After the quake: stories Page 0,19
after he went on to middle school, though, Yoshiya abandoned his faith. As he awakened to the existence of his own independent ego, he found it increasingly difficult to accept the strict codes of the sect that clashed with ordinary values. But the most fundamental and decisive cause was the unending coldness of the One who was his father: His dark, heavy, silent heart of stone. Yoshiya’s abandonment of the faith was a source of deep sadness to his mother, but his determination was unshakable.
The train was almost out of Tokyo and just a station or two from crossing into Chiba Prefecture when the man put his magazine back into his briefcase and stood up, approaching the door. Yoshiya followed him on to the platform. The man flashed a pass to get through the gate, but Yoshiya had to wait in line to pay the extra fare to this distant point. Still, he managed to reach the line for cabs just as the man was stepping into one. He boarded the next cab and pulled a brand-new ten-thousand-yen bill from his wallet.
“Follow that cab,” he said.
The driver gave him a suspicious look, then eyed the money.
“Hey, is this some kind of mob thing?”
“Don’t worry,” Yoshiya said. “I’m just tailing somebody.”
The driver took the ten-thousand-yen bill and pulled away from the curb. “OK,” he said, “but I still want my fare. The meter’s running.”
The two cabs sped down a block of shuttered shops, past a number of dark empty lots, past the lighted windows of a hospital, and through a new development crammed with boxy little houses. The streets all but empty, the tail posed no problems— and provided no thrills. Yoshiya’s driver was clever enough to vary the distance between his cab and the one in front.
“Guy havin’ an affair or something?”
“Nah,” Yoshiya said. “Head-hunting. Two companies fighting over one guy.”
“No kidding? I knew companies were scramblin’ for people these days, but I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
Now there were hardly any houses along the road, which followed a riverbank and entered an area lined with factories and warehouses. The only things marking this deserted space were new lampposts thrusting up from the earth. Where a high concrete wall stretched along the road, the taxi ahead came to a sudden stop. Alerted by the car’s brake lights, Yoshiya’s driver brought his cab to a halt some hundred yards behind the other vehicle and doused his headlights. The mercury vapor lamps overhead cast their harsh glare on the asphalt roadway. There was nothing to see here but the wall and its dense crown of barbed wire that seemed to defy the rest of the world. Far ahead, the cab door opened and the man with the missing earlobe got out. Yoshiya slipped his driver two thousand-yen bills beyond his initial ten-thousand-yen payment.
“You’re never gonna get a cab way out here, mister. Want me to wait around?” the driver asked.
“Never mind,” Yoshiya said and stepped outside.
The man never looked up after leaving his cab but walked straight ahead alongside the concrete wall at the same slow, steady pace as on the subway platform. He looked like a well-made mechanical doll being drawn ahead by a magnet. Yoshiya raised his coat collar and exhaled an occasional white cloud of breath from the gap between the edges as he followed the man, keeping far enough behind to avoid being spotted. All he could hear was the anonymous slapping of the man’s leather shoes against the pavement. Yoshiya’s rubber-soled loafers were silent.
There was no sign of human life here. The place looked like an imaginary stage set in a dream. Where the concrete wall ended, there was a scrap yard: a hill of cars surrounded by a chain-link fence. Under the flat light of a mercury lamp, the pile of withered metal was reduced to a single colorless mass. The man continued walking straight ahead.
Yoshiya wondered what the point could be of getting out of a cab in such a deserted place. Wasn’t the man heading home? Or maybe he wanted to take a little detour on the way. The February night was too cold for walking, though. A freezing wind would push against Yoshiya’s back every now and then as it sliced down the road.
Where the scrap yard ended, another long stretch of unfriendly concrete wall began, broken only by the opening to a narrow alley. This seemed like familiar territory to the man: he never hesitated as he turned the corner. The