Despite decades of service, Mrs Comb was cross about the kippers. 'You had another writing dream, I dare say, sir. Remember when you dreamed you wrote Les Miserables Les Miserables? It took your editor a week to persuade you not to take Victor Hugo to court for flagellism.' The door banged open and the wind sprang in. A fearsome prehistoric creature filled the frame with his hairy, mud-spattered torso. He grunted several times in the language of clay and blood. Mrs Comb glared fiercely. 'Don't you dare clomp your filthy mudluggers on my clean carpet!'

'A jolly good m-morning to you, too, Pithecanthropus.' Goatwriter forgot his missing pages. 'What are you holding there, my dear fellow?'

Pithecanthropus opened his cupped hands towards Mrs Comb. A delicate white flower drooped from its clod of earth. 'I say!' exclaimed Goatwriter. 'A Snowdonian snowdrop! In September! How exquisite! How rare!'

Mrs Comb was less impressed. 'I'll thank you for digging up your mucky weeds and carrying them elsewhere! Such a muckster I never beheld! And shut the door on your way out! Do you want me and Sir to catch our deaths?'

Pithecanthropus grunted dejectedly and closed the door.

'Nowt but a hairy savage, that one.' Mrs Comb scrubbed the kipper pan. 'A savage!' Goatwriter felt sorry for his friend, but he knew better than to come between Mrs Comb and her temper.

So I wake up staring at another unfamiliar ceiling, and slip into my amnesia game. I am numb and I want to stay numb. I used to play this after Anju went, when I began my nine-year round of uncles' spare rooms and rice-cracker futons 'Eiji is visiting this month' and cousins who had the atomic warhead in any possible argument 'If you don't like it here, go back to your grandmother's house!' Anyway, the object of the game is to hold on to this sensation of not knowing where I am for as long as possible. I count to ten but I am still clueless. I slept on a ballooning sofa in the middle of a living room, pale curtains covering a big bay window. I have a mouth ulcer the size of a hoofprint. Bang! Bang! goes the memory bomb. The heads in the bowling alley. I see Morino, cigar-lit. The Mongolian on the unfinished bridge. I flex my sore muscles. My nose and throat in the corked-up stage of a bad cold; my body sorts itself out despite its idiot brain. How long have I been asleep? Who fed Cat? A box of Lark cigarettes on the coffee table. Only three left, and I smoke one after another, lighting them with matches. My teeth feel clad in lagging. The room is warm. I slept in my clothes, my crotch and armpits are stewing. I should open the window, but I can't be bothered to move quite yet. While I lie here nothing new can begin, and more distance opens up between me and the deaths of thirty, forty men. I groan. I cannot unsee what I saw. It will be national news, if not international news. Yakuza Wars, from now until the new year. I groan. Forensics men will be crawling over the battleground with tweezers. The Serious Crime Squad will be interviewing Xanadu shoppers. A girl employed at the already infamous pachinko parlour will have told reporters about an impostor claiming to be the manager's son, moments before Mr Ozaki himself was thrown through the second-floor security window. Police artists will be making charcoal sketches. What do I do? What will the unseen Mr Tsuru want done to me? What has become of Mama-san and Queen of Spades? I have no plan. I have no cigarettes. I have no tissues to ungunge my nose. I listen hard, and I can hear... absolutely nothing. goes the memory bomb. The heads in the bowling alley. I see Morino, cigar-lit. The Mongolian on the unfinished bridge. I flex my sore muscles. My nose and throat in the corked-up stage of a bad cold; my body sorts itself out despite its idiot brain. How long have I been asleep? Who fed Cat? A box of Lark cigarettes on the coffee table. Only three left, and I smoke one after another, lighting them with matches. My teeth feel clad in lagging. The room is warm. I slept in my clothes, my crotch and armpits are stewing. I should open the window, but I can't be bothered to move quite yet. While I lie here nothing new can begin, and more distance opens up between me and the deaths of thirty, forty men. I groan. I cannot unsee what I saw. It will be national news, if not international news. Yakuza Wars, from now until the new year. I groan. Forensics men will be crawling over the battleground with tweezers. The Serious Crime Squad will be interviewing Xanadu shoppers. A girl employed at the already infamous pachinko parlour will have told reporters about an impostor claiming to be the manager's son, moments before Mr Ozaki himself was thrown through the second-floor security window. Police artists will be making charcoal sketches. What do I do? What will the unseen Mr Tsuru want done to me? What has become of Mama-san and Queen of Spades? I have no plan. I have no cigarettes. I have no tissues to ungunge my nose. I listen hard, and I can hear... absolutely nothing.

How else would I shunt loose my morning dump if I gave up smoking? Bowel-shaking is one quality of cigarettes that never appears in the surf 'n' bronzed ads. I regret sleeping in my jeans, but I was afraid to undress in case I woke up to hear the door being jemmied and needed to bolt. I still am. This is worse than waiting for an earthquake. But what do I do if I think I hear an intruder? Hide? Where? I have no idea even how many floors this house has. I get up: first stop, toilet. Japanese-squat style, with a bowl of bitter herbs. A good clean birth Western toilets increase the risk of complications. A Niagara Falls flush. The kitchen is terracotta and spotless the owner loves cooking, judging from the flour-thumbed recipe books. Each cooking implement hangs on its own hook. Through the window I see an empty carport and a front garden. Roses, weeds and a bird table. A high privet hedge hides the house from the outside world. The cleaning cupboard is well stocked, but is too obvious to hide in. The living room is Japanese tatami matting, a Buddhist altar with photographs of the recent and long dead, an alcove for flower arrangements, and a hanging scroll with kanji that would give me a headache if I tried to read them. There is no TV, no stereo and no telephone just a receiver-less fax machine on the top of an ample bookshelf. The books are old, illustrated collections of tales. 'The Moon Princess', 'Urashima Taro', 'Gon the Fox'. This house seems too orderly for kids. I open the curtains an inch. The back garden is somebody's pride and joy. The pond is bigger than my grandmother's I can see carp lurking in the green. Late dragonflies skim over the duckweed. A stone lantern sits on an island. Pots of lavender, and a high bamboo grove, thick enough to hide in. Birds nest in an orange mailbox nailed to a silver birch. You could watch this garden for hours. It unfolds. No wonder there is no TV. I go upstairs. The carpet is snowy and lush under my bare feet. A lavish bathroom with seahorse taps. A master bedroom the decor suggests a middle-aged couple. The smaller bedroom is only used for guests. Well. No hiding places here. You have to be nine years old to find good hiding places in the average house. Anju won by hiding in the washing machine one time. I assume my tour is complete, but notice a slatted cupboard door at the end of the landing. Its knob twizzles uselessly, but it swings open anyway. Its shelves are not shelves, but steep stairs. A knotted rope hangs down to help you haul yourself up. On the third step my head hits the ceiling, which shifts. I push, and a crack of daylight opens as the plyboard trapdoor swings up. I was way wrong. This is better than a hiding place. I emerge into a library/study with the highest book population density I have ever come across. Book walls, book towers, book avenues, book side streets. Book spillages, book rubble. Paperback books, hardback books, atlases, manuals, almanacs. Nine lifetimes of books. Enough books to build an igloo to hide in. The room is sentient with books. Mirrors double and cube the books. A Great Wall of China quantity of books. Enough books to make me wonder if I am a book too. Light comes in through a high triangular window. A sort of wickerwork light shade hangs down. Apart from the bookcases and sagging shelves, the only item of furniture is an old-fashioned writing bureau with square holes to lose papers and bills in. My grandmother had the same sort. Still does, I guess. On the writing bureau are two piles of paper one white and blank as starched shirts, the other a manuscript laid in a special lacquer tray. I cannot help myself. I sit down and begin reading page one.

Goatwriter worked all morning, trying to reconstruct the fragments of the truly untold tale which whispered before dawn, but it was as taxing as tracking tacks in a jonquil junkyard. Mrs Comb mangled wrangled sheets. Pithecanthropus returned the engine of the venerable coach. Goatwriter finally got up from his writing bureau to look up the correct spelling of zwitterion zwitterion in his dictionary, but got sidetracked by in his dictionary, but got sidetracked by gustviter gustviter and lured farther away by and lured farther away by durzi durzi and and theopneust theopneust. Drowsiness ambushed. Goatwriter's last thought was that his dictionary was an impostor pillow, or possibly vice versa.

When Goatwriter awoke from his nap and returned to his writing bureau he thought he was still dreaming. The very pages he had written pre-snooze they were gone! Impossible! Mrs Comb, he knew, never touched his writing bureau there was only one explanation.

'Thief!' cried Goatwriter. 'Thief! Thief!'

Mrs Comb rushed in, dropping pegs. 'Sir! Whatever's to do?'

'Burglarized, Mrs Comb, while I lay sleeping!'

Pithecanthropus burst in clenching a French wrench.

'My reconstructed truly untold tale spirited away!'

'But how could it be, sir? I was hanging out the washing but I seen nowt!'

'Perchance the thief is diminutive, and gained ingress and egress through the exhaust pipe!' This seemed rather far-fetched to Mrs Comb, but she followed Goatwriter and Pithecanthropus outside to the venerable coach's stern. Pithecanthropus knelt, sniffed the tyre-track mud. He grunted.

'An unwashed rodent?' verified Goatwriter. 'Slightly bigger than a mouse? Aha! Then we m-may conclude that the thief is a dirty little rat! Come, friends! We m-must apprehend this scallywag and teach him a thing or two about copyright law! My dear Pithecanthropus lead the way!'

Pithecanthropus read the ground with his brow furrowed. An anvil cloud lugged past its sluggish mass. The tracks led off the beaten track, down the path not taken, through a sleepy hollow, over a tarn of brackish bilgewater. Mrs Comb caught sight of him first. 'Whatever next by 'eck!' A scarecrow, nailed to a 'T', staked into the lip of a dyke, in a sorry state. His eyes and ears were pecked away, and wispy hay bled from a wound in his side whenever the wind bothered to blow. Goatwriter approached him. 'Ahem. Good day, Scarecrow.'

Scarecrow raised his head, slower than moons over mown meadows.

'Frightfully sorry to trouble you,' began Goatwriter, 'but have you seen a dirty little rat scurry by carrying pages of a stolen manuscript?'

Scarecrow's mouth twitched more slowly than violence of violets. 'This day...'

'Splendid!' said Goatwriter. 'Can you tell me which way the thief went?'

'This day... we shall sit with my father in Paradise...'

At that very moment, two hellhounds hurdled the dyke, sank their slavering fangs into poor Scarecrow, ripped him off his T, and savaged him to windblown tatters. Goatwriter was knocked backward by a lashing paw. Pithecanthropus leaped and swept Mrs Comb into his arms. All that remained of the scarecrow were rags nailed to the wood. Goatwriter tried to recall what to do and what not to do with rabid dogs play dead? Look them in the eye? Run like billy-oh?

'That'll learn 'im,' growled the top dog, 'to give the plot away!'

'Wot shall us do with these three, boss?' sniffed the underdog.

Goatwriter felt the heat of their breath. 'Good doggies.'

'Ee talks like a writer,' growled the underdog. 'Smells like one. Is one.'

'Ain't got the time,' the top dog barked. 'Our maker is getting away!'

'I want to practise on Beardy first!'

Pithecanthropus got ready to defend his friend, but the hellhounds bounded away over the rises and falls of the margins until they were blots on the wizened horizon. 'Well!' exclaimed Mrs Comb. Then she realized she was still nesting in the arms of Pithecanthropus. 'Put me down this very instant, you mucky lout!'

A door bangs downstairs and the manuscript zooms out of focus. My heart goes seismic and I stop breathing. Somebody is here. Somebody is here for me. Buntaro would have called out by now. So soon? How did they find me? My survival instinct, so shredded by Morino, kicks in now. They are searching the living room, the kitchen, the garden, cranny by nook. My socks, which I left on the sofa. My empty cigarette box. I replaced the plyboard trapdoor and pulled up the rope, but did I close the slatted door? I can hand myself over and hope for mercy. Forget it. Yakuza just do not do mercy. Hide here, under books. But if I cause a book-slide I am done for. Is there anything up here that could serve as a weapon? I listen for footsteps on the shelves nothing. The intruders are either working in silence, or I am only dealing with one. My default strategy is this: hold a three-ton three-volume set of A Critical Review of the Japanese "I A Critical Review of the Japanese "I" Novel Novel above the trapdoor when it opens wide enough, lob them through, and hopefully knock the guy backwards. Jump down, land on him if he has a gun I'm in trouble bust his ribs and run for it. I wait. And wait. Concentrate. I wait. Am I sure I heard the bang? I left the back window open an inch suppose it was just the wind? Concentrate! I wait. Nobody. My arms are aching. I cannot stand this. 'Hello?' above the trapdoor when it opens wide enough, lob them through, and hopefully knock the guy backwards. Jump down, land on him if he has a gun I'm in trouble bust his ribs and run for it. I wait. And wait. Concentrate. I wait. Am I sure I heard the bang? I left the back window open an inch suppose it was just the wind? Concentrate! I wait. Nobody. My arms are aching. I cannot stand this. 'Hello?'

The flurry of violence never comes.

Scared by a story I told myself. I am in a bad way.

Later in the afternoon, I go back down. In the spare bedroom closet I find some sheets and towels, and arrange them on the step-shelves behind the slatted door, so hopefully the intruder will think it is just a linen cupboard. I gather up any sign of me, and stuff it into a plastic bag under the sink. I must clean up any traces of myself, as I make them. I should be hungry when did I last eat? but my stomach seems to be missing. I need a cigarette, but no way am I venturing outside. Coffee would be fine, but I can only find green tea, so I make a pot. I blow my nose my hearing comes back, but snots up again open the bay window, and drink my tea on the step. In the pond carp appear and disappear. Whirligigs bend but never puncture the liquid sky. A ruby-throated bird listens for earthworms. I watch ants. Cicadas muzzzmezzzmezzzmezzzmezzzmuzzzzzzzzz. Nowhere in the house is a single clock, or even a calendar. There is a sundial in the garden but the day is too hazy for a clear shadow. It feels three o'clock-ish. The breeze shuffles and flicks through the bamboo leaves. A column of midges hovers above the pond. I sip my tea. My tongue cannot taste a thing. Look at me. Four weeks ago I was on the morning ferry to Kagoshima, with a lunch box from Aunt Orange. I was sure I would find my father before the week was up. Look at who what I found instead. What a disaster, what an aftermath. The summer is lost, and other things too. The fax machine beeps. I jump and spill my tea. A message from Buntaro, telling me he'll be over around six, if the traffic lets up. When is six o'clock relative to now? Hours need other hours to make any sense at all. Hanging on the wall above the fax machine is a shell-framed photograph of an old man and woman, maybe in their fifties. I guess they own this house. They are sitting at a cafe table in the shade on a bright day. He is about to break into laughter at whatever she has just said. She is reading my reaction to see if I genuinely enjoyed her story, or if I am just being polite. Weird. Her face is familiar. Familiar, and impossible to lie to. 'True,' she says, 'we met before.' We look at each other for a while, then I go back to her garden for a bit where the dragonflies live out their whole lives.

'Are you quite sure, m-my dear fellow,' prompted Goatwriter, 'that the tracks stop in this mound of mired mulch?' Pithecanthropus grunted a yes, waded in a yard and picked something up. 'Kipper bones!' squawked Mrs Comb. 'Then I must conclude,' said Goatwriter, 'we have hunted our quarry to its lair.'

'Nowt but an eyesore,' said Mrs Comb, 'and right whiffy to boot.' Upon closer inspection the dwelling proved carefully constructed bricks of cans, pans and mottled bottles, and mortar of spud skins, burnt rice crusts and 'Vote for Me' leaflets. A bicycle mudguard ascended ramp-wise, to a hole as black as a Hackensack mac. Goatwriter squinted inside. 'So the burglar dwells in this hovel of stiltonic stench.'

'Hovel?' An irate rant shot back. 'Give me my hovel hovel and stuff ya geriatric rust-bucket bus, and stuff ya geriatric rust-bucket bus, any any day of da month!' day of da month!'

'Aha! So you are are in residence, thief! Unhand my manuscript forthwith!' in residence, thief! Unhand my manuscript forthwith!'

'Take a ing hike, ya JoeSchmoe!' ing hike, ya JoeSchmoe!'

'Soap and water!' gasped Mrs Comb.

Goatwriter lowered his horns. 'Fiend, there are ladies present!'

A tiny hand appeared in the whole and flashed the finger. 'If that scrawny bird is a "lady" I am Frank Sinatra's I'm warnin' ya, if ya ain't skedaddled by da time I count to five I'll slap harassment suits on ya so quick ya won't know your I'm warnin' ya, if ya ain't skedaddled by da time I count to five I'll slap harassment suits on ya so quick ya won't know your X!X X!Xs from Tuesday!'

'Legality! Indeed. A most m-moot point! You broke into our venerable coach, and theived Zanzibar kippers and m-my truly untold tale! Furthermore, by Girton, we don't intend to go back empty-handed!'

'Oooh, a threat I'm ing in my didgereedungarees!' ing in my didgereedungarees!'

Pithecanthropus grunted impatiently, waded up to the cone of rubbish and clefted the top quarter clean away. Inside was a shocked rat who a moment later was a furious rat. 'Are ya IXXX IXXX ing ing deranged deranged? Ya nearly brained me, ya knucklescraping Neanderthal!'

Goatwriter peered through his pince-nez. 'Remarkable the thief is an apparent relative of mus musculus domesticus mus musculus domesticus.'

'I ain't no domestic nuffink, punk! I am da One, da Only, ScatRat! Yeah, yeah, so I sampled sampled ya mouldy kippers where's da big balooey, Huey? But I never lifted no stories. I got ya mouldy kippers where's da big balooey, Huey? But I never lifted no stories. I got Japanese Scientific Whalers Japanese Scientific Whalers' Weekly Weekly 2 wipe my 2 wipe my hole. And I swear, ya slander my good name once again my lawyer's gonna sue ya hole. And I swear, ya slander my good name once again my lawyer's gonna sue ya s up ya s up ya !#X$ !#X$s!'

'Scourers! Detergents!' Mrs Comb covered her ears.

ScatRat hollered all the louder. 'Act ya age, not ya egg size! Ya in da real world margins here!' ScatRat saluted with one finger. 'Rats, 4ever! In Union Are We Linked! ScatRat never never never, is extinct!' With that, the rodent vanished into the benthic bowels of his pyrrhic pile.

Pithecanthropus grunted a question.

'I agree, sir,' said Mrs Comb. 'Don't care should be made to care.'

Goatwriter shook his head sadly. His arthritis hurt. 'Certainly, friends, ScatRat is an exceedingly unpleasant character, but a lack of m-manners per se is no crime. I am afraid the m-mystery of my m-missing m-manuscript must go unsolved. Let us return to the venerable coach. I believe we will be leaving the m-margins tonight.'

Evening on the margins was an unrequited requiem. Mrs Comb was baking a burdock fairy cake to cheer Goatwriter up, and Pithecanthropus was repairing a hole in the roof. Goatwriter proof-read his last page, and laid it to rest in his manuscript tray. His rewrite lacked the magnificent glow that the original truly untold tale retained in his memory.

'Dinner-time, by and by,' called Mrs Comb. 'You must be starving, sir.'

'Peculiar to pronounce, I could not entertain a m-morsel.'

'But, sir! You haven't had a bite the livelong day!'

Pithecanthropus grunted in concern through the hole in the roof.

Goatwriter considered. 'So I haven't.'

'Still fretting about your missing stories, sir? We'll be leaving the margins and burglars and the like far behind.'

Pithecanthropus double-took and grunted frantically.

'By 'eck, you savage! Clap that trap! Sir is out of sorts enough as it is!'

Goatwriter frowned. 'M-my dear fellow, whatever is distressing you so?'

Mrs Comb dropped her cookery book. 'Sir! What are you eating?'

'Why, only a little paper cud-' Goatwriter's jaws froze. The truth dawned. Mrs Comb spelt it out. 'Sir! You were eating your own pages as you wrote them!'

Goatwriter's words stuck in his throat.

When evening comes I turn off all the lights and wait for Buntaro in the kitchen, so nobody knows I am here, and so I can see Buntaro arriving and know it is him and not anyone else. I stare at a wall-tile whorl as minutes spin by and die. Here come the headlights of Buntaro's car now, swinging into the car porch. It still seems weird to think of Buntaro existing anywhere except the counter at the Shooting Star. I hate needing. I spent the last nine years trying to avoid needing generosity, charity, affection, sympathy, money. And here I am again. I unlock the front door. 'Hi.'

'Sorry I'm late. Heavy traffic. Has your fever gone?'

'It turned into this cold.'

'So that's why you sound like a parrot. Here, I bought you an emergency six-pack of Ebisu Export and a Hokka-Hokka take-out. Eat it before it gets cold and starts tasting like what it's made of.' He hands me the bag as he slips out of his sandals. 'And some cigarettes. Wasn't sure what you smoke, so I bought Peace.'

'Thanks... I'm sorry, but I lost my appetite.'

'No matter. I trust your nicotine craving rages unabated?'

'Peace is fine.'

'What are you doing all shut up in the dark?'

'No reason.' I switch the lights on as we go through to the living room.

'Whoah!' Buntaro looks at my black eye. 'A beaut!'

'Who's looking after Shooting Star?'

'My wife. Who do you think?'

'But she should be taking it easy. Being, uh, pregnant, I mean.'

'Worse than pregnant bored and pregnant. In fact we had a mini-row this morning. She says she is tired of being treated like an invalid whale, and that if she sees another daytime TV programme about how to make pep bottles into traditional dolls she is going to buy a gun. Yes, if you are wondering, she knows what happened. But the good news is, it seems she is the only person in the whole wide world who does know.'

'What?'

'Nothing on the news. Nothing in the papers.'

'Impossible.'

Buntaro shrugs. 'Lad, it never happened.'

'It happened.'

'Not if it didn't happen on the news.'

'You do believe me?'

'Hey! I drove around all night, remember, you idiot.'

'So everything the guns, the explosions?'