The Ruined Map (21 page)

Naturally, a gritty dust streamed and whirled with the pieces of paper, so that the structure of the wind was like lace. It blended with the dirt of my car, which somehow seemed unexpectedly conspicuous. Perhaps it was not dust that swirled in whirlpools, but light which assumed the form of dust. The odor and taste of February dust suggests something springlike. To me, the light today was the color of cream. In order not to stand out, I had not had the car washed for more than a fortnight, leaving it to collect dirt, but perhaps it should be cleaned the next time I stopped for gas.

The alarm stopped ringing and the arrow indicating the train direction went out; the barrier gate, wide for the four-track bed used for express trains, sprang up. The human wave, like the sand in an hourglass, flowed through the constriction, while the cars, fending the surge of people, slowly began to cross over. Before the head car had finished going over, the second alarm began to ring. I was the last car to make it across.

I turned left at the second alley. Fortunately, just beyond the first telephone pole a parking place was free. It was barely enough for one car, but by backing in at an angle I squeezed in. When I got out, I noticed that in the dust on the side of my car someone had written in big letters, FOOL—when I wasn’t looking. They must have been in a hurry, for the last part was blurred. There were signs of a thick glove.

I returned to the main street by the way I had just come. In a self-consciously modern display window on the right-hand corner, a mannequin decorated in tones of purple, its arms and legs detached, was suspended by wires; and various articles of clothing, each different, for hands, arms, torso, and legs, were cleverly hung onto the body. There was no other decoration, and the figure was lined up against mirrors, which stood in a complex arrangement. It all stimulated the imagination strangely, giving the effect indeed that there were more than ten mannequins.

Three years ago the street would never have accepted such a display, but now things were different. Every place has its ups and downs. Then, it was merely a typical suburban street with a pinball parlor bleating out its old records and variety stores carrying only cheap goods, all of this centered around a grimy movie theater that showed three-month-old films. It barely sustained a main-street atmosphere. Perhaps there
had been a change in the up-down cycle, for the whole city was gluttonously gobbling up more and more. In this neighborhood, the structural appearance of a main street had been established without too much unnaturalness. Actually, across the way, a supermarket with an underground garage was under construction. It was useless to argue back and forth that it was because she was farsighted or that it was due to a stroke of good luck. Anyway, I had lost.

PICCOLA DRESSMAKING

From a flute-shaped arm was suspended a thick, milk-white acrylic board, inlaid with thin aluminum strips that formed a kind of massive cursive script. I could not help but recognize that it was very stylish and individual. Piccola had evidently been my wife’s nickname during her school years. I did not assume that the name bore an especially pejorative meaning, but also I definitely thought it had been given her not only in a good sense. My wife interpreted it arbitrarily as being a pet name, and carrying it further, a term of endearment. Maybe that quality was itself
piccola
. I was fascinated by this aspect of her. I still maintain it implies a virtue as well as a fault.

The door next to the display window was a single black acrylic panel. Like a mirror, it reflected the board fence around the construction site across the street, and in it appeared the image of my whole body. A disreputable character much more suitable to be sought than to be seeking, with his unsteady shoulders in the mirror, as if he had risen from a sickbed, and his ruffled hair tousled by the wind. But I could not comb my hair here. From where I stood the door was a mirror, but from the other side it was quite transparent.

I pushed the door open with my shoulder and squeezed in. A pleasant, lingering warmth tickled my nose, and despite myself I sneezed. It was not the heat alone but also the peculiar air, in which sizing and new dyestuffs mingled with perfume and steam from the hot iron in the basting room at the back of the shop. On the left were display shelves for samples of goods, pattern books, and orders already made up. Besides that, there were glass cases for buttons, little pieces of fur, and costume jewelry. On the right a round table, its artificial marble top supported by slender metal legs, stood between two ivory-colored chairs; and there was a sofa. The walls and the ceiling were covered with the same material as the curtain that cut off the basting room—a gay yet tasteful rough-woven material on which dark-brown flowers lay scattered over a light-yellow background, and the balance was cleverly maintained by the simplicity of the lighting, which followed the walls of the room in the form of an extended glass rod.

My wife had placed both hands on the sides of the armchair, her back to the curtain of the basting room, and she looked up at me with a droll smile on her face. It was at times like this that I envied men who wore glasses. Glasses get foggy and you could take up time cleaning and fussing with them. Having none, I proceeded, expressionless and in silence, to seat myself on the end of the sofa nearest the door. A spring groaned; suddenly, before I knew it, I had sunk into the sofa.

“The springs are broken. I’ll have to send it out to be repaired,” said my wife, laughing. She seated herself in the armchair and crossed her legs. Her knees peeping out from under her short skirt seemed even better than when I had last seen them. Sensing my look, my wife tapped her legs as
if she were slapping a mosquito. She spoke quickly with a velvety smoothness: “Skirts are getting shorter and shorter. It’s really a help. When the price of material goes down, you can’t raise the sewing charge. People have to get new clothes every time they go up or down very much.”

“Don’t they say that when skirts go up there’s going to be a war?”

“Yes, and they say cycles exist for everything.”

“Apparently, it would seem.”

“What brings you here today?”

“I have a little something to ask you. Is it all right … now?”

The curtain behind her parted and a young assistant appeared—“Hello. Shall I bring some ordinary tea … or would you prefer coffee?” She was not exceptionally pretty, but her face was attractive and innocent. My wife generally wore plain, unobtrusive clothes herself, since anything would suit her small-boned frame, but for the girl she made daringly modern ones. She reckoned on the psychological effect they would have on the customers. If the woman owner of a dressmaking establishment dressed too flashily she would be resisted by her clients. Yet something overly plain would have the effect of lowering confidence in her technique and sensitivity—neither was good. The two of them together were definitely effective. However, the girl kept staring intently at me over my wife’s shoulder, revealing only her face. Her open, innocent gaze was like that of a small bird waiting for a whistle. Since I was her employer’s husband she could get along without being defensive. But I was the separated husband, and so her curiosity was aroused and there was no need to be particularly formal in her mistress’s presence. I had the impression that the part of the girl’s body hidden by the
curtain was stark naked. But this coquetry was not at all the type meant for me as a man. Indeed, the first time my wife had brought the girl home with her, I had some question whether my wife didn’t have lesbian tendencies. In all likelihood the girl looked at tables and walls with the same sultry gaze.

“Is what you have to talk about complicated?”

“It depends on how you look at it.”

“You should have phoned in advance.”

“Oh, no. I wanted a spontaneous answer. I’m fed up with prepared answers.”

The girl tensed her lips, shaking her head left and right. As she withdrew behind the curtain, she glanced at me coquettishly.

“She’s something of a problem for me, that girl,” said my wife, lowering her voice, although speaking laughingly, like an accomplice, half conscious of being overheard. “Isn’t she cute? She’s a genius with her coquettish poses.”

“You’re ripe for that, aren’t you? But just what was the real reason we had to separate?”

“Is that what you came to ask me?” she questioned in amazement, peering into my face. “Right here in the store … in broad daylight?”

“Don’t think too much. Tell me just what occurs to you.”

“I agreed to separate because I thought I knew what you were thinking, I guess. At this point, when you try to turn the blame for your mistakes back on me …”

“My thoughts came first, you mean?”

“Of course.”

“Because I was definitely against your opening this shop.”

“Are you still?”

“I admit I was the loser.”

“It’s not a question of who won or who lost.”

“I’ve often been asked why I ever became an investigator for a detective agency. What do you think I answer?”

“I imagine you don’t tell the truth.”

“I answer like this: my wife employs a detective to check on what I do. However, this detective changes sides in the middle of the case and demands that I pay him to say nothing. I have my weaknesses, it’s true, but to have my trust trifled with like that makes me feel it’s nonsense to pretend being honest.”

“Even when you think up your fabrications you’re not satisfied unless you make me out to be the wrongdoer, are you?”

My wife’s smile slowly vanished as if deflated. Then a white loneliness, like an ebb tide flowing to the distant sea, enclosed her.

“I don’t say you’re an evildoer, I’m only deriding the detective.”

“You can’t talk like that.”

“Did you make out with that architect?”

“My weaknesses hurt your self-respect without my intending them to, don’t they? But even you have your problems. You’re abnormally jealous.”

“Jealous? I’ve never even thought of it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have to say that. But you’re at fault too—you treat me so as to make me say such things. We’re always going around in a vicious circle like this. We don’t know what starts it all. But something does, and we just go on with our endless quarreling.”

“We still don’t have to sign the final divorce proceedings, do we?”

“Have I ever once asked that?”

“But you did, because I was absolutely against opening this shop.”

“But that’s all past.”

“It’s over because you ignored my opposition and had your own high-handed way. I’m not saying it to be unpleasant. As far as the outcome is concerned, the fact remains indisputable that you were right and I was wrong. I wonder if I am jealous … No, it’s a little different … similar, yes, but different, I think. The problem is this: Why was I alone wrong while you were not?”

“You put me in a quandary when you suddenly shift like that from posing as the victim.”

“But even you must recognize there’s no reason for my being here, don’t you?”

“Well, then if …” My wife uncrossed her legs and joined her two hands on them as she leaned forward. “Supposing our positions were reversed, what would you do then? I wonder. Let’s suppose for the moment that you have made a big success out of some business that I was opposed to, and let’s suppose that, using that as my reason, I started talking about a separation.”

“Of course, I’d be at a loss to understand.”

“You’re impossibly self-centered.”

“You should find it hard to understand too.”

“I do!”

“But you said before that you understood.”

“It was a bluff.”

“I see. Well then, I’ve been going round in circles trying to explain what even I could not explain, is that it?”

Suddenly my wife sat up, clapping her two hands together. Her eyes sparkled as they peered at me.

“I’ve got it! You left home! You ran away.”

“Ran away?”

It was obvious, wasn’t it? That was my intent. I understood that without being told. Something was definitely wrong if I was surprised at this late date, as if I had made some new discovery. While I thought this, it was also a fact that I experienced a strange confusion at being reminded of the overobvious. Suddenly the indignity of it penetrated painfully into my head, as if the contents of the ashtray had been dashed over me. Why? Perhaps because I had the feeling that the husband I was investigating and I were fused. Outside the sun was shining more and more intensely, and the dark door had taken on a green color; my shadow slanted almost parallel with the sofa, my shoulder sprawling over the opposite arm. My head was severed and nowhere to be seen.

“It’s true. I really think you ran away.”

My wife nodded in a self-satisfied manner as she covertly watched me. She seemed to think that if she could just get me to agree everything would thus be resolved.

“From what? You?”

“Certainly not from me,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “From life, from the endless competing and dickering, the tightrope walking, the scramble for a life buoy. It’s true, isn’t it? In the final analysis, I was merely an excuse.”

Suddenly a flaming, white pain shot through my left eye as if I had been struck with a bent nail. My broken molar, of course. I would have to have it looked after before the decay spread to the jaw.

“Isn’t there competition and dickering in the life of an investigator for a detective agency?”

“The rivalry in advertising on the busiest street and a professional peeping Tom of a private detective specializing in
back streets—both are competition, but the sense of the word is quite different. It’s absolutely true. You left your last job and you ran away at precisely the same time. That’s the crucial point. Because you could have done either one before the other, couldn’t you?… if competition weren’t the reason … couldn’t you? You were against this shop because you thought that, even though our livelihood was assured here for the time being, it would never be a solution. Your life was such that there would never be a solution unless you won out over the competition in the office.”

“Was I so ambitious?”