The Box Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

a racing motorbike engine. But after two or three seconds had gone by, there was no sign of anyone at all. Could it be that the inhabitants had withdrawn underground like grubs? A scene so calm that it induced an overwhelming desire to see a human being… anyone. But a box man’s eyes cannot be deceived. Looking out from the box, he sees through the lies and secret intentions concealed behind the scenery. The scenery evidently intended to shake me up by pretending that this was a road where one could not go astray, intended for my surrender, but unfortunately I was not to be taken in. I just wanted to relieve myself at my leisure. The area around a station or a crowded shopping district was more suited to a box man. I liked the honesty of it. I felt at home with it-three or four straight roads pretending to be a labyrinth. For this reason I don’t like provincial towns. Anyway there are too many sham straight roads there. Thinking of the confusion of the air rifle man lost on such a road, I felt sentimental without meaning to.
    As I pressed down on the wound, my fingers became sticky and covered with blood. Suddenly I was uneasy. It may be all right in one of the busier quarters of Tokyo, but in this commercial section of ‘I’ City, there isn’t room for two box men. If he insists on becoming a box man, it necessarily follows that a territorial dispute will be unavoidable. When he realizes he can’t drive me out with an air rifle, it doesn’t mean that he won’t come for me next time with a shotgun. Was I wrong in the way I reacted? Frankly, fellows like him have tried to get on intimate terms with me any number of times.

    One addressed me directly and even stopped me in the street. At the time, I looked back at him in silence from the crack in the inclined vinyl curtain. Anyone would have been nonplused at that. Even a policeman or a railway guard would have shrunk back. I wondered if I should have said something before I drove him to his air rifle.
    BUT THE CONJECTURE TEAS COMPLETELY CHANCED WITH A NEW
    CAST OF CHARACTERS . . The new character in the cast came riding on a bicycle. As I was concentrating on the sham road, a voice suddenly came from behind me. “There’s a hospital at the top of the slope,” it said. White fingertips grazed the observation window, and three thousand yen notes were tossed in. I felt like a mailbox and turned to see a retreating figure already some ten yards away. It was apparently a young girl whose low, rasping voice did not suit her. I had no time to point the camera in her direction, and she disappeared around the corner at the next lane. I had observed her for only a few seconds, yet I was quite taken by the movement of her legs propelling the bicycle. They were slender, but not too slender-light legs with a well proportioned curve. The backs of her knees were glossy and beautiful like the inside of a shell. They were so vivid that I have no memory of the color of the dress she was wearing. But I wasn’t necessarily disarmed. If by that evening, the wound in my shoulder had not worsened, I probably would not have made it a point to go to the hospital at the top of the slope. Nor would I have realized that the air rifle man (as the photo clearly showed) was in fact the hospital doctor and the girl on the bicycle, the nurse. Furthermore, quite naturally, I should not have been in the ridiculous situation of waiting for her-or her substitute-in such a dangerous place under the bridge.
    But I just put another cigarette to my lips. Again and again I counted over the thousand yen notes and, folding them in three, I dropped them into one of my rubber boots. They say that a wild bird that has been captured will refuse food and die of hunger. But the condemned convict relishes his last cigarette. I, who was no bird, leisurely lit the cigarette, reflecting that there was no connection between the rifle man and the nurse. It made absolutely no difference; the rifle man was the rifle man