Chapter 18

The streets downtown looked different from a few weeks ago. As if preparing for Christmas, the roads were decorated with large trees and poinsettias, and the whole place was filled with the air of a festival. The faces of the people walking the streets, too, were lit with wide smiles.

Judith drew together the fur attached to the collar of her coat and folded both arms across herself below her chest. It was not really because she was cold. Somehow, being buried among the crowd dressed in nearly the same style, differing only in color, made her feel embarrassed.

Where is Johannes?

Johannes had said he would be in the city square, but even after circling the square several times, she did not see him. Judith nudged the ground with the tip of her shoe and searched the crowd intently. Then a row of street stalls spread out in the distance caught her eye. At the very end of them, she spotted a familiar figure standing tall with his back turned.

“How much is this?”

Johannes pointed at one of the wooden dolls. An old woman who could not see tapped the hand of the child sitting beside her. The child, by habit, seemed about to speak in sign language, then quickly wrote the price on a piece of paper instead. Johannes quietly watched the mute child. The child did not avoid Johannes’s gaze either.

“I’ll take everything here.”

His somewhat firm voice reached the old woman’s ears, and she struck the back of the child’s hand so the child would indicate the entire stall with a sweep of the palm. The child widened their eyes in surprise and began adding up the prices of all the wooden dolls on the paper. Judith slowly approached the stall. She was worried some sort of quarrel might have broken out. The stall where the old woman and child sat had been a place the country had assigned several years ago to support the economic activity of vulnerable groups. Visitors from elsewhere, like Johannes, often did not know the circumstances and sometimes ended up getting into arguments.

“Ah. Ah.”

The child unfolded the paper and held it out toward Johannes.

“So the total is fifty thousand rubles.”

Johannes moved his mouth and his hands at the same time. The old woman and the child both nodded at once. Judith simply stood there and watched. Did Johannes know sign language? Since when? Had he done volunteer work while living in Udiya? His sign language looked natural. Johannes took bills out of his wallet and placed them into the child’s hand. Then he picked up one of the wooden dolls. Flustered, the child pulled out a bag. Johannes turned the hand he had shaped like scissors downward, then opened it upward. Then he gently stroked the child’s head.

“Move aside. Out of the way!”

A cart piled high with goods came rushing toward the stall. Beside the person pulling the cart, another ran along holding the load in place with both hands so it would not topple, shouting warnings to the pedestrians. Those looking at the stalls shrank their shoulders where they stood so as not to be hit by the cart. The cart came barreling toward Johannes. Whether he knew it or not, Johannes withdrew the hand that had been patting the child’s head and turned around.

“Johannes!”

Thud.

Judith threw her arms tightly around Johannes’s waist and flung them both toward the stall. They fell onto the cloth spread on the ground, narrowly avoiding the place where the goods were displayed.

Clatter.

Only after confirming the cart had rushed past behind Johannes’s back did Judith let out a sigh of relief and slump flat onto the road. Johannes lay sprawled over Judith and merely blinked his eyes. What just happened? The heat rushing to his head was not normal. Johannes rubbed the rim of his right ear with his fingertips and twisted his face.

“Are you hurt anywhere? You didn’t get injured, did you?”

Judith sat up and looked him over. Johannes quietly shook his head while covering one ear with his palm. When Judith placed her hand over the back of his hand,

“Don’t touch me.” 

He snapped sharply, shaking off her hand.

Judith only blinked in surprise. Had the cart struck the back of his head after all? If so, she needed to check immediately. Judith sprang to her feet, went behind Johannes, and examined the back of his head. She ran her hands through his fine black hair, searching here and there again and again, but there was no wound.

“Your head seems fine.”

“……”

At the touch of her hand brushing even over the back of his neck, Johannes slowly rose to his feet. Once he moved far enough away that she would need to reach out to touch him, Judith’s hand dropped away.

“I’m fine.”

“Really? If the cart hits you, we need to go catch them now. That way we can demand money for treatment.”

Johannes quietly shook his head.

“The merchants’ association has a lot of complaints because this prime piece of land was handed over to the underprivileged. So whenever this goblin market opens, they drive their cargo carts roughly just to take it out on people. There’ve already been more than a few people hurt by those carts. Quite a few of the people who work here can’t hear.”

Judith brushed off the wrinkled hem of her clothes, now crumpled from rolling on the ground, with her palm as she spoke.

“Even so, don’t throw yourself around recklessly.”

Johannes took off the coat he was wearing and draped it over Judith’s shoulders. Not wanting her to notice how his fingertips were trembling, he quickly shoved them into his trouser pockets.

“Anyway, where’s Grandmother?”

“This way.”

Johannes swung his long legs forward and cut through the crowd. Judith hurried after the abruptly rising black head of Johannes. His mood was different than usual. He did not look back even once and headed only in his own direction.

“Johannes.”

Seeing the distance between them grow, Judith called after him. Even so, he kept walking straight ahead as though there was only one road in the world. Judith hurried after him, weaving through the crowd, but it was no use. She raised her voice again and again, calling Johannes’s name.

Breathing hard, Judith remembered Johannes speaking in sign language to the child. The natural gestures, as if he were speaking an everyday language, and the way he kept touching one ear bothered her. Her mouth went dry, feeling as though she had glimpsed some secret of Johannes’s.

When they passed by a record shop, jazz-like carols richly colored the street. Christmas truly must be just around the corner. Judith gripped Johannes’s coat slipping from her shoulders with her fingertips and let out a small sigh. Once she confirmed only whom Grandmother was meeting, she ought to stop by the employment agency run by a former detective known for his tight lips. She could not afford to waste time like this.

Tap. Tap.

It happened while she was walking after Johannes. Something poked her in the back. At first she thought she had bumped into one of the passing crowd, but when the sensation continued in a regular rhythm, Judith turned her head. It was the child who had been beside the old woman selling the wooden dolls. The child lifted a face reddened by the cold and stared at Judith. Judith bent her knees to meet the child’s eye level.

“Do you need something from me?”

As soon as she asked the question, she bit the inside of her cheek. From what she had seen earlier, the child seemed unable both to speak and to hear. The child only stared at Judith’s mouth. It seemed they could read lips.

“Why?”

Judith deliberately opened and closed her lips more clearly.

The child held out a tightly clenched fist toward Judith.

“This?”

At the shape of Judith’s mouth, the child gave a small nod. When Judith held out her hand, the child carefully placed something in her palm. It was a ball of red thread. It was tangled in a complete mess. Two sharp little ends of thread stuck out from above and below the tangle. What is this? Judith tilted her head. The child hurriedly scribbled something on the paper they had brought along.

Grandmother said you have to untangle what’s knotted before you can start anew.

“?”

Judith looked at the paper the child held out and thought. You have to untangle what’s knotted before you can start anew? What was that supposed to mean?

She said this is something she wanted to tell both of you.

“Both?”

The child nodded firmly, then turned away as if there were nothing more to do. Judith had heard that those who could not see sometimes read fortunes for the people who bought their wares. She had been told that even for something done half in fun, they were surprisingly accurate, but Judith had no interest in such things. If fortunes really could reveal the future, then everyone in the world ought to be safe and happy. But reality was not like that. It had never been like that, not for thousands of years. People feared the uncertainty of the future and wanted to have it confirmed and confirmed again. Even though every path was uncertain anyway, and hardship was always hidden inside it.