The Thief

by Fuminori Nakamura

  Our eyes met. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I looked at the ground.

  “You should disappear, before you get caught up in it again.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be OK. In fact, if they are planning something I’ll make a lot of cash. Besides, that’s how I live. It’s too late to worry about saving my own skin.”

  He laughed, so I laughed too. As if realizing that he’d talked for too long, he raised his hand lightly and turned at the intersection. In the distance I saw a tall, rich-looking man, but I couldn’t be bothered. The buildings were getting to me, so I went back under the bridge. Murky water had pooled in a discarded take-out container. Somehow it looked unpleasantly warm.

  3I was lying on my bed unable to sleep. I opened my eyes. The rain was buffeting the thin windows, making an unpleasant rattling noise. A deep bass beat pounded from the apartment above. From time to time it stopped, then started again, over and over. I was wide awake, fully aware of every detail of my ground-floor room. The rain seemed inexorable, falling from the sky to inundate the whole world around me.

  The pulsing rhythm overhead stopped, leaving just the sound of the rain. When the music didn’t start again, I figured the guy upstairs had gone to sleep. I felt like I was the only person left in the whole world. I lit a cigarette, then saw that there was a half-finished one still in the ashtray. My room held nothing worth looking at, just a pipe bed and a closet and an ironing board. Synthetic fibers stuck up like stakes from the holes in the frayed tatami mats. I stared at my long fingers, flexing them over and over, opening, closing. I tried to remember when I first realized that I was virtually ambidextrous, but couldn’t pin it down. It felt like I’d been born with it, but also like I gradually grew that way.

  The rain kept on falling as if it was determined not to let me go outside. I contemplated the vastness of the clouds in the sky, and the place I was in at that moment. Like an act of defiance, I grabbed my cigarettes, pulled on my socks, opened the flimsy wooden door and stepped outside. The rain soaked the rusty poles of the apartment building, the bicycle lying on its side like a corpse, making the cold air even colder.

  I rounded the corner by a leaning traffic sign, walked past a factory with rusting steps, then turned left at the T-junction at the end of a line of row houses. A car was coming towards me, picking up speed. I guessed that it would give way first and sure enough, when I feinted towards it, it swerved timidly. Many telephone poles away the rain was lashing a gigantic pylon. I looked away, but of course I knew it was there even if I wasn’t watching it.

  When I got to the station the downpour was drenching a solitary taxi with no passengers. The driver was looking straight ahead listlessly, eyes still, staring into space. I climbed the stairs and closed my umbrella. A homeless man, lying there out of the rain and cold, was looking in my direction. He seemed right at home, as though there was supposed to be a bum here at this hour. Something about his eyes reminded me of Ishikawa and I felt uneasy, but his face and age were wrong. He wasn’t actually looking at me. He was gazing fixedly at a point just behind me as I walked, as if there was something there. I lit a smoke to take my mind off him, crossed over to the other side of the tracks and down the dilapidated steps.

  In a convenience store I bought some more cigarettes and a can of coffee. When I handed over the money the clerk bellowed, “Thank you very much!” like he was insane. The cash was what I’d taken from the pervert the day before, but its previous owners were unknown. I thought about how this banknote had witnessed a moment of each one of those people’s lives. Maybe it had been at the scene of a murder, then passed from the murderer to a shopkeeper somewhere, then to a good person somewhere else.

  When I left the store the great, fat clouds seemed to be hovering overhead, and I felt like I was being coated with countless drops of rain. My heart started to beat faster and I flexed my fingers in my pockets. I imagined calling a cab, getting out in some busy area and sliding my fingers into the people’s pockets there—planting myself in the middle of the crowd, one wallet after another, my hands moving as swiftly and precisely as possible. The rain kept falling and my pulse wouldn’t settle. I thought the only thing for it was to go downtown, but I tried to compose myself. I climbed the stairs once more, telling myself that the persistent footsteps behind me were just echoes, and lit another cigarette. The homeless man was nowhere to be seen. My heart beating dully, heavily, I went through the station and downstairs again. A man in a raincoat was getting saturated at the roundabout in front of me and the white headlights of a passing car lit up the drizzle, illuminating the sharp, golden droplets. The rain seemed to hold a thousand needles. I spotted the sleeping figure of the homeless guy but there was no sign of the man in the raincoat.

  I stopped myself from looking over my shoulder, thinking that I shouldn’t have come out in the first place. I could sense the pylon, even though I couldn’t see it from here. I felt the never-ending rain. I was conscious of the enormous clouds and of myself walking beneath them.

  4 “If you steal a hundred thousand from someone who’s worth a billion, it’s almost like you’ve taken nothing.”

  Ishikawa often used to say things like that. He loved stealing from the rich, and I would just go along with it. He’d take their wallets, but he didn’t really care about the money and spent most of it immediately.

  “But it’s still wrong,” I said.

  He nodded, but he grinned briefly before continuing the conversation. We were chatting in a narrow booth in our usual run-down bar. The owner was a former gangster, though he never said much about his past. His arms and legs were thin and his body twisted, giving him a slightly lopsided appearance. I couldn’t tell his age.

  “But obviously if there was no concept of ownership there’d be no concept of stealing, would there? As long as there’s one starving child in the world, all property is theft.”

  “We can’t use that to excuse what we do, though.”

  “I’m not trying to excuse it. I just can’t stand people who are totally convinced that they’re saints.”

  Ishikawa once stole a lot of money with a really simple trick. He heard about this old man who used to go to a private club with a large bundle of cash. The man was the director of some religious organization and he liked showing off his money to young women. After every assembly, to work off some of his exaltation, he’d take his staff to this club to have sex with the girls there. He was scrawny and bug-eyed, with a habit of showing his gums when he laughed. Ishikawa bought a pouch exactly the same as the one the old guy carried his cash in, waited for him to turn up at the club, and as they were getting out of the car he bumped into the secretary who was carrying the bag. He shoved the pouch inside his coat and dropped the fake one, which was stuffed with wads of paper. The old man picked it up, barking at an apologetic Ishikawa before disappearing into the grey building with his assistants. The bag contained ten million yen.

  “I guess he likes round numbers like ten million. No, he isn’t a bad person at heart. Probably he really did want to build schools in the Sudan and help refugees and stuff, just like they advertise. Subconsciously. So I helped him realize his subconscious desire.”

  Ishikawa screwed up his face and laughed like a child.

  “Look, in those countries there are thousands of people who die as soon as they’re born, right? Just because they were unlucky enough to be born in that place. Dying in droves with no time to fight back, all skin and bone and covered in flies. I’d hate that.”

  I don’t know if it’s true or not, but he said that he gave one million yen to his accomplice, a woman from some foreign country who worked in the club. Then he spent another million the same day and sent the rest to an overseas non-profit where his ex-girlfriend worked.

  Ishikawa was always good with his hands and he had a smooth tongue. In the past he’d drifted from one job to the next, only picking pockets when he needed money. Before I met him he was in a notorious investment fraud
group.

  “When I’m making my way invisibly through a crowd, it’s a special feeling. You know how time has different textures? The tension when you’re gambling or pulling off some investment scam is the same. The instant you move outside the law or sleep with some woman who’s off limits, like a mobster’s girlfriend, time becomes saturated. It’s ecstasy. Intense moments like those demand to be recreated, taking on a personality of their own. They tell you, again, I want that feeling again. Well, for me picking pockets is the greatest thrill of all.”

  An arrest warrant was issued for Ishikawa for fraud and he fled to the Philippines, and then as far as Pakistan and Kenya. When he came back, however, he’d acquired a dead person’s identity. He had a new driver’s license and passport and certificate of residence—on the face of it he was a free man.

  “The official story is that I died in Pakistan, so now my name’s Niimi. That means I was already Niimi when I met you. It’s complicated and I can’t go into details, but there are some things you’re better off not knowing.”

  Because of the demands of the part of his life I wasn’t supposed to ask about, he spent Monday to Friday in an office all by himself, watching the phone. From time to time a call would come in and he’d answer with the name of a company that was probably fictitious. He collected the mail and very occasionally he’d receive a visit from a man who appeared to be some sort of official. Going out on the town with me was pretty much limited to Saturdays and Sundays.

  At his request I went to the office several times to keep him company. But as fate would have it, when I was there one day I met the man. The door flew open, I spun round in surprise and there he was, right in front of me. At the entrance he turned off the light and looked silently around the room. I don’t know why, but the moment I saw him I regretted having come. In the darkness, without saying a word, the man walked inside.

  With his black hair and sunglasses he looked like a broker of some kind, but I couldn’t guess his age. He could have been thirty, he could have been fifty. In the dim light shining though the curtain his shadow stretched along the wall. Naturally it moved when he moved, and his footsteps rang out strangely. Still watching Ishikawa, he opened the safe, took out ten million yen or so and stuffed it casually into a bag. Then he turned his attention to me for some reason.

  “I’ll see you again,” he muttered.

  I had no idea what was going on so I just stared back at him. After the man left, however, Ishikawa went on talking about pickpocketing, as if he didn’t want to give me a chance to open my mouth.

  “There’s only been one time I really didn’t like dipping. It was a fireworks display, see? It’s pretty unusual, but sometimes you get some rich people mingling with the crowd, right?”

  Looking at his face I gave up on asking about the man. Probably he fell into that category of things I was better off not knowing about. I tried to forget about him, though not very successfully.

  “A middle-aged guy watching from his hotel room with his mistress, for example. She starts pestering him to go down and get yakisoba, or wants to go for a walk together or something. Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved fireworks. Poor people can see them for free and they’re great entertainment. Up in the sky, they’re equally nice for everyone.”

  Sometimes Ishikawa’s expression was so innocent that he looked defenseless, but the echoes of the man still lingered in the room, and his eyes wouldn’t stay still.

  “They’re really beautiful. One of the most beautiful things in this life, in the world. But we take advantage of that beauty, yeah? We’re waiting for a chance, when everyone’s absorbed in the beauty. We’re not looking at the fireworks, we’re looking at people’s pockets. That’s—I don’t know how to describe it.”

  That’s what he said, but for me it was his skill that was enchanting. Nipping a wallet with three fingers, passing it back to me, and by the time I took out the money and return it he’d already have lifted the next one. Then he would lean his arm against the first wallet’s owner and without even looking he would put it back in the guy’s pocket again. In my eyes his movements were one of life’s beauties. At the time it never occurred to me that this beauty would vanish as swiftly as the fireworks.

  5 When I went outside again the rain had stopped, so I dumped my umbrella in the basket of a nearby bike. I buttoned my coat, ignoring the cat that had been following me for some reason, and went into a supermarket.

  It was warm in the shop and I started to sweat. I thought I spotted Tachibana, but then realized there was no reason for him to be there and exhaled in relief. One of the staff was watching me. I put bread, ham and eggs into my basket, grabbed a bottle of mineral water and headed for the checkout.

  I was trying to work out why I’d come back to Tokyo. Ever since that violent, elaborately planned attack, I’d known it was dangerous to return. I wanted news of Ishikawa, but I wasn’t sure if that was the real reason. Thinking about how the situation had unfolded back then, I knew there was a strong possibility that he was dead, and almost certainly it wasn’t safe for me to be here either.

  I noticed a mother with her child and I stopped. The woman, her damaged hair tied in a ponytail, touched the boy lightly with her knee. At that moment he slipped a packet of fish fillets into the Uniqlo bag he was carrying. A towel had been placed inside and by shaking the paper bag the stuff was hidden. My heart skipped a beat and I was annoyed with myself. The child was seizing the items earnestly, as though trying to live up to his mother’s expectations. He was skillful, and he seemed determined that even if he were caught his mother wouldn’t be blamed. Skinny legs poked out from his blue shorts and the sleeves and pockets of his green jacket were frayed. Inside the shop, with its cheerful piped music, they were conspicuous. I stood and looked at the boy’s clothes. The woman smacked him, maybe because he was walking too slowly. People turned to stare, but he was smiling. I thought he was probably ashamed. His smile looked automatic, insisting to the onlookers that he wasn’t the kind of kid who gets treated like that by his mother and that his mother wasn’t that sort of parent, trying to mask his mother’s disgrace.

  I found myself following them. She nudged the boy with her knee again and he swiftly put some cup noodles in the bag. His hands were quick, but the bag was too small to meet his mother’s demands. A middle-aged woman in a dark blue coat disappeared around the corner of the aisle, keeping an eye on them. I was certain she was a store detective, employed by the supermarket to catch shoplifters. The child seemed to have noticed, but he couldn’t tell his mother.

  I approached them and examined the woman from up close. She was in her mid-thirties, with narrow eyes and a haggard look. Her red tracksuit was new but her sandals were ugly and dirty. She crouched down to inspect the biscuits, prodding them with her finger and mumbling to herself as if unable to make up her mind. I suddenly thought of Saeko, even though this woman didn’t look a bit like her. When she reached out for a packet of crackers and turned to call her son, I was squatting beside her. I realized that I was about to say something so I stopped myself and started to rise, but she was looking at me in surprise. Seeing her face, I felt as though the words were dragged out of me.

  “You’ve been busted.”

  “What?”

  She glared at me, disguising her fear with anger. The boy stood petrified beside her, skinny and miserable.

  “The woman in the navy coat over there. She works for the store. You’ve definitely been spotted. These days they call the cops straight away, so either buy it or dump it all and leave.”

  The mother’s desires had greatly exceeded the capacity of the towel in the clumsily modified paper bag the child was carrying. The meat and fish were hidden, but I could see the tip of a bulging packet of snacks. I went to the checkout and joined a queue. It was busy. People were jammed together like ants and everyone was sweating.

  After I left the shop I bought a can of coffee, which I’d forgotten to get inside, from a vending machine. I lit a ci
garette as the woman and child came walking up behind me. The boy undid the lock on his mother’s bike and watched her back as she approached me.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  For an instant her face contorted, one eye closing, squeezed tight at the edge. As she stood in front of me the tic showed itself again.

  “All I did was warn you that you’d been seen.”

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  She glared at me and her eye shut firmly yet again.

  “I’m feeding my kid properly. It’s not fair to laugh at me.”

  Behind her the boy seemed to be assessing how angry she was. Her voice was unnaturally loud, as though her wiring was faulty somewhere, and as I looked at her face I thought once more of Saeko.

  “Sometimes I feel happy when people tell me I’ve done something unforgivable,” Saeko once said to me. “Even when I didn’t do it on purpose. Because I do nasty things to everyone. Because I do nasty things to myself as well. Because I trample all over people’s values.”

  Saeko’s voice was always low.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” I said to the woman.

  I took out the coffee I’d just bought.

  “Because I’ve shoplifted too. I only told you because you’d been seen. You should be grateful.”

  The woman had opened her eyes and was sizing me up. I didn’t think Saeko had ever looked at me with that expression.

  “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I don’t.”

  I was telling the truth, but she was looking me up and down. I was wearing my good clothes, as I always did when I went into the city at night.

  “But you’ve got money, haven’t you? Give me a call when you’re free. Ten thousand yen would be OK.”

  She took a business card from her purse. It had the name of a club and her picture on it, but the club’s address and phone number had been crossed out with ball-point and only the cell phone number was left.