ground. The man puts his glove back on. He raises his arm and looks at his watch. He performs each movement with unnatural slowness. He is clearly in no hurry. He seems to be trying to impress the three women with the sheer weight of his presence. He can take as much time as he likes for anything. All the while, the motorcycle engine keeps up its deep rumbling, like a skittish animal.
“You’re pretty gutsy,” the man says to Kaoru.
“Thanks,” Kaoru answers.
“If you call the cops there might be a fire in the neighborhood,” he says.
A deep silence reigns for a time. Arms folded, Kaoru keeps her eyes locked on the man’s face. Her own face marked with cuts, the prostitute looks uneasily from one to the other, unable to comprehend their give-and-take.
Eventually the man picks up his helmet, slips it on, beckons to the woman, and seats her on his motorcycle. She holds on to his jacket with both hands. Turning, she looks back at Mari and at Kaoru. Then she looks at Mari again. She seems to want to speak but finally says nothing. The man gives the pedal a strong kick, revs the engine, and drives off. The sound of his exhaust reverberates heavily through the midnight streets. Kaoru and Mari are left standing there. Kaoru bends over and picks up the thousand-yen bills one at a time. She turns them so they face the same way, folds the wad in half, and stuffs it into her pocket. She takes a deep breath and rubs her palm over her short blond hair.
“Man!” she says.
4
Eri Asai’s room.
Nothing has changed. The image of the man in the chair, however, is larger than before. Now we can see him fairly clearly. The signal is still experiencing some interference: at times the image wavers, its outlines bend, its quality fades, and static rises. Now and then a completely unrelated image intrudes momentarily. But the jumble subsides, and the original image returns.
Eri Asai is still sound asleep in the bed. The artificial glow of the television screen produces moving shadows on her profile but does not disturb her sleep.
The man on the screen wears a dark brown business suit. The suit may well have been an impressive article of clothing in its day, but now it is clearly worn out. Patches of something like white dust cling to the sleeves and back. The man wears black, round-toed shoes which are also smudged with dust. He seems to have arrived at this room after passing through a place with deep piles of dust. He wears a standard dress shirt and plain black woolen tie, both of which share that look of fatigue. His hair is tinged with gray. No, it just may be that his black hair is splotched with the white dust. In any case, it has not been properly combed for a long time. Strangely, however, the man’s appearance gives no impression of poor grooming, no sense of shabbiness. He is just tired—profoundly exhausted—after unavoidable circumstances have conspired to smear him, suit and all, with dust.
We cannot see his face. For now, the TV camera captures only his back or parts of his body other than his face. Whether because of the angle of the light or through some deliberate arrangement, the face is always in a place of dark shadow inaccessible to our eyes.
The man does not move. Every now and then he takes a long, deep breath and his shoulders slowly rise and fall. He could be a hostage who has been confined to a single room for a very long time. Hovering around him there seems to be a drawn-out sense of resignation. Not that he is tied to the chair: he just sits there with his back straight, breathing quietly, staring at one spot directly in front of him. We cannot tell by looking at him whether he has decided for himself that he will not move or he has been placed into some kind of situation that does not permit him to move. His hands rest on his knees. The time is unclear. We cannot even tell if it is night or day. In the light of the banked fluorescent lamps, however, the room is as bright as a summer afternoon.
Eventually the camera circles around to the front and shows his face, but this does not help us to identify him. The mystery only deepens. His entire face is covered by a translucent mask. Perhaps we