Free The Ruined Map by Kōbō Abe Page B

word of thanks went off toward the window where they sold specially boiled vegetables, there being no automatic machine for that.
    On the tables, side by side, stood smaller vending machines, which carried over thirty kinds of peanuts, salted beans, pine seeds, dried shellfish, and even fortune slips. Besides these, there was a contrivance like a toy robot whose arms and legs had been severed that sold boiled bean curd; it was the only one in the whole country. There was usually a humming like that of a vacuum cleaner as the queue of customers was being served, but this evening, because the machine was all sold out, it was hushed and motionless. First, ten yen for pine seeds. I caught them in the palm of my hand and popped them into my mouth in a single gesture—there were only twenty or so. As I finished half of my second cupof saké, my nose suddenly began to run. Then I bought boiled whale bits that came in a three-cornered bag. I began to feel the effect of my drinking this night in the region of my forehead, and it seemed gradually to be descending, making a noise quite like that of a cat on a tin roof. When I had drunk my third cup and returned to my place, I felt somehow weightless.
    A fortune machine happened to be at the place I went back to. Perhaps it was because the easing of my tension was too sudden or again it might have been that there was no need to protect my paper cup by extending my elbows as I always had to in the rush hours—anyway, I gave myself up to the whirlpool of my tipsiness that was revolving faster and faster. Suddenly I noticed that the top of the table was a synthetic contact paper printed to represent knotted wood; furthermore, I saw that the whole surface was in reality pockmarked by cigarette burns. Among the pockmarks a number seemed to be moving, and I discovered that they contained cockroaches. I was overcome by an impulse to stop time right there and limit the world to what I saw before me.
    There were aluminum ashtrays here and there on the tables big enough to be bothersome. Between the tables were unsightly wastebaskets covered with galvanized iron. Cigarettes had been rubbed out on the table tops, and paper cups, plastic saucers, and chopsticks, deliberately thrown wide of the wastebaskets, littered the whole floor. When the cafeteria was jammed you almost took no notice. The open-hearted, easy-going quality of the place came perhaps from the peculiar sensation underfoot when one trod heedlessly on the abundance of refuse. The only merit of the automatic vendors was faithfulness and obedience. The customers, in theirsolitude, could enjoy royal privilege in full measure. Thus they vented their anger as much as they could, not on the ashtrays, but on the much larger tables; not on the waste-baskets, but all over the much more spacious imitation-tile floor.
    I wanted to talk with somebody I didn’t know about flying saucers. But detachment was the highlight of the place. Since I did not dislike the convention I felt compelled to slip my ten-yen piece into the nearest fortune machine.
    Good luck. The sign of auspicious clouds in the south. Your horse is a slow walker, but there is promise of an open gate. You may act positively about turning over a new leaf and about love. Take care of rainy weather and a wallet with holes. What you seek is at your feet. There will be spring rains and radiation. Stay under an umbrella.
    The drawback of a paper cup is that it leaks no matter how careful you are. Perhaps that was why the match simply would not obey me when I tried to light my cigarette. In the end I was exasperated. I had the idea of putting two match-sticks together when suddenly I became aware of the difference of the two heads. As I kept turning the screw of my tipsiness, somewhere a part of me awakened and forged a link. It occurred to me that this matchbox which had casually come into my possession, was in fact an important piece of evidence given me by my client. I wrapped it in a