Free The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura Page A

it hurts. And then I turn white with the heat. But at that moment this tall thing appears.”
    I looked her in the face.
    “Long, glistening, towering. It’s like I’m outside somewhere. Then as I’m looking at it I’m thinking, ‘What is that?’ It’s pure, higher than the clouds, the top hidden from sight. And then I realize that I can’t go there, that this hot smoky whiteness is my high point. But just because it’s my peak, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll reach it. What I mean is, it’s my limit. It feels wonderful. I destroy all those values and I exist solely as sensation. I becomeunbearably hot and then vanish. That tall, shiny tower is a long way off, but I die happily under its ruins. Of course it’s high and beautiful, and I can’t help longing for it, but that’s because it represents my greatest desire.”
    PERHAPS BECAUSE OF the pills, the woman cried out several times, digging her fingernails into my back, my shoulders, my stomach. After we finished she kept her tongue in my mouth for a while. I was still thinking about Saeko.
    “Actual ruins, though,” she had said to me once, “aren’t abstract like that. Ruins are always boring. Solid, concrete and boring.”
    When the woman finally got off me, she lit one of my cigarettes and inhaled deeply. She moved close again and put her hand on my heart. The rain had stopped and everything was quiet. In the distance I could hear a shrill siren.
    “Um, will you see me again?” she said, resting her nose on my shoulder. “It wouldn’t have to cost this much, less would be fine.”
    “No.”
    “It was good, wasn’t it?”
    Her voice grew louder. For a second it seemed to blendinto Saeko’s voice and I looked away.
    “It was good, wasn’t it? I bet it was. Absolutely.”
    “It’s not that it wasn’t good,” I said. “You know they say that prostitution is the oldest profession?”
    “The oldest? Hm. What’s the second oldest?”
    “Pickpocket. Stealing. That’s the truth.”
    “Picking pockets is a profession?”
    I grinned.
    “I don’t know, but if you’re going to screw up your life, do it on your own. Don’t get the boy involved.”
    The siren grew gradually louder and finally stopped somewhere nearby.
    “Okay. I won’t make him go shoplifting any more. I send him out when my boyfriend comes round. That’s all right, isn’t it? Sometimes he hits him, see.”
    “Hits him?”
    “Not badly. Just a tap, when he’s drunk.”
    “Anyway, shoplifting is out.”
    “Got it. But let’s get together again, eh?”
    She looked at her watch, put on her clothes and snatched up the money.
• • •
    EVEN AFTER SHE left I kept thinking about Saeko. When she told me she couldn’t see me any more, she was weeping.
    “When I’m really fucked up—not that I’m not pretty fucked up now—but when I totally fall apart, then will you see me again?”
    She certainly seemed to be serious. I didn’t look away, wanting to hold onto her face for just a little bit longer.
    “Next time we meet,” I said, “I’ll be more screwed up too. As bad as you.”
    Saeko smiled weakly.
    “Yeah. I’d like that. Because you never look down on anyone.”
    But she died alone without getting in touch with me. She disappeared and when her husband found her she’d overdosed. She didn’t leave a note.
    The night I heard about it I went out in the street and stole indiscriminately from rich and poor alike. Burying myself in the crowd, I took wallets and cell phones, even gum and receipts and handkerchiefs. Breathing raggedly, with tension and pleasure running through me, I took them all. High overhead shone a white moon.

11 I ventured outside for the first time in ages. The wind was blowing a fine rain and everything looked blurry, like in a fog. I passed a group of foreigners in laborers’ clothes, then a woman in an extremely short skirt talking loudly on her phone. I realized that the kid was following me but kept on walking, figuring