,
after all.”

I held my hand out, and Carrot softly took it in his. I could feel his slim, small fingers in mine. A feeling that I’d experienced somewhere—where could it have been?—a long long time ago. I held his hand and we headed for his home.