by Kōbō Abe
I turned around, intending to offer the woman my shoulder again—only to find that the insect dealer had swiftly stepped forward and wrapped his arm around her. She was compliant, showing no signs of resisting. The shill looked away with a faint smile. That was a dirty trick. But I was the only one who had the right to put a compress on her ankle.
8
THE WATERY TASTE OF DISAPPOINTMENT
GROWS AS FAMILIAR
AS A PAIR OF OLD SHOES
It was a steep stone staircase, six and a half feet wide, with twenty-three steps in all. The banister was a square-cut log of cryptomeria. At the top, on the right, was a stone pillar some thirty inches square, and in the back a parapet twenty inches high. The bridge (also known as the forward observation deck—my quarters) formed an elongated diamond some 235 square feet in area. The walls were open, balcony style. Living here alone with my imaginary crew, I had taken pleasure in the uninterrupted view, and in the sense of spaciousness (besides, I had foolproof measures in place to guard against surprise attack). But community life, it now struck me, would necessitate the acquisition of heavy curtains.
I led the way, followed by the girl on the insect dealer’s arm, with the shill bringing up the rear.
“What a mess!” exclaimed the insect dealer, his voice an unconvincing shriek of dismay. “A junkman’s backyard has nothing on this.”
He needn’t have said anything; I was quite aware of the room’s shocking state. I had not planned on bringing anyone here for some time yet, and so everything was in the same topsy-turvy order as my own brain cells, scarcely fit to withstand the cold scrutiny of outsiders. I gnashed my teeth to think that if only I had known they were coming, I could have straightened things up and made the place more presentable. Both the TV and the stereo were fairly new models, but the effect this might have had was lost.
“Considering how messy things are, though,” I said defensively, “you’ll notice there’s very little dust. The square box at the head of the stairs is a dust-collecting machine that I invented. It works pretty well.”
“That you invented, you say?” the shill said mockingly, looking from me to the box and back again. It was a plastic box approximately twenty by twenty by eight inches; a fluffy covering of dust made it appear to be wrapped in old felt.
“Instead of an ordinary filter system, I used the adsorption power of static electricity.”
“Oh, yeah?” The shill’s voice picked up with interest. Perhaps he was a more reasonable fellow than I had given him credit for being. “A dust remover using static electricity? That’s a new one on me.”
“It is new; I thought it up.”
“It makes good sense, theoretically.” He squatted down in front of the machine, while I ran over to the chaise longue shoved against the wall and swept off a motley pile of old newspapers and magazines to make room for the girl.
“Never mind that. Get a load of this room, will you?” The insect dealer groaned, his teeth clenched, as he kicked three bananas and a bag of peanuts under the table. “Looks like a cross between a pawnshop and a den of thieves.”
Supported by the insect dealer, the girl sat down on the chaise longue, holding one leg straight out before her. Still with his arm around her, the insect dealer sat down too, snuggling close against her. He bounced playfully on the old springs, then gave his own face a slap and muttered, “Shame on you. Behave yourself.”
The shill, still squatting in front of the dust collector, paid no attention. “Is all this stuff on top dust?” he asked. “Pretty clever. You know something? You’re a lot brainier than you look.”
I took no offense. “Well, after all, it’s not as if your brain gets fat.”
“It’s making a noise. Is something rotating inside?”
“To ensure uniform contact with the air, I have it set to rotate five times a minute, while the wool and nylon brushes inside turn in the opposite direction at ten times that speed. The friction creates static electricity. I set it right at the point where air currents intersect. Seems to work all right, as far as I can tell.”
“I suppose you’ve already applied for a patent.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“No ambition?” He wiped the corner of his mouth dry with the palm of his hand. “Don’t throw away your talents. Remember that sale at the department store today? An item like this could have gone over big. Right, Komono?”
“Yes, sir—the captain here is a great man, all right.”
His answer came too readily. His glasses had fogged over, obscuring his expression, but he obviously had no real interest in the dust collector. Was this some sort of dodge, to put the shill off guard? People lacking in curiosity are said to be unfeeling. Had his original air of introspection been a deliberate act, just a way of getting himself aboard the ship? It wouldn’t do to expect a lot of him as my bodyguard, and wind up paying for it in the end. Meanwhile, a few amendments seemed in order on my impressions of the shill. Generally, it’s money and material goods that win society’s respect, while intangible assets like inventiveness and resourcefulness get short shrift. After all the interest I’d shown in his eupcaccia, the insect dealer went on treating me like some kind of kook.
Come to think of it, the rest of the eupcaccias were still out in the jeep. I’d have to remember to bring them in later.
The girl began swaying, probably from the effort of holding her leg up in midair. The insect dealer made a move to get up, planning evidently to go over and support her leg himself. He was mistaken if he thought I was going to let such a prize go to him. I planted myself in front of him, blocking his way at close range. One or the other of us would have to step aside.
“Relax, relax—I wouldn’t do anything to offend you.” He gave my shoulder a light pat and moved aside. Then, heading toward the back of the room, he walked by the five steel lockers next to the chaise longue, snapping a finger against each one in turn. He stopped in front of two bookcases that intersected at an angle of 120 degrees and looked back at me. Avoiding his eyes, I knelt in front of the girl, a little to one side.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Naturally.”
She clasped her hands under her knee and pulled her arms back, lifting her leg so that her artificial leather skirt peeled back to the top of the thigh. Fine soft hair covered flesh even rounder and richer than I had imagined. I pulled out a first-aid kit from underneath the chaise longue. The room might look chaotic, but it had a certain orderliness of its own: things were strewn in concentric circles around the chaise longue in order of usefulness, distance being in inverse proportion to necessity or frequency of use.
“Hold out your leg straight, and relax,” I said, and brought my two palms up to the calf of her leg. She let out an exaggerated scream.
“Stop it! That tickles!”
“Don’t scare me like that. I’m just trying to examine you.”
The shill glanced our way. “Examine, huh. That’s a good one.” Slowly he stood up in front of the dust collector and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. Setting both hands on the end of the desk-table that took up half the available space, he leaned forward slightly in a pose of unmistakable menace. “If you’re going to give first aid, just keep it cold. Make a cold compress out of a wet towel, and wrap a bandage around it. That’s all.”
“Wrong.” Rubbing the cover of a large book he had taken from the bookcase, the insect dealer shook his big head. “Not cold. You’ve got to use a hot compress.”
“Are you crazy? Everybody knows you pack a sprain in ice.” The shill was adamant.
“No, it’s heat you want. Hot compresses are the best.” The insect dealer was not about to give ground, either.
Let them fight it out. In the meantime I had a clear field. It was a golden chance—one I had no intention of wasting. Without the least hesitation, I slid my hands confidently along the curve of her calf, and this time she made no sound. I had to act as if I knew what I was doing; a gingerly approach wo
uld only backfire.
“Leave it to me,” I said, hands now firmly in place, as I savored the sensation of her flesh against mine. “I learned all about it when I was a firefighter. You chill a fracture, but you apply heat to a sprain.”
The girl’s finger touched the back of my hand. I thought she was going to push me away, but that didn’t seem to be her aim. Never leaving my hand, her finger began to crawl along it like a wingless insect. Now it was my turn to feel ticklish. But it was a ticklishness I could happily endure.
“Why do they take X-rays at a hospital?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s because otherwise they can’t be sure if the bone’s broken or not, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Then isn’t this just a waste of time?”
The question was a heavy blow. The shill laughed, spraying saliva from between his teeth like an atomizer. The insect dealer shut his book with a bang.
“Tell me,” he said, “what made you become a firefighter, of all things?”
“Nothing special. You know, when you’re a kid you dream about what you want to be when you grow up. I wanted to be a fireman, that’s all.”
All three of them burst out laughing. “All right, what were you doing in the Self-Defense Forces, of all things?” I countered.
Instead of answering, he took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirttail. “My glasses are fogged up all the time. It must really be humid in here.”
I stayed serene. The reason was that casually, secretly, the girl’s fingers were rubbing the back of my hand in rhythmic circles.
“It’s humid, but it feels comfortable, doesn’t it?” she said. “As if a cooler were on.”
Fortunately, her hands were shadowed by my body, so that neither the shill nor the insect dealer seemed aware of what she was doing. I hadn’t known that secret pleasures could be so exciting. Warm air blew into my ear, and emerged from my nostril. My blood pressure must be zooming. What I could not comprehend was the meaning of the signal coming through her fingers. Was she uncommonly sympathetic, or had the shill merely conditioned her to flirt with whoever was at hand?
“Now that you mention it, it is cool. I’m dry as a bone.” The shill put a hand under his shirt and rapped his chest several times.
“But if it’s humid all year round, the air gets full of air mites. Terrible for your respiratory organs.” The insect dealer threw in a cavil in his know-it-all tone of voice.
“Air mites? That’s a good one. Typical,” said the shill.
“I’m not making it up. Don’t you read the paper?” He held out a book horizontally, making it swim like a fish. “They’re one-hundredth of an inch across, like microscopic jellyfish; look in any encyclopedia. They float in the air and feed on dust particles. They’ll reproduce in your lungs and bring on a nasty inflammation.”
Paying no attention to this exchange, the shill skirted the table and peered down into the hold over the parapet opposite the chaise longue.
“What’s inside those storage drums down there?” he asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask ever since I got here.”
“Five are full of drinking water.” My voice was thick, as if spread with glue. The girl’s continued massaging of the back of my hand had swollen the mucous membranes of my throat. “In an emergency, there’s got to be plenty of water, right?”
“This place is swimming in water. Look at this book—you could practically wring it out.” The insect dealer held the spine of the book at either end and twisted it; the cover came off and the contents fell to the floor. “Oops, sorry. Looks like an interesting book—A Manual for Self-Sufficiency, it’s called. Whoever wrote it must be a real nut, to worry about self-sufficiency in this day and age. Say, this is a library book, isn’t it? Aren’t you going to take it back?”
I had no obligation to answer. I was on the verge of remembering something far more important. Uses for bundles of printed paper, old newspapers, old magazines … That was it—a cast. Until a plaster cast was available, you could use them as temporary substitutes, to immobilize an injured joint.
“You know, I like it here,” announced the shill, leaning slightly forward to seat himself on the parapet. He continued in a loud and enthusiastic voice. “To be honest, at first I just wanted a look at the place, out of sheer curiosity. But this is great! Absolutely fascinating. Who cares about a little humidity? High humidity is typical of underground space; all you have to do is think of some way to put it to use. Having the winters warm and the summers cool, with a fixed temperature year round, could be extremely useful, it seems to me. Just to take an obvious example, it’s perfect for storing vegetables or grain. Or maybe unhulled rice and seeds would be better. The price is high, and there’s a stable demand… .”
Too pedestrian. It was like seeing a diamond in a king’s crown and associating it with mere glass-cutting. This sort of man could become a great nuisance. It struck me now that the noncommittal insect dealer was the safer of the two.
“Nobody tells me what to do.” Numbness in my leg blunted my tone. I raised my eyebrows, tightened my grip on the girl’s calf, and said, “For now, anyway, let’s make a cast. Whether it’s a fracture or a sprain, the most important thing is to keep the injured area immobile.”
“That’s all right for now, but what happens after that?” he said.
The girl’s calf twitched slightly. Without hesitation, the insect dealer came butting in.
“It’s all settled, isn’t it? I’ll climb down with her on my back.” He put a cigarette in his mouth, then returned it to the pack unlit. “You two came down here from the highway, but the real way in is along the shore. There’s a jeep waiting outside, so relax and let me take care of things. I’ll just have a cup of coffee before we go.”
“Takes you a while to catch on, doesn’t it? You’re a bit slow—like an old fluorescent light.” The shill dragged out his words for greater effect. “This place is so top-secret we can’t even call an ambulance, right? If I were the captain, I can tell you I wouldn’t want to grant any shore leaves, either, not unless it was to a trusty who had really proved himself.”
“You stay here as hostage, then,” the insect dealer said easily, with a wink at me, seeking my approval.
Taken by surprise, I was unable to decide quickly whether his suggestion would work to my advantage or not. If she were the hostage, it would be a different matter; but was there any conceivable advantage in being left alone with the shill? She might disappear, stuck fast to the insect dealer’s back, and never return.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The shill sucked in his saliva with an offensive sound. “Just look at the captain’s face. Talk about black looks …”
“Shall we be off?” Unperturbed, the insect dealer addressed the girl across my shoulder. It might have been the angle, but all of him—not just the dome of his head—looked a size bigger than normal. “Captain, will you see us out to the jeep? I can’t handle those dogs alone.”
“Dogs? What dogs?” The girl gave my hand a light pinch.
“A pack of hungry strays. We took our lives in our hands getting in here. There must be five or six really ferocious ones. But there’s nothing to worry about: the captain here does a great imitation of a dog’s howl, and the moment they hear that they calm right down.”
My hand, covered with sweat, felt as obscene as if it had been coated with lubricant. The insect dealer was standing now where he could see our hands, but he said nothing. Was he intentionally overlooking it? In that case, his request that I see them out to the jeep took on a deeper significance: I would be one of those to leave rather than stay, and my wish to see the shill excluded would be brilliantly fulfilled. It was an ingenious idea. Once the padlock was locked from the outside, the shill would never again set foot aboveground. How long he could stay alive would depend on when, and whether, he found the provisions. If he never did, then he would certainly die in a matter of weeks. Even if he did find
provisions, he would probably fall in one of the anti-invader traps and be fatally injured. I could dispose of the body single-handed. Chopped in pieces and flushed down that high-pressure toilet, it would be gone without a trace in a matter of minutes.
Perhaps I should trust the insect dealer, after all. It was like facing a broken traffic signal that blinked red, then green, then red, then green, over and over. I hesitated, unable to decide whether to step on the brake or the accelerator.
“First let me get that cast on,” I said, and reached out for the pages of the Manual for Self-Sufficiency, which lay strewn across the floor. The floor spun and I toppled over. My leg had fallen asleep from spending such a long time in an unaccustomed position. The girl, despite her supposed injury, dodged and sprang to her feet. The shill exploded into laughter with the suddenness of a cork popping off a bottle of champagne. The water cannon on the department store rooftop, which hadn’t attracted a single buyer, would probably fire its projectile with a similar noise, I thought.
“All right, miss, you can quit acting now.” The shill snapped his fingers and jumped nimbly from the parapet to the floor. “That’s enough. Time to take a break.”
“You mean she was faking?” Slowly the insect dealer planted his feet wide apart, exuding menace. I remained surprisingly calm. Things never go the way you plan them, except in fantasies. The watery taste of disappointment was as familiar as a pair of old shoes.
“You knew it all along. Stop bullshitting,” replied the shill, wiping the corner of his mouth with a fingertip.
Feeling began returning to my leg, with such discomfort that I could not have borne the touch of a fly’s wing.
