The Thief

by Fuminori Nakamura

  I HARDLY SLEPT all day. Seven o’clock, the time Ishikawa had given me, crept closer. Crowds of people were milling around the north entrance to the station. Looking at them, all with far more energy and vitality than my sleep-deprived self, gave me a mild headache.

  Eight o’clock passed, then nine, but Ishikawa didn’t show. I sat there, smoking nonstop. Under the neon lights the colors of the people’s clothes hurt my eyes. I looked at a couple laughing boisterously, I looked at a businessman leaning against the wall, I looked at my watch, I looked at my shoes. I looked at a man walking towards me with his hand raised, and then realized that he was waving to someone else. Just then an elderly homeless man came up behind me.

  “No matter what happens after this,” he said, looking me in the eye.

  My heart started to beat faster. All around me thousands of people were smiling at each other, their faces indistinct.

  “Keep a low profile if you still value your life. You interest me. Let’s meet again sometime.”

  I stared at him. My breathing grew rapid, and I consciously tried to slow it down.

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s a message. I got it just now from a dude in a suit.”

  He took a bottle of whiskey from his pocket.

  “Is there more?”

  “Ah, what comes after that?” He coughed and screwed up his face. “ ‘I’ve decided to let you go for now. Be secretly grateful to me wherever you go.’ I think that was it.”

  I went into the station, bought a ticket at random and waited for the bullet train. A news item about a war was blaring from the TV in the waiting room. The screen changed and I saw the headline: Mr. XX, House of Representatives Member, Murdered. Above it was a picture of the old man we’d robbed.

  “According to an eye-witness who escaped unharmed, the assailants appeared to be foreigners. They forced Mr. XX to open the safe and then killed him with a sword-like weapon. The metropolitan police have opened an investigation and are treating it as another burglary by a Chinese crime syndicate, which have been increasing in recent years. And in the Diet….”

  I found out later that the following day the private secretary of another politician had committed suicide. The director of a public corporation fell onto a railway line and was hit by a train, and the president of an IT company disappeared and turned up dead. Share prices made an abrupt and unusual jump, then fell sharply. A Minister resigned, citing health reasons, and soon afterwards another politician belonging to the same faction also died.

  I left Tokyo that night.

  8 Leaning against a dingy office block, I lit a cigarette, shielding it with my coat against the wind. I put my hands in my pockets, felt the cold air chill my neck and shoulders. Two middle-aged women in uniform, so similar they could have been twins, came out of the building and gave me a suspicious look as they passed. My fingers just wouldn’t warm up, so I went into a convenience store and bought a can of hot coffee. I wrapped my hands around it as I walked towards the concert hall.

  In the smoking area I pretended to check my email and smoked another cigarette. I sensed the bustle of a crowd of people and looked towards the doors just as the concert-goers came pouring out. Since it was a classical program, most of the audience was elderly and rich. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, stuff I didn’t know much about.

  I joined the people making their way towards the taxi stand, picked out the most elegant retired couple in the crowd. Walking slowly, I moved closer, flexing my fingers in my pockets. They were looking at each other happily, praising the French conductor, talking about possibly going to hear him in France next time. The man wore a heavy brown Loro Piana jacket, and she was wearing a thick cream coat and a Gucci scarf. The man suggested they buy a present for their grandson and she smiled in agreement. In the afterglow of the concert their faces were filled with goodness, brimming with satisfaction at the beautiful music they had just heard. The soft lines on the old man’s face showed that their lives had arrived at this point without a single wrong turn or false step.

  His wallet was probably in the inside pocket of his coat, so I thought I’d have to take the orthodox approach, bump into him from head on. But then he said he was hot, slowed his pace and began undoing his buttons. I placed myself right behind him, using my own body to block the view of anyone following. I had to get it done before his wife started to help him. Just as he finished with the buttons and began to open his coat, I stretched out my hand at an angle, coming at him from his left. I slid my index and middle fingers into his pocket and grasped the wallet. At that moment it was as though my fingers could feel his genial expression and their easy lifestyle. I lifted the wallet and slipped it up my sleeve. As I passed him on the left he was struggling with his jacket. His wife said something to him and extended a slender arm to assist.

  His wallet held 220,000 yen, several credit cards and some small photos taken with his grandson. The smiling boy standing between them and making a funny face looked really happy. I stuffed the wallet violently into a mailbox as though rejecting everything it stood for. A lightning rod glittered silver on top of the row of office blocks. It rose straight up, catching the rays of the sun. I looked away and plunged into the crowd once more.

  • • •

  I CAUGHT A cab and got out near my apartment. A small boy with long dyed brown hair came sprinting out of the shadows of the decaying apartments on the other side of the road, shouting. I passed rusted signboards, looked vacantly at shuttered-up shops next to concrete walls covered in graffiti. I thought about having a smoke but then changed my mind. I still wanted something in my mouth, though, and at that moment my fingers closed on a packet of chewing gum in my pocket. A car drove by right in front of me, accelerating as it went. I wasn’t sure if it was gum I’d bought ages ago and forgotten about or if I’d lifted it when I got the coffee.

  I lit a cigarette after all and wrapped my coat around me, trying to compose myself. When I came out onto the main street, among the sluggish passers-by I saw the kid who’d been shoplifting with his mother. He was alone, carrying the same paper bag and going into the same supermarket. I considered going home, but after hesitating for a few seconds I followed him in.

  He was wearing blue shorts and a green windbreaker, but the fabric was shabby. After walking to the meat section, he paused briefly and then as quick as a flash seized some sliced meat and stuffed it in the bag. He chose the nearest packet and his movements were seamless. I felt as though the course of his life had been determined at birth, that he was constantly pushing against a powerful current.

  Next he moved to the vegetables. Weaving his way through the cluster of housewives around the bargain bin, he used the blind spot they offered to pilfer some potatoes and onions. He was right-handed, and it only took him a split second to grab the goods and stash them in his bag. As I watched him I wondered which of us was more skillful at that age. But no matter how good he was, a child walking around a supermarket on his own stood out, and his choice of a paper bag was all wrong. A middle-aged woman pretending to be a customer was observing him, surely a detective hired by the store to catch shoplifters. It was a different woman this time, with long hair. She was tailing an old man who was acting suspiciously, but keeping her eye on the kid at the same time.

  Unaware of her gaze, he stopped in front of the liquor shelves. He wavered, disconcerted, I was guessing, by the mismatch between what he was supposed to pinch and the size of his bag. The store detective’s attention was locked on him. I had an image of hundreds of arms reaching out to seize him. I pictured him standing tiny and defenseless, bombarded by accusing glares and whispers of pity and shock, exposed to the world as “that kind of kid.” I moved closer and stood beside him. Taken by surprise, he started to tremble slightly, keeping his face averted.

  “You’ve been spotted,” I said. “Dump the bag and get out.”

  He looked up at me helplessly.

  “Same as before. You’ve been
seen. Give it up.”

  I walked towards the woman who was watching. When she noticed me she looked away, bending down and pretending to be choosing some sweets. But the boy put three cans of beer into his bag, one after the other, and then trotted to the dairy products. There his head moved from side to side, searching for what he wanted to steal—or rather, what he’d been told to steal. I followed him. Checking that the woman wasn’t looking, I quickly grabbed a basket and took his bag from him.

  “That’s enough,” I said. “I’ll buy it for you.”

  His first impulse was to fight back, but then he saw how much bigger I was and stopped. His face was dirty but his eyelashes were long, his eyes large and clear.

  “What else do you need?”

  He didn’t answer. I saw a scrap of paper peeking from his coat pocket, and I plucked it out and unfolded it. A shopping list, written in ballpoint. Untidy, slanting handwriting, probably his mother’s.

  I put the groceries in the basket and moved on. The boy came with me. The woman caught up with us and looked curiously at me, this adult who had suddenly appeared beside the child. Then she looked at the things in the basket and set off in pursuit of the suspicious old man, who had disappeared round a corner. The boy trailed after me passively, without even a show of resistance. Since I was dressed for work, my clothes were much flashier than his. Maybe he was ashamed that his pilfering had been spotted by someone like me. I turned to face him.

  “You’re good, but this is how you do it. Watch.”

  The only thing left on the list was yogurt. I stretched my hand towards the shelves where it was displayed, acting like I was trying to make up my mind. Glancing left and right, I caught the lid with my middle finger and tipped it into my sleeve. Sliding my hand to the left, I snagged three more containers. He watched my fingers earnestly and then turned and stared at my face as though he was seeing a miracle. He was clearly impressed that the yogurts didn’t fall out when I lowered my arm.

  “Now we buy the rest. Okay?”

  Without waiting for an answer I went to the checkout and paid. We left the store and I transferred the purchases into his bag.

  “You can’t come back here. They’ve got a look-out and she knows your face.”

  The boy looked at me, one shoulder dragged down by the weight of the bag.

  “Hiding things under the towel is a good idea, maybe. But you’d better stop. First, it doesn’t look natural for a kid to be carrying a paper bag, so people notice. And it’s small so you can’t fit much stuff in it. Your moves—you go for the target too obviously. When you’re shoplifting, you need to make some unnecessary movements as a diversion.”

  I saw that his face had turned serious and I looked away.

  “Okay, take those and go home.”

  I walked away without looking back, chewing viciously on the gum I’d found in my pocket.

  9 When I woke my neck and shoulders were drenched in sweat. I thought I’d been dreaming but I couldn’t remember clearly. There’d been a tower in the fog, a long way off beyond the houses and the power poles. A stone tower that had probably been standing there for centuries, its surface carved in geometric patterns. It stretched straight up, dim and massive.

  I smoked two cigarettes and thought of Ishikawa. When I ran into Tachibana I could have questioned him more closely, but I couldn’t trust what he said. I didn’t like the idea of being manipulated by his lies. The office where Ishikawa had worked had been turned into a beauty spa.

  Suddenly I felt uneasy, like I had to get outside. I tried to decide where to go—the lounge of some high-class hotel, an exclusive brand-name shop, even Haneda Airport, where I’d thought about going before but changed my mind. I opened the door, planning to think about it as I walked. The boy was sitting in the cracked hallway. He seemed right at home in an old dump like this. He looked up at me blankly in the doorway, waiting passively.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He showed no reaction. I knew he’d been following me after we parted, but I never thought he’d come all this way. In his hand he held a brown paper bag, bigger than the one he’d had before. I think he knew that size wasn’t the issue, though.

  “What is it this time?”

  He held out a piece of paper. It was a list in cramped, twisted writing on the back of a flier:

  300g pork

  ginger

  lettuce

  lotus root

  carrot

  3 × 500ml Super Dry

  sliced squid

  cup noodles (something you like)

  Perhaps she was cooking for a male visitor.

  “Impossible. These are no good for shoplifting. You should pick canned goods, processed veggies in packets, stuff like that.”

  He was wearing the same blue shorts and filthy green windbreaker, and he was rubbing at his leg with his right hand. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it because of the cold or if it was unconscious, a deeply ingrained habit, but the movement of his arm was mesmerizing. When I went back inside for my bag he came in with me, still clutching his paper sack. Ishikawa would have laughed if he’d seen me now. I forced a brief smile. Then I hailed a cab, and as it pulled up the boy opened his mouth for the first time.

  “Where to?”

  His childish voice was high and pure, not yet worn down by his surroundings.

  “You can’t go back to that supermarket. They’ll have their eye on you. We’ll go further away.”

  I told the driver our destination and leaned back on the seat. For some reason the kid was staring avidly out the window at the passing scene as though he’d never seen anything like it before, his lips firmly shut.

  WE ENTERED A giant supermarket in the basement of a department store and I got a basket. Then I picked up some sliced pork and slipped it in my bag, which was black with a slit hidden in the pattern so that I could put things inside without undoing the zip.

  Once the boy saw my hand move he kept glancing at the bag.

  “Grab the edge of my coat,” I told him. “Pretend I’m your father and stay right beside me. Your body will help hide the bag.”

  I put a couple of packed lunches into the basket as camouflage while I filled the bag. This time the store detective was a woman in glasses, close to retirement age. The basket of her shopping cart was loaded with stuff so she’d look like a normal customer, but since she had to be on duty for a long time there were no perishables among them. She was keeping an eye on a woman in her forties with dyed brown hair who was walking along the aisle, her long white down jacket swinging from side to side.

  “Stay there, but watch that woman.”

  Holding her basket in one hand, the woman in the white jacket quickly shoved a box of chocolates in her pocket. The security guard missed that one but kept following her as though she was sure the woman was up to something. They disappeared around the corner.

  “Probably she’s sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “Stealing stuff without realizing it. There are people like that.”

  I was careful to keep my expression neutral.

  “Maybe it’s Pick’s disease. That’s also called early-onset dementia. But it’s strange, a complete mystery. Why does the subconscious mind make people steal? Why does it have to be stealing? Don’t you think it’s something deep-rooted in our nature?”

  The boy shook his head to show that he didn’t know.

  “But now’s our chance. It’s crowded and that store detective isn’t here.”

  I put everything that was on the list into my bag, and beer, water and ham into the basket. Then we paid at the checkout and left.

  WE WENT TO a park, and when I handed the boy one of the lunches he started eating without a word. I passed him a bottle of water but he barely touched it. Meat, omelet—he shoveled the food down so fast I thought he’d choke.

  I opened a beer and chewed some ham. Dirty clouds were gradually closing in, blocking the light from the sun. In the distance a group of c
hildren clustered around a bench with Gameboys in their hands, all focused on the screens.

  “As a kid, you have to choose what to take when you shoplift,” I told him. “Otherwise it’s too hard.”

  He looked at me between mouthfuls.

  “Sweets, or at most soft drinks. It’s pretty hard for you to take veggies from a supermarket.”

  I touched his windbreaker.

  “What you could do, for example, is sew a pouch inside your jacket. Then you make a hole in your pocket so that it opens into the pouch. Or you can make a slit along the zip in the front so that it’s hidden by the flap. You put everything in the pouch, and you stop before it gets too full.”

  Before I knew it he’d finished his lunch.

  “Or a bag. A school bag is too conspicuous. A satchel like you would take to cram school is good. If you make a cut in a bag like the one I was using, you can put all sorts of stuff in. Then there’s stealing. Wallets.”

  “I’ve done that.”

  He was watching the gang of kids on the other side of the park.

  “On a crowded train with my mom.”

  “Really?”

  “This wallet was sticking out of an old guy’s pocket. I thought it looked like I could take that, I wondered if I could take it, and I took it. It had seven thousand yen in it. I’ve done it a few times since then. On trains by myself.”

  “Let’s try it.”

  I put my own wallet in my back pocket and stood up. He bumped my left leg, as if by accident. Shifting his weight to his left, he took my wallet with his right hand.