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kind of ‘false bottom’? To what extent had Dejima changed the way we saw things, during its centuries-long hibernation? As for me, I feared that the oshiire – the one in my house – and everything it had unleashed upon my feeble existence might unhinge me, leaving me vulnerable to life’s open sea.
    I switched on the light in the kitchen and cleaned everything from top to bottom. Then I turned up the volume on the radio, which was playing an old song about those who keep going while all around are dying. If only someone had been watching me from behind the glass cabinet and called to warn me about the pitfalls ahead; I swear I would have picked up without a moment’s thought. But the telephone remained stubbornly silent. The only thing showing up on its Lilliputian screen was a missed call, the time corresponding with my attempt to alert the intruder.
    Next I was standing in front of the built-incupboard. Two panels both two metres forty high, one sliding behind the other. The shelf was only eighty centimetres from the top. Depth? Not much more than a metre. Wood-panelled interior. A luxury couchette on a stationary train. The police officers hadn’t touched anything. Futon, crumpled sheets, plastic bottles. She must only have taken her toiletries and a couple of items of clothing with her when escorted out. Under the pillow, I found a novel I had scoured the bookcase for the previous week,
Scandal
. On a page with the corner turned down, where her reading must have been interrupted, Shusaku Endo writes: ‘Without warning, the cogs most central to his being had stopped turning. And the reason for it was clear. Ever since the night of …’ Idiot, I said to myself, because it had just crossed my mind to send the book to her in prison to give her the chance to finish it. She must have had a good nose for these things as a matter of fact, since visitors were few and far between. My father was too old to travel. As for my sister and brother-in-law, I had been waiting for them to visit for over a year. I thought back to my stay with them at the beginning ofMay; the woman must have taken the opportunity of my absence to really make herself at home. She had probably slept on the tatami mats. Was she alone in her cell tonight? I slid the panel across and backed out of the room because the doorbell had rung: the locksmith.
    Later, with the television on low, I sat listening to what was going on in the world. I couldn’t get interested in anything. A documentary channel was telling me all about old people and the robots who would one day make their lives easier. If I heard another word about robots … The number of citizens of the archipelago aged 100 or older had gone from 153 in 1963 to 10,000 thirty-five years later, to 36,200 today, according to a young female journalist who was in no danger herself of joining their ranks until at least 2080. They were taking over. This year, all those celebrating their hundredth birthday were to receive a silver cup from the Prime Minister. And surprise, surprise, the silly woman had to bring Tanabe into it, hauling him in front of the cameras again just because he happened to have reached 113 … and here’s Tanabe who gets up early to read thepaper, and has a glass of milk every morning. He had become our collective baby, whose crib the camera was trained on every day.
    I imagined myself at a venerable age, fifty years from now. Buried deep in the mines of Brazil or the Congo lay the elements – coltan, cassiterite and other peculiar metals – that would one day be used to make my robot. This automaton would watch over the endless autumn of my days, speak to me, take down my will and hear my last breath. Someday, as it had been programmed to do, it would place a hand on my shoulder and gently whisper my name; it would pass this same hand over my eyes and mouth, dial the emergency services and set the funeral arrangements in motion. I turned off the television, plunging the house