Yet it’s too late. Indeed I wonder if she intends to renege on her promise. I still have seven matches. Wet tobacco is absolutely tasteless.
Promises … promises…
To take away the bitter taste, a drop of whiskey. A little less than a third left in my pocket flask.
But it’s all right if she doesn’t come. Is breaking a promise anything to get excited about? I’ll be a lot more amazed if she puts in an appearance as she said she would. What if she doesn’t go back on her promise but sends a substitute in her place? And I’m positive this will happen. A substitute will come in her place. I have a general idea as to who that will be, too. In the final analysis they are both in it together. With her as decoy, the substitute intends to lure me under the bridge as a place of execution. Since I am a born victim-indeed, as I am a box man, which is the same as not existing, no matter how they try they’ll never kill me-the role of killer automatically goes to my enemy. That doesn’t mean that everything proceeds according to logic. I’m prepared to meet the attack. The wet surface of the slope is steep and slippery. Of course, when it comes to strength, I fancy he has something of an edge on me. I wonder if, contrary to my feelings, deep down I don’t want to die.
Now, then, time and place are suitable to the victim. The speed of the tide is ideal too. A very oldfashioned thickbodied bridge that spans like a last constricting ring the funnelshaped mouth of the canal swollen at high tide with sea water. As the central portion rises in an arc to let ships pass, the girders from the area at the foot of the bridge arc conspicuously high. Since I am a box man walking around with a waterproofed room on my back like a snail, there is no need to worry about mere rain blown sideways or the height of girders. Compared to a real room the weak point of a box is that it has no floor, I suppose. If the wet wind comes blowing up from underneath, it is hard to avoid, whatever I do. But you can think of it in another light: precisely because there is no flooring, I can sit close by the water’s edge without fear of being flooded. Even if the water level suddenly rises, swollen at high tide by the rain, as long as it doesn’t exceed the height of my boots I can always stand up and change positions. For those who have not actually had the experience, this will seem madly carefree. Besides from now on the tide will be going out. No need to worry lest the water rise more than it has. The black band of seaweed, as if drawn with a ruler along the base of the embankment now rotting from oil wastes, clearly divides the view into upper and lower parts.
A dark swell spreading out from somewhere has begun to erase the ripples from the surface of the water. Immediately downstream from the bridge pylons, large and small whirlpools, sluggish, like the melting of unrefined rice honey, gradually begin to form. They arc actually rather small depressions; but wooden fish boxes, fragments of bamboo baskets, and plastic containers draw falteringly near, swirl suddenly around, trembling, turn over several times, and just as their speed seems to slacken, are all at once swallowed up.
Yes, indeed, in an emergency I shall join these notes to the wooden boxes and the bamboo baskets. The shadow of someone appears on the embankment; if it is not she, I shall immediately put them in a vinyl bag, seal the mouth after blowing it up, and wrap the opening several times with the thin wire that I have doubled. About twenty two to twenty three seconds. Then I shall bind red vinyl tape over the wire, leaving long conspicuous ends. I shall fix a stone, the size of a fist, to the tape by means of twisted paper. That will take less than five seconds. The whole business will take about thirty seconds. However long it lasts, it shouldn’t take more than one minute. Furthermore, no matter how her substitute hurries it will take him two to three minutes to come down the stone stairway by the landing, cross the slippery stone slope, and get here. I have no fear I won’t have plenty of time. If he shows the slightest strange behavior, I shall immediately throw the bag into the current. It should go pretty far with the attached stone. No matter how he tries to reach it, he’ll never get it. The bag will head directly toward the whirlpools. If he’s an expert swimmer I wonder if he’ll plunge in and chase after it? No, an expert would surely avoid such recklessness. Even the passage of small boats is forbidden after the tide has begun to withdraw. But he will be aware of the whirlpools without reading the sign on the embankment. After faltering for a while, the bag will ultimately be swept out to sea. Then after hours or days the paper string will come undone and the stone will be released. The air filled hag will easily attract attention with its red tape, drifting in with the shore tides.
Thus if the man who shot me were to appear right now, according to the contents of the notes up to this point, he will be the one who tried to kill me. Impossible. Even if I specify his name here on this page, I doubt I can get anyone to believe me. If I try to explain the motives, I will simply weaken the credibility of the notes even more. It will all sound like a lie. But I’ve got my wits about me. I’ve attached a black and white negative with cellophane tape to the upper right hand corner of the inside cover. Perhaps it is not very clear, but it will constitute absolutely unshakable evidence. It’s the back view of a middle aged man hurrying off, hiding his air rifle under his arm, the muzzle pointed downward along his body. When enlarged, I suppose you will be able to distinguish the various features even better. He is poorly dressed, but the cloth is strong and of excellent quality. Yet the trousers are full of creases. His fingers are heavy and solid, but the tips are rounded and look as if they have never experienced work. And then the fancy shoes are most conspicuous. They are low shoes, like slippers, with the sides scooped out and the soles thin. He is in a profession in which he takes them off and puts them on more than the ordinary number of times.
These notes, if the finder so wishes, can make him a little fortune.
There! The whirlpools are beginning to swell. There is absolutely no need to worry about being seen. Heavy trucks piled high with frozen fish or pulpwood kick up the thick concrete slabs immediately above on the bridge, honking and crossing back and forth every few seconds; they are absorbed only in their own noise and are like blind beasts. This is an ideal place not only for the disposal of corpses but for living humans as well. And an ideal place for murder must be an ideal place to be murdered.
The lead in my pencil is gone. Come on, come on … I’ve had enough. Is she really going to come or not?
(I can’t sharpen the pencil with this rusty knife. Tomorrow, if I’m able to prolong my existence until then, I must get two or three ballpoint pens. The ones around the service entrance of the Middle School have the most ink left in them.)
Two or Three Additions
Concerning the Photographic Evidence Attached to the Inner Cover
Time of shooting: One evening about a week or ten days ago (paralysis of the sense of time is one of the chronic ailments of a box man).
Place of shooting: The mountainside end of the long black wall of the soy sauce factory (the shadow of the wall cuts diagonally across the foreground of the picture).
At the time I was just in the act of standing there relieving myself. Suddenly there was a sharp noise. It resembled the sound of a pebble kicked up by a truck striking the box (that frequently happened, for I often lay by the roadside). But no truck, not to mention any three wheeled conveyance, had passed by. At the same time a sharp pain like biting down on ice with a bad tooth pierced my left shoulder: and my urine stopped flowing. Looking out the little hole in the side, I saw the sweeping branches of an old mulberry tree just where the curve began along the sweet potato field of the hatchery and where the wall of the soy factory ended and became a slope and the pavement gave way to a graveled walk (a part is visible on the left side of the photo). Turning away from the shadow of the tree (that is, as if to run away), a man was beginning to get up. He shifted a sort of stick about three feet long from his shoulder and put it under his arm, whereupon it caught the evening sun and gleamed a reddish black. I at once concluded that it was an air rifle. Without rearranging myself after urinating, I set up my camera. (To tell the truth, before I became a box man I was a photographer who had just become independent. Since I had become a box man right in the midst of my career, for no particular reason I still went around with a minimum of photographic equipment.) Changing the direction of the box, I snapped three pictures in succession. (I did not have the time to regulate the distance, but as the camera was set at f I i at one two hundred and fiftieth of a second, it was more or less in focus.) The fellow sprang to the side, crossed the road, and disappeared from view.
Almost everything up until now can be proved by analyzing the film. But from this point on, nothing at all is backed by objective evidence. I expect that either you or the finder of these notes will believe my testimony and justify it on your own.
FIRST
CONJECTURE
CONCERNING
THE
TRUE
CHARACTER
OF
THE
SNIPER
. I should like you to refer to the “Case of A.” When someone is infected by the idea of a box man and tries himself to become one, there is a general tendency to overreact by shooting him with an air rifle. Thus I did not cry out for help or make any attempt at pursuit. Rather I thought that the candidates for box man had increased by one, and I experienced a feeling of closeness to him. Thereupon the pain in my shoulder receded and changed into a feeling of incandescence. From now on it was rather the sniper who must endure a pain a hundred times worse. There was no need to inflict any greater chastisement on him than this.
As I gazed at the deserted sloping road after the disappearance of the rifle man, I felt moist like a broken water faucet. The smoke that smelled like burnt sugar came from the soy factory and diligently filed away at the ends of the sharp shadows east by the evening sun, dulling the angles. Somewhere in the distance, the monotonous grating of firewood being sawed. And still further in the distance, the lively sound of a racing motorbike engine. But after two or three seconds had gone by, there was no sign of anyone at all. Could it be that the inhabitants had withdrawn underground like grubs? A scene so calm that it induced an overwhelming desire to see a human being… anyone. But a box man’s eyes cannot be deceived. Looking out from the box, he sees through the lies and secret intentions concealed behind the scenery. The scenery evidently intended to shake me up by pretending that this was a road where one could not go astray, intended for my surrender, but unfortunately I was not to be taken in. I just wanted to relieve myself at my leisure. The area around a station or a crowded shopping district was more suited to a box man. I liked the honesty of it. I felt at home with it-three or four straight roads pretending to be a labyrinth. For this reason I don’t like provincial towns. Anyway there are too many sham straight roads there. Thinking of the confusion of the air rifle man lost on such a road, I felt sentimental without meaning to.
As I pressed down on the wound, my fingers became sticky and covered with blood. Suddenly I was uneasy. It may be all right in one of the busier quarters of Tokyo, but in this commercial section of ‘I’ City, there isn’t room for two box men. If he insists on becoming a box man, it necessarily follows that a territorial dispute will be unavoidable. When he realizes he can’t drive me out with an air rifle, it doesn’t mean that he won’t come for me next time with a shotgun. Was I wrong in the way I reacted? Frankly, fellows like him have tried to get on intimate terms with me any number of times.
One addressed me directly and even stopped me in the street. At the time, I looked back at him in silence from the crack in the inclined vinyl curtain. Anyone would have been nonplused at that. Even a policeman or a railway guard would have shrunk back. I wondered if I should have said something before I drove him to his air rifle.
BUT
THE
CONJECTURE
TEAS
COMPLETELY
CHANCED
WITH
A
NEW
CAST
OF
CHARACTERS
. . The new character in the cast came riding on a bicycle. As I was concentrating on the sham road, a voice suddenly came from behind me. “There’s a hospital at the top of the slope,” it said. White fingertips grazed the observation window, and three thousand yen notes were tossed in. I felt like a mailbox and turned to see a retreating figure already some ten yards away. It was apparently a young girl whose low, rasping voice did not suit her. I had no time to point the camera in her direction, and she disappeared around the corner at the next lane. I had observed her for only a few seconds, yet I was quite taken by the movement of her legs propelling the bicycle. They were slender, but not too slender-light legs with a well proportioned curve. The backs of her knees were glossy and beautiful like the inside of a shell. They were so vivid that I have no memory of the color of the dress she was wearing. But I wasn’t necessarily disarmed. If by that evening, the wound in my shoulder had not worsened, I probably would not have made it a point to go to the hospital at the top of the slope. Nor would I have realized that the air rifle man (as the photo clearly showed) was in fact the hospital doctor and the girl on the bicycle, the nurse. Furthermore, quite naturally, I should not have been in the ridiculous situation of waiting for her-or her substitute-in such a dangerous place under the bridge.
But I just put another cigarette to my lips. Again and again I counted over the thousand yen notes and, folding them in three, I dropped them into one of my rubber boots. They say that a wild bird that has been captured will refuse food and die of hunger. But the condemned convict relishes his last cigarette. I, who was no bird, leisurely lit the cigarette, reflecting that there was no connection between the rifle man and the nurse. It made absolutely no difference; the rifle man was the rifle man and the girl the girl. It was all right to assume that her hurrying on ahead was an expression of her delicacy, that she was simply ashamed of her charitable act.