The Ruined Map by Kōbō Abe

with special custom-made teeth. Right. I would have to go right to the dentist’s myself. When I put the tip of my tongue in the hole left by my molar, more and more I got the metallic taste of blood.
    “When you say the Dainen, you mean the main office?”
    Sucking up air into his nose, the younger man exhaled strongly on the tips of his oil-stained fingers peeping out from the torn work gloves. I wondered if he had swallowed the mucous he had inhaled. He inclined his head toward me as I nodded.
    “Funny … his going out before noon. He said he was going to drop in at the Dainen main office.”
    “Who knows?” said the older man, tucking the ends of the towel round his neck into the collar of his overalls. He spoke in a thick dialect that was difficult to understand. “He’s always got one excuse or another for going out. He can do it in his position … just drop out of sight like that.”
    I answered him at once with a smile and an air of complicity.
    “He can afford a car, and the city’s right around the corner.”
    “What do you mean?” The younger man made as if to cross his arms, his hands under his armpits, rocking his body as he spoke. “Once the working men’s temporary flats were finished in the second ward, the city kind of began to come out here. Go around by the river on your way back and take a look, if you like. The hotels and restaurants are on the other side of the river. Even on this side they’ve got … oh, you know, the micro-something-or-other … the little buses they use for kindergarten kids. Every evening there’s someten of them hung with red lanterns. How about some noodles? Or a hot dog? Or some vegetable stew with a little cheap sake?”
    “But don’t be fooled. Filling up the belly’s not the only use for a hot dog,” added the older one, clearing his throat and spitting out a gob of phlegm. “The real thing for sale is right behind the counter. What do you think is on the other side of the partition in the bus? Back there they’ve got a fantastic gadget—a soft cushion with a hole.”
    “Why? Do you know why a cushion has to have a hole?” asked the younger laughingly, titillated, squatting on his heels as if to defecate. Thereupon his long dark shadow, darker than the dark surface of the ground, which was cast by the light under the eaves, suddenly grew shorter and slipped under the fellow’s buttocks as if attached to him. “It’s too cramped there … you can’t lie down. So you call it a cushion, not a mattress.”
    “It’s a cheap, money-eating hole.”
    Spitting out the words, the older man turned to go back to work, and the younger one casually followed after him. They slapped together their work gloves that, gummed with mud and oil, had become like old rubber.
    “Well, that’s the way it is, so you never know when he’s going to come back, exactly. Another customer has been waiting an hour for him.”
    “Nervy guy. Making himself right at home … using the telephone any time he wants.”
    The two, as if by prearrangement, cast a hard look inside the building that was ostensibly the office—evidently not a very welcome customer, a bill-collector type or something like that. If I were going to get any information, it would be from these two. I put a cigarette in my mouth and offeredthe pack to the two men. “I have one or two things to ask you …”
    “No fire!” the older one interrupted in a gruff voice. But the younger, unruffled, took one and when the flame of the lighter lengthened to almost an inch, applied it first to his own cigarette and then, with it still lit, brought it close to the tip of my nose.
    “It doesn’t make any difference. Tonight the wind’s from the west.”
    “How can you say that? You have a license to deal with explosives and combustibles.”
    “I’m not the type to cling to life, I guess.” I too, without a sign of perturbation, suddenly decided to take a light from the burning lighter, which he was