by Kōbō Abe
With the ark in danger of springing a leak, this was no time to loiter. It was essential to go straight below and take defensive steps. But the other two seemed content to stay where they were. After the insect dealer’s ritual assertion of supremacy just now, I could not bring myself to go off and entrust the girl to his keeping. The situation called for deportment worthy of a captain, to make them recognize my leadership. What if I went ahead and gave her bottom a resounding slap myself?
“Anyway, let’s get going,” I said. Taking advantage of the opportunity my words provided, I gave the girl’s bottom a slap that was bold in spirit, if less so in reality. The sound effect was poor, but the tactile impression was richly rewarding—the moist, clingy feel of artificial leather, and a heavy warmth that sank deep into my flesh.
The girl straightened up and turned red. She opened her eyes wide and looked straight at me, whether in fear or embarrassment I could not tell.
“I didn’t know you had it in you,” said the insect dealer, licking his lips, and reaching past the girl to slap my shoulder. He flashed me a secretive, friendly grin in which I could detect no trace of irony or ridicule. Had it been a success? The insect dealer walked ahead, leading the way. Reality returned. It was as if at last the ship’s rudder had begun to work. The day’s events had not been a total waste.
11
AT FIRST GLANCE THE PASSAGEWAY
APPEARS TO BE A MERE CRACK
OR SLIT IN THE SEAM BETWEEN WALLS
At first glance the passageway appears to be a mere crack or slit rising high in the seam between walls. This is because of its enormous height, over fifty feet in all; actually it is wide enough for a small truck to pass through easily. We were dwarfed as we drew near.
About fifteen feet in, it turned to the right, thus blocking off our light source from the first hold. As we moved on in darkness, the floor began rising. Calling a warning to the others, I halted and stared ahead into the blackness. If the shill was there, the light from his lamp should be visible. Those shadows, light and dark, that moved with my eyeballs—were they mere afterimages, within the eye? I could see nothing else. Had he switched off his lantern, hearing our footsteps? Why? I pushed the second button on the switch control panel hanging from my belt, and fluorescent lights spaced evenly along the walls came sputtering to life. The right-hand wall of the passageway continued on to become the south wall of the work hold. The first hold and the central work hold were linked directly by this passage. The cluster of white pipes along the west wall, like a scale-model factory, was a manually operated air-conditioning system.
“Looks like he found the switch,” the insect dealer whispered in my ear. He hadn’t caught on that I was operating a remote-control switch. I saw no reason to relieve him of his misapprehension.
The girl took a step forward and called, cupping her hands, “Come on out. Hide-and-seek’s over.”
“Watch out.” I grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Why, I wondered, was her skin so soft? For a while I let my fingers stay as they were, pressed into her flesh. It was the first such change in mental state I had undergone since the bottom-slapping incident. He who controls the woman controls the group. Leering in my imagination like a movie villain, I strained my eyes to see the stone floor a few steps ahead.
The worst situation possible met my gaze. The flat steel spring lay blocking our way like a railway crossing gate. By rights it should have been fastened to the wall, set so that the moment anything or anyone touched the silkworm gut, suspended in a zigzag just off the floor, the latch would release and the spring would mow down its prey. Someone (possibly the shill) had either seen through the device and dismantled it safely, or else fallen into the trap.
“Is that a trap?” She clung to my arm. A most favorable sign. The sound of urinating … bottom slapping … and now direct contact. At the same time, I found myself still more apprehensive: a sprung trap, and no sign of prey… .
“Yes,” I responded, “but the spring’s been released. Look, the strings on the floor have all gone slack.”
“I’ll be damned. You’re right.” The insect dealer crouched over the steel spring and removed his glasses. “These lenses aren’t right for my eyes—but wait a minute, where’s the victim? If this came down on your leg, you’d sure as hell know it.”
“That’s right; we didn’t hear a scream,” said the girl.
“It didn’t have to be a person, you know. A rat could have set it off easily,” I said.
“Yes, but a rat would get killed, wouldn’t it?” said the insect dealer. “Not only is there no dead rat here; the spring is perfectly clean. There’s not even any hair on it, let alone bloodstains.”
“Then it was a person. Somebody stood back at a safe distance and poked it with the end of a stick, or threw a stone at the string. But to do that you’d have to know before-hand that the trap existed. So it’s impossible.”
“It’s possible,” the girl said flatly. “He’s a master at anticipating people’s moves. Cards, mah-jongg … you name it.”
“Yes, and he’s already been hurt, twice.” The insect dealer put his hands on the small of his back and stretched. “First the staircase, then the fireworks. But, Captain, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the president, does it? Couldn’t it be somebody else, like a spy who sneaked aboard when you weren’t looking?”
There was no point in discussing hypothetical possibilities. The important thing now was to ascertain the shill’s whereabouts.
“Whoever it was, he couldn’t have just melted away. He’s no snowman,” I said, stepping over the steel spring and moving forward.
“He’s terrible, running off like this without a word to anyone,” the girl responded fretfully. The genuine irritation in her voice seemed to rule out any possibility of collusion.
We entered the work hold. It was the same size as the first hold but seemed smaller, as the length and breadth were equal. The ceiling, however, was high, so glancing up, one had an impression of spaciousness. The pillar thrusting upward directly ahead, near the back wall—or in other words along what was an extension of the right wall of this passageway—was exactly twenty-three feet around. The number of pillars, and their girth, were apparently fixed according to ceiling height. Behind the pillar was a tunnel over three feet across and six and a half feet high, easily overlooked because of the old bicycles piled up nearby as camouflage. There were twenty-eight of them, which I planned someday to turn into a foot-powered electric generator. Catty-corner from the pillar—or from where we were, at the far end of the near left-hand wall—gaped the opening of a second passageway. Rusted rails indicated that this had been a main tunnel when the quarry was still in operation. A third opening was near the ceiling, straight ahead on the left, below which a lift—a sort of vertical conveyor belt—was attached. Excavation work customarily proceeds from high to low, so probably in the beginning this was used to transport excavated stone to the surface. When it became apparent that the layer of high-quality rock extended deeper than was anticipated, they must have dug out the main passageway, to raise efficiency.
“What a mountain of rock! Whoever made off with all this must have earned themselves a pile of dough.” As he said this, the insect dealer swung his big head around as if his neck had no vertebrae. “So where do you think our friend went? Where would you look, Captain?”
The lift was over forty feet high—a bit much even for a former Self-Defense Forces member. The secret passage in the shadow of the pillar looked like nothing more than a scrap heap. Our eyes turned as if by agreement to the large tunnel entrance on the left, where the end of the rails could be seen.
“Come on out, will you!” shouted the girl, the echo extending her voice. “You’ve made enough trouble. Just when we were going to eat, too.”
“Remember, he polished off eight of those kamaboko sticks all by himself.” The insect dealer lifted his undershirt and began rubbing dirt off the skin on his side.
“Anyway, let’s hav
e a look.” I led the way down the tunnel. Their footsteps behind me rang out with appalling loudness.
“What’s this jiggledy-joggledy thing?” asked the girl, regarding a seesaw-style pump fastened to the wall along the way.
“It’s a pump hooked up to the ventilation system. It’s set up so that two people working it by hand for four hours a day can purify the air of three holds.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?” The insect dealer wiped his finger on his trousers, and laid a hand on the seat of the upper arm of the seesaw. The pump functioned smoothly, operating on the resistance of air inside six-inch-diameter stainless-steel pipes. “Not bad,” he said admiringly. “Pretty darned clever, in fact.”
“Why doesn’t it run on electricity?” the girl cut in with a dissatisfied air.
“When the time comes to use the system, there’ll be no electricity,” I told her.
“Don’t waste your time explaining,” said the insect dealer. “You can’t talk logic to a woman.” He raised his right arm, bent at the elbow, and hauled back, aiming for the girl’s rear end. She dodged nimbly aside. Kicking the pedal of one of three wheelless bicycles lined up beside the pump, she said boastfully:
“I know what these are. They look like exercise machines, but really they’re generators. Right?”
“Yes. They’re hooked up to car generators. Of course they function as exercise equipment too; lack of exercise is a perennial problem… .”
“One of these would supply about enough electricity for one twelve-watt bulb, and that’s it,” said the insect dealer, and launched a second attack on her backside. There was the sound of a wet towel falling on the floor. He’d scored a direct hit, in the area of the crease in her buttocks. She emitted a scream that was half wail.
“Eventually I intend to convert all those old bikes in that pile over there. With twenty-eight bikes operating at the same time, charging up the car batteries, there would be enough energy to supply an average day’s needs.”
Pretending I was going to activate one to show them, I drew closer to the woman and laid a hand on her myself, not to be outdone. It was not so much a slap as a caress: that prolonged the contact by a good five times. Using her hand on the handlebars as a fulcrum, she swung herself around to the other side, bent forward, and giggled. On the other side, the insect dealer was waiting, palm outstretched. It was a game of handball, her bottom the ball.
“In that case, you have to have a fairly large crew.” He served.
“Not all men, I sincerely hope,” she said, reentering my court.
“Of course not; there’ll be lots and lots of women too… .” Bold now, I took my turn, giving her bottom a good pinch into the bargain.
“That’s enough.” She squatted down, hands covering her posterior. “If the captain and I got on the same seesaw, it would stop moving, wouldn’t it? Please don’t get me wrong… .”
I couldn’t completely fathom what she meant. And yet suddenly my excitement ebbed. She had referred to what bothered me most—the difference in our weights. The insect dealer too seemed to return to himself. Licking the palm of his serving hand with his long tongue, he sighed and glanced up at the ceiling.
“Say,” he said, “isn’t this a terrible waste, all this electricity?”
How like him—a totally practical view. This hold alone had ninety-six fluorescent lights, plus five halogen lights of five hundred watts each. Not only were the ceilings high, but the blue stone walls were dulled by nicks and scratches from the electric saws, reflecting the available light so poorly that in order for the hold to function as a center of operations, extra intensities of illumination were necessary. If an electric bill came, I could never hope to pay it. But it was too soon to show my hand.
There was a sound of water dripping. The girl started up and exclaimed, “What was that?”
Allowing for some variation according to the weather and the time of day, at intervals of once every thirty minutes to three hours a barrage of water drops fell from the ceiling in the first hold onto the row of storage drums. They made a dry, unwatery noise that sounded as if a chair had overturned, or the bottom had burst in a bag of beans. Since it’s impossible to tell what direction the sound is coming from, the imagination swells limitlessly. Without explaining, I turned and headed straight down the second tunnel entrance.
The lights of the operation hold illuminated the rusty rails for another twenty-five feet or so. The lights all shone straight down, so the sheer walls at either side vanished halfway up into darkness, as if stretching all the way to heaven.
“Got some kind of a trap in here too?” asked the insect dealer in an undertone.
“Of course.”
“I’m telling you, he really is very agile.” She too spoke in an undertone.
“This next one is different.” Holding my arms out at shoulder level, I took three steps forward into the dark, guided by the rails, and then slowly I lowered my arms. An alarm bell rang out. The shadow of the insect dealer, which had been following close behind me, suddenly disappeared; he’d tripped on a tie and fallen, crashing into the girl, who let out a scream.
“Quick, turn that damn thing off—it’s bad for my heart.” Seated where he had fallen, the insect dealer covered both ears with his hands.
The left side of the seventh tie from the front. I groped for the switch under the rail, found it, and gave it a flip. The ringing stopped, leaving only a buzz in the ears.
“See what I mean? This one is foolproof.”
“Says who? That’s the same kind of thing they install in banks, right? A burglar alarm using infrared lights. If you look carefully, you can see a red beam in the air, and all you have to do is duck under it.”
“Wouldn’t work. There are three different beams, which get lower as you go. The lowest one is only a foot off the ground. How the hell could anyone duck under that?”
“Where does this lead to?” The girl was crouched down, with a hand cupped behind one ear. “I hear something.”
“It’s a dead end. It used to connect over to the western side of the mountain, just under where the city hall is now, but there was a cave-in, and it became a blind alley. But there are lots of little rooms along the way. It might make a good place to live.”
“There’s a town on top of this mountain, isn’t there?”
“Yes, a big residential district.”
“I hear noises… .”
“It’s not what you think. Inaudible sounds become audible here, amplified as they bounce off the ceilings and walls: winds of different velocities passing by each other, bugs crawling around, drops of water falling, stone cracking… .”
“I don’t care, I’m not going up there.” The insect dealer looked up at the tunnel at the ceiling edge, brushing stone powder off the seat of his pants. “Granted the guy’s reckless and athletic—but doesn’t it seem funny that these lights came on just twenty or thirty seconds before we came in here? In fact, all we did was check out the trap, so maybe it wasn’t even that long. That contraption would be hard to climb, and it must be a good twenty-five feet high.”
“Forty-two, to be exact.”
“No way.”
“Then where do you think he is? There’s nowhere to hide.” The girl thrust out her chin, tilted her head back like radar, and turned around in a full circle. “What’s that smell? It’s stronger than it was before. And it’s definitely not fried squid.”
“I smell it too.” The insect dealer likewise tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “I’ve smelled it somewhere before.”
“It’s the smell of the wind,” I said. “It blows down through that hole in the ceiling.”
“That doesn’t lead to a Chinese restaurant, does it?” she asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I had my own explanation for the odor. But I was not duty-bound to tell them, nor did I think it was at all necessary. “Even fifteen seconds is longer than you think. A woman can do the hundred-yard dash in that leng
th of time.”
The girl started walking straight toward the lift. From around her feet, shadows stretched out in all directions, light and dark, like the spokes of a fan. She put both hands on the bottom of the scaffolding and hung from it, suspending her full weight. “It’s perfectly strong,” she said. “Somebody climb up.”
“Forty-two feet in the air?”
“Well, you had training for a rescue squad, didn’t you?”
“After I left them, I got acrophobia.” The insect dealer spoke glumly, lifting his shirt and scratching his belly. “Captain, how about leveling with us? Is there some reason you don’t want him wandering around in here? Something you don’t want him to find out?”
“No, nothing in particular. It’s just that it turns into a real maze; I haven’t finished surveying it yet. Once I made it all the way to the tangerine grove on the other side of the mountain. I carried a lunch, and it took nearly all day. The inside of the mountain’s full of other, smaller mountains, and valleys, and rivers.”
“Yeah? Any fish?” asked the insect dealer, his forehead wrinkling—a sign of serious interest.
“Not a chance. The only living creatures in there are snakes and beetles and centipedes.”
“Then he won’t make it,” said the girl. “He’s terrified of snakes.” She looked at me and the insect dealer in turn. Was she worried about the shill’s safety after all?
“A bigger problem would be finding the way back,” I said. “I had a heck of a time, believe me. It took me all morning just to get over to the other side, and then coming back I tried to follow the same route and got lost. A compass isn’t worth a damn underground. The going was dangerous and I was hungry, and so tired my knees were knocking. Before I knew it, it was the middle of the night. Frankly, I thought I was done for. You know, like those stories you hear about people who wandered in the wind holes under Mount Fuji and died there without ever finding their way out… .”
