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  “By the way,” I started hesitantly. “It’s my school reunion tomorrow night. Two thousand yen a head. I didn’t go last year, and if I miss this one, who knows what they’ll say about me? They’ll say I can’t show my face because I’ve gone down in the world. They’re sure to. People can’t bear going to class reunions when they’re down on their luck.”

  “Yes, your class reunion,” said my wife with a smile. “I wonder what Mr Tanaka would say about that!”

  “Well, it’s already eight o’clock. He’s not going to know about it, is he. And even if he did, I’ve locked the door, so he can’t get in, can he.”

  “Hello, hello, hello! Here I am, here I am, here I am! Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!” The moustache man slid open the French windows and came in from the veranda.

  I gave a silent groan.

  “What’s that you say, sir? What’s that you say? A class reunion?” He came up and sat beside us at the kitchen table. “Out of the question! Will your life end if you miss your class reunion, sir? Does it matter what they say behind your back? Everyone has things said behind their back! Weren’t you just talking about me too?!” He wiggled his moustache.

  “No, it was just that…”

  “Anyway, never mind, that’s not important. Do you think your financial status will allow you to attend your class reunion? Of course not. But you still want to go. That is pure vanity, sir. Vanity is the greatest enemy of thrift. Some people have sufficient financial status to afford a modicum of vanity. But you don’t even have that.”

  I thought I’d try standing up to him this time. “It’s all right to indulge myself a little, isn’t it?”

  The moustache man shook his head resolutely. “No, sir. It would not be indulging yourself. Yes, you’d have a drink or two. But drinking at a class reunion would not be indulging yourself. All you’d gain is fatigue. When you saw how well your classmates are doing, you’d be full of anger and resentment. And that would only make you drink more to drown your sorrows. Am I wrong, sir?”

  Yes, that’s exactly what would happen. I hung my head abjectly. “I understand. I won’t attend the class reunion,” I said. I felt so miserable that I could have wept.

  My wife couldn’t hide her relief.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. More needless luxury,” the moustache man said, looking in dismay at our kitchen table. “Not just potato croquets, but no fewer than three bottled condiments, too. I’m not saying they’re excessive in themselves. The problem is this: not only do they lack nutritional value, but they also encourage you to eat more of the main dish. And as you know, overeating is bad for your health. Well there! Just as I thought. Look how much rice you’ve made!” he cried as he took the lid off the rice-cooker.

  My wife blushed and hung her head. “I’m sorry. I only wanted to make our humble meal look a little grander,” she said. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

  My feeling of misery was beyond description. I put my chopsticks down and turned to the moustache man. “You make us sound like paupers,” I said with some sarcasm. “I’m not sure if I like that!”

  But he didn’t take it as sarcasm. “What’s that, sir?” he said. “I make you sound like paupers?” He rose from his seat and knelt on it again. “You mean you don’t see yourselves as paupers? How wrong you are. You are paupers. It’s an undeniable fact that salaried workers today are the lowest class of all in this country. People selling bananas at late-night markets, tradesmen with special skills, they all earn more than salaried workers do. They may not save much, but even beggars are better off than you. You’re just going to have to accept it. Salaried workers often fail in life. Why? Because they’re weighed down by their superiority complex. The successful ones are those who quickly discard their sense of superiority. Prudent salaried workers are the ones who, though not actually saying it, know they’re all paupers.”

  “How wretched we are,” my wife said, starting to sob.

  “What makes you think you’re wretched, madam? You mustn’t,” the moustache man continued. “Because you see, being paupers also proves that you have no vices. All you’re doing as salaried workers is using your meagre income to save for your own home, pay for your children’s education, and contribute to pensions for your old age. In that way, you’re helping the national economy and maintaining the healthy state of the country. There’s nothing to be ashamed of at all, madam.”

  I’d been staring sideways at the moustache man as he cheerfully launched into his lecture. “How can you possibly understand how miserable we’re feeling?” I countered. “After all, you can afford the prime steak lunch, can’t you.”

  His eyes widened. “How could you say that, sir? How could you?! Oh, that you should be so petty in mind! Spying on others while they’re eating, envying them! When did you succumb to such sordid thoughts? They bring far more shame on you than poverty ever will. How sad. How truly sad.” He looked up to the ceiling as tears fell from his eyes. “How poverty dulleth the wit. Well fed, well bred, ’tis true. Alas, alas. Doth a life of poverty corrupt a man’s heart so?”

  Starting to loathe myself, I felt so utterly full of remorse that I too burst into tears.

  “I didn’t mean to say that,” I pleaded. “I had no intention at all of saying that. Oh God! I feel so ashamed!” I slumped down on the kitchen table, held my head in my hands and cried uncontrollably.

  “Darling! Darling!” My wife rushed up and held me from behind, weeping aloud herself.

  The moustache man, who’d continued to weep and wail like a baby, now stopped abruptly and fixed his bloodshot eyes on me. “Please, cooperate with me. I’m trying my very hardest for you. No – for everyone in this block. The others are being most cooperative. Some of them are being much more frugal. For example, your neighbours the Hamaguchis. They haven’t bought a new TV, they haven’t bought a new washing machine. They’ve just persevered and persevered, and now they’ve saved fifteen million yen – nearly enough to buy a brand new home!”

  “What? Fifteen million yen?!” My wife’s eyes were gleaming.

  “That’s right, madam. With just a little more effort, they’ll reach their target saving. What’s more, they’re both only forty-eight. What a truly wonderful couple. And it’s all because they cooperated with me. They were as frugal as frugal could be, and saved up the money. So. You should try your hardest too!” The moustache man slapped us both on the shoulder with each of his hands.

  “Yes,” we both answered meekly, nodding like schoolchildren.

  “When things are getting hard, when you’re feeling low, I’ll come and share your tears with you,” he said. Then he pulled out a pure white handkerchief and wiped his cheeks.

  “Thank you,” we said in unison. “We’ll be even thriftier than before. We’ll try hard to save.”

  From that day on, the moustache man visited us with increasing frequency. Sometimes, I might feel like eating something special, and I’d come home with some sea-bream sashimi, for example. Then he’d invariably appear at our kitchen table, and glare at me through narrowed eyes. Sometimes he’d even take the food away with him, or beat me hard on the back with a length of washing-machine hose. What’s more, he would always, always appear, however carefully we locked the front door or the French windows on our veranda.

  “Hello, hello, hello! Here I am, here I am, here I am! Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!”

  Sometimes he’d enter the kitchen from the next room, which has no other means of access. If we were in our bedroom, he’d emerge from the built-in wardrobe. I thought he must be getting in through the ceiling. All the apartments in our block share a communal loft space – he must have been using that. So I nailed up the ceiling panels above the wardrobe. Then he appeared in the toilet.

  On the train in to work one morning, I met my neighbour Mr Hamaguchi. I just had to ask him when he was planning to buy his brand new home.

  “Well, however hard we save, house prices just keep going up faster,” he replied in
a tone that suggested he was on the brink. “It might be all right if my salary kept going up too. But Mr Tanaka keeps telling us to be frugal, so I can’t buy drinks for my staff any more, even though I’m the Chief Clerk. It’s affecting my work. My superiors don’t like me because I never give seasonal gifts. So I’m not likely to get promoted. I don’t know what we’re saving for any more.”

  Actually, I’d been starting to feel the same way myself. If house prices were going up faster than we could save, what on earth were we saving for?!

  One night, my wife looked at me reproachfully in bed. “You don’t do anything for me these days,” she said.

  “Sorry. I’m really sorry,” I said – and meant it. “I don’t eat well enough. I’m always too tired.”

  “No. That’s not it. You’ve changed.” She started sobbing again. “When we were students, when we lived together, you used to love me then.” Ours was a student romance. “We didn’t have any money in those days. All we ate was junk food. But you still made love to me nearly every night. You don’t love me any more. It’s because I’m old and ugly, isn’t it. That’s why you don’t make love to me any more.”

  “No, it’s not that, really it isn’t,” I protested, and went to hold her. “You’re still attractive. You’re still beautiful.”

  She clung to me tightly. “Say it again! Say it again!”

  “You’re still attractive. You’re still beautiful.”

  “Oh darling. Darling!”

  “Hello, hello, hello! Here I am, here I am, here I am! Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!”

  The moustache man came down through the ceiling panels just as we were starting to make love. I groaned on top of my wife. My wife heaved a sigh of desperation under me.

  “Oh dear, oh dear. What’s all this then, what’s all this? Oh dear, oh dear. Look how close you are together.” He squatted beside our bed and peered under my belly. “You mustn’t, madam. Absolutely not. Your husband’s tired. You should let him go to sleep. It’s all right for a lady, but for a man, intercourse is very hard work. It’s equivalent to a two-mile run, madam. What’s more, one to six cubic centimetres of semen in a single ejaculation contains a huge amount of nutrition, namely protein, calcium, and glucose. Don’t you care if your husband uses that much energy when he’s had hardly anything to eat all day? Madam! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

  Look how he’s sweating. What a waste. What a waste. This will really interfere with his work tomorrow. Don’t forget, he has to put up with the packed rush-hour train as well. Madam, are you not aware how much strength he needs to endure that? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. You’re still clinging so tightly to each other. Sir. Please remove yourself from your wife’s body as soon as possible, sir. Sex is like a poison for the lower classes. You should both abstain from such wasteful pleasures. Oh dear. You’re still so close. Come on. Quickly, now, quickly. Disengage, please. Disengage.”

  My wife began to wail uncontrollably.

  Until now, I’d remained still with my head bowed as I lay there on top of my wife. But now I could take it no longer. I got up and started yelling at the moustache man. “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, YOU SLIMY LITTLE PERVERT?!” I screamed.

  But the next words wouldn’t come out. My brain wasn’t working properly, due to fatigue and malnutrition – though being so angry didn’t help. I felt so abjectly worthless that large tears started to fall from my eyes. “Or, or do you mean to rob us paupers of our last remaining pleasure?” I added pathetically.

  The moustache man had jumped back at first, startled by the ferocity of my tone. But now he knelt on the floor, stared at me through eyes that were red with tears, and said in a perfectly restrained voice: “Please cooperate with me.”

  “Cooperate? With you?! A vile peeping pervert like you?! Who asked you to come and spy on us in bed? I’ll bloody kill you!” And I tried to grab hold of him.

  “Just a minute. T-Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!” he said, resisting me passively with hands behind his back.

  As he repeated his mantra, his voice had a hypnotic effect on me. Strength instantly drained from my limbs, and I flopped down onto the floor where I stood.

  “If it means we have to feel this miserable,” I said, “I’d rather not save money at all. I’d rather just spend every penny of it. After all, however much we save we’ll never keep up with the rise in house prices.”

  At that, the moustache man jumped back to his feet with a cry. “You mustn’t say that, sir!” he said. “I knew you’d say it sooner or later. That’s what makes prices go up – half-desperate people who give up, thinking they’ll never buy a house! They squander their meagre incomes hunting for the latest fashionable goods – and it’s their consumer lifestyles that push prices up and cause big corporations to pollute! The root of all evil is the indiscriminate luxury, the desperate lust for merchandise, the beggar-like vanity of all these salaried workers! Do you want to demean yourself to their level?”

  He sounds like a government official, I thought somewhat abstractedly. But I couldn’t find the vigour to contradict him. My body quite lacked the energy to defy him now. I didn’t even have the strength to listen to him any more.

  “Well, it’s late now,” the moustache man said at length, having berated me continuously for a full half hour. “Just go to sleep now, ready for work tomorrow. You mustn’t think about anything else. All right, sir?”

  My wife, who’d been sitting in bed listening to the moustache man’s lecture, had already fallen asleep and was snoring away without a care.

  The moustache man went back up through the ceiling panels. I imagined him crawling around the communal loft space, peering down into other apartments and spying on other couples as they were having sex.

  As if she’d learnt her lesson, my wife never again tried to arouse me at night. From that day on, she just went to sleep tamely on her own. Perhaps she wasn’t actually suppressing her desires but had found some other method of satisfying them. Because, far from being hysterical, she always had a glint of pure satisfaction in her eyes. She was probably being satisfied by someone else. It may have been an illusion, because I was hungry and my vision was blurred. But two or three times, when I returned home from work unannounced, I saw my wife and the moustache man hurriedly moving away from each other. Maybe she was having an affair with him. But I didn’t feel like questioning her about it. And anyway, even if I did discover she was having an affair with him – or with a different man altogether – I no longer had the strength to get angry about it. I would have no option but to pretend I hadn’t noticed. In fact, vitality was slipping away from my body day by day, as I wasn’t eating properly. Even my capacity to think straight, to grasp situations and work out how they would develop, was quickly starting to disappear.

  “But hey,” I thought incoherently, idly inside my feeble head. “He’s satisfying my wife on my behalf, since I don’t have the energy to. Because of him, I’m released from my wife’s demands. I can go to work without collapsing, so I can carry on working. That’s good, isn’t it? If anything, I ought to thank him!”

  But one day, the moustache man suddenly stopped visiting us. Not only did he stop visiting us, but he suddenly vanished from our apartment block, from our entire neighbourhood.

  It was just a few days later that I realized he’d withdrawn almost our entire savings from our bank account before he vanished. And we weren’t the only victims. All fourteen households in our block had suffered the same fate. All had believed, nay, never doubted that the moustache man had been sent from their bank. They’d entrusted him with their passbooks, and had handed him money and name seals to let him deposit their salaries into their accounts. In other words, they saw him as a kind of roving bank employee. And he disappeared the day after payday.

  But at least he was human – at least he had some sort of conscience. For he’d been kind enough to leave the small sum of five thousand yen in each account to tide us over. That made me feel better. It was abou
t the same amount as we spent on food each month. Yes! That was all we needed to keep us going until the next payday.

  You see, our hard-earned savings are always going to be taken from us by someone – whether we have any or not.

  The World Is Tilting

  Marine City started tilting at the end of a particularly blustery autumn one year. A typhoon in September sent waves of almost tsunami-like proportions into the bay, where the City rested on an artificial island. The waves breached one of the bulkheads on the ballast tanks used to stabilize Marine City, causing its centre of gravity to shift south-southwestwards.

  The entrance to the bay was on the south-southwest, and just after the middle of October, Marine City gradually started tilting towards the Pacific Ocean. But the angle could have been no more than about two degrees, and nobody noticed it at the time. Nor did it cause any inconvenience. Rod Le Mesurier first became aware of the tilt when an old university professor, Proven McLogick, spoke to him at a bus stop. They were both waiting for a bus to take them over Marine Bridge into the metropolis.

  “Look you there, Master Le Mesurier,” said the Professor. “Look at the northeastern wall of yon North No. 2 Block. The wall is supposed to be vertical, is it not. But try lining up the perpendicular of the corner with the perpendicular of the wall on that thirty-six-storey building – oh, what is it called? Yes, the Notatall Building, over there in the distance. Do you not see? Their tops are askew of one another.”

  Unlike the City’s women, Rod was always most deferential to Professor McLogick, and perhaps because of this the Professor often spoke to him. Rod looked out in the direction indicated by the old man’s leaden-grey, spindly finger, and saw that the top of the multistorey building across the water in the metropolis was indeed tilting by about half an inch to the right, as his eye saw it, from the fifth floor of an apartment block on the northern edge of the City.