“There is nothing, Maeda, nothing, nothing more beautiful than destruction! Destruction on a vast scale, destruction for its own sake, destruction that outrages every moral precept! Destruction, Maeda, destruction, destruction! Destruction, executed boldly, is its own justification! Do you know who understood that better than anyone? Picasso! Picasso was a born destroyer. Unfortunately, he was an artist, and confined his destruction to canvas and sculpture. I’m not an artist, but I am a Picasso…”
“Tazawa, stop, stop, please.” Maeda let his head fall into his hands.
“I said I’m not an artist, but you know, in a sense that’s not true. In a sense an artist is exactly what I am.”
“Listen. Damn, my head’s spinning so fast I can hardly think! Listen. I told you I was here as a reporter. I didn’t specifically mention that I’m recording our conversation, but you might have inferred it. Did you?”
“Recording? No, the thought didn’t occur to me. So you’ve got this insane raving of mine on tape! Ha ha! That’s good. That’s really good. Why don’t you take it to the police, see what they make of it? Ha ha ha!”
“The prospect doesn’t seem to worry you.”
“Oh, it does! It worries me terribly! I can imagine what they’d make of it. Well, listen. If you can have a concealed tape recorder, what’s to stop me from having a concealed bomb? In seconds this place will be reduced to flaming rubble, with bits and pieces of you, me and Mother Michiko there strewn all over the place and barely identifiable as former sentient beings. Give me the recorder.”
“What?”
“I’m not joking. Hand me the recorder. I’ll count to ten. One, two… Are you thinking of calling my bluff? Three… Michiko-san! One more cup of your out-of-this-world coffee, please! Four.”
“Coming up!” Michiko sang out from behind the cash.
“Seriously, Michiko-san, you must advertise! Your coffee is fantastic, it’ll be a hit, but people have to know about it!”
“Don’t you worry, tonight’s a slow night, but when it’s busy it’s more than I can handle!”
“Five. Thank you.” Tazawa briefly examined the little device, then slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Would you really have taken this to the police? They would have laughed at you, and for good reason. No, but seriously, is it my fault that destruction is so irresistibly, irresistibly beautiful? Sex, now… but what is sex if not destruction in disguise, destruction in another form? You wouldn’t know, of course… or has Yoshiko-san succeeded in rousing your… no, I see by your expression that she hasn’t. But sex, orgasm… it’s nice, but it’s not the real thing, it’s just a… what’s the word… a symbol, a metaphor, a euphemism. Children play house, adults play sex, but the real thing… Oh, thank you, Michiko-san, thank you, you’re an angel, this is angel’s brew---am I right, Maeda?”
“Yes, yes indeed.”
Michiko beamed.
“I could sit here drinking this coffee and chatting with you all night, Maeda, honestly I could. Sometimes, when the mood is right, the brain starts firing a certain way, one thought leads to another, and you simply can’t believe the things that come out of your own mouth! You didn’t know you had it in you! Yes, when your own thoughts astonish you---there’s something orgasmic about that too, isn’t there? It’s as Rogozhin says…”
“Rogozhin?”
“Haven’t I mentioned Rogozhin? It’s to him I owe the opening of my mind. He’s a Russian, a diplomat. He’s my master, I’m his disciple. I’ll introduce you to him sometime.”
“Rogozhin. Fair hair, wears dark glasses…”
“Yes, he has some sort of eye condition. Ah, so you know him!”
“Yoshiko knows him.”
“Does she really! Well, that’s very interesting, I’m very pleased to know that! Very pleased indeed! We’ll have to all get together sometime! So tell me something. Are you going to write about this?”
“I don’t know. I know one thing…”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll say goodbye, go our separate ways, and I’ll walk to the station thinking, ‘Did this really happen?’ And no matter how hard I try, no matter how vivid my memory is, I won’t be able to quite convince myself that it did. It’s a kind of disease I have, you see---nothing that happens seems quite real to me.”
“Yes, you mentioned it. A rather fatal disease for someone in your profession, I would think, no?”
“Yes, probably.”
“Well, here, take this,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket and handing the little recording device back to Maeda. “I’m sorry if I frightened you. I have what you might call a whimsical sense of humor. But seriously, though: Rogozhin was telling me about Bakunin and Nechaev, two Russian revolutionaries of the nineteenth century who really did believe that mindless, wholesale, amoral destruction was the necessary prelude to a rebirth of the world, a rebirth they held to be necessary. They were midwives, you see.”
“Are you a midwife too? Did you really commit those three murders you confess to in the communiqué?”
Tazawa laughed. “I haven’t even confessed to writing the communiqué!”
“And of course it was you who torched the Alexandria?”
“The Alexandria? Was the Alexandria torched? Really! I didn’t know. I’m a bit out of touch, you see.”
“Listen. This Rogozhin character. Do you know where he lives?”
“Of course. I told you. I’m his disciple.”
“Would you give me his address?”
“Why?”
“Well, as a favor, with no questions asked.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t know the address. I know the house, though. Shall I take you there? Ah! Do you know---I think I’ve put two and two together! The last time I visited him, our conversation was interrupted---he was expecting a lady! I wonder if the lady… of course, of course! All the pieces fit together! Michiko-san! We must be on our way. We’ll come again soon. How much do we owe you? What do you mean, nothing? You can’t do business that way, I’m telling you! Here… Maeda, lend me five thousand yen, will you? I don’t seem to… There. Well, come along, it’s a bit late, but Rogozhin won’t mind, he doesn’t keep conventional hours. We’ll continue our conversation at his place, under his guidance, and as to your private business with him, don’t worry, you can count on my discretion!”
Next episode:watch for it
]]>