by Kōbō Abe
“So what happened?”
“So there I was, camping out with nothing but a bar of chocolate and what little water came seeping out of the rocks, no sleeping bag—not even a flashlight, since the batteries had given out. I never felt so forlorn in my whole life. But when the sun came up—”
“How could you tell the sun came up?”
“That’s it, you wouldn’t believe it. I’d retraced my steps back to the other side of the mountain—the north entrance, I call it, or the tangerine grove entrance—and spent the whole night there. When I woke up, the morning light was pouring in.”
“That is unbelievable.” The girl’s tone was stinging, but her eyes emanated sympathy. “People’s instincts don’t amount to much, do they?”
“In the dark, your senses are numbed.”
“So,” said the insect dealer, stretching and narrowing his eyes. “You’re saying he’s the only one who’ll suffer; you have nothing in particular to lose if he’s in there. Right? Then who cares—let him go. Let it teach him a lesson.”
“You have a point there,” said the girl, falling in easily with his opinion. For some reason, this sudden switchover seemed entirely natural. “It’s just silly to waste time worrying about him. Last December, when we were at a fair near a ski slope, a truck came sliding down a steep hill. It must have been doing at least forty miles an hour. Right then he was crossing the street, and he slipped and fell in the truck’s path. What do you think happened? After the truck rolled on by, he got up and walked away, not a scratch on him. He’s invulnerable.”
“He is, huh?” I said, thinking, Another six months and he’ll be a goner. I started to say the words but caught myself in time. She didn’t react. Didn’t it seem ironic to her that a man with only six months to live should have such great reflexes that he was “invulnerable”? I was the only one who felt abashed. Inwardly I tendered an apology to the shill. Heroes fated to die untimely deaths have an inescapable air of privilege. I began to think it was high time to drop my unwarranted hostility toward the guy and issue him a special complimentary boarding pass.
The insect dealer gave his belly a couple of resounding slaps. “Let’s eat.”
The girl glanced up at the top of the lift. It still seemed to weigh on her. Never mind if it was a stunt worthy of an acrobat—there did remain the small possibility that he had somehow clambered up to the ceiling. I, however, was more concerned about the shadow behind that far right pillar. Before we ate, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t lurking in there.
“This is a long shot, but I just want to be sure… . Behind those old bikes over there, there’s a small storage space with a trapdoor. This’ll only take a minute.”
The twenty-eight old bicycles piled in a triangular heap between the stone pillar and the wall were a tangled mass of handlebars and wheels that formed an ingenious barrier: not only did they make entry difficult; they kept one from suspecting anything was there. It looked as if nothing but wall was behind them. Light was particularly dim, as if the overseer (me) set no great store by the area. But it was all a trick. Of all the shipboard traps, this one was the most elaborately camouflaged: the entire triangle formed by these tangled old bikes was in fact a door. The “key” was the front wheel on the far right bike. All you had to do was twist the handlebars sharply and pull out the pedal that was embedded in the spokes of the neighboring bike.
“Now it’s unlocked. Mind aligning the wheels of the bikes in the front row?”
A slight pull, and the triangle of all twenty-eight bikes swung around to reveal, alongside the pillar, a gaping wedge-shaped passageway. At the far end lay a section of dirty canvas, roughly six feet by three. In the dim light it looked like something to throw over the bikes, but it was in fact camouflage for a trapdoor, backed with plywood and fastened with hinges.
“Isn’t there some kind of bug that makes a nest like this, covering it over with leaves?” asked the girl.
“I think you mean a fish.”
“No, a bug.”
The construction inside was worthy of the camouflage outside. Just beyond the door was a small room with a low ceiling, just over six and a half feet high. Tunnels had been dug out in three levels—top, middle, and bottom—each leading to yet another small room, all interconnected by irregular narrow stone steps. It was rather as if several playground monsters, the kind whose labyrinthine innards children love to climb around in, had been lined up and joined together.
“This is just a guess,” I said, “but I suspect these were all trial borings. They tried digging in different directions, but the quality of the stone here fell short of their expectations, and so they gave up. All these tunnels are small, and the excavation is rough. But they’re handy for storing materials according to type.”
A largish, high-ceilinged room at the top of the right-hand stairs was where I kept food supplies, sorted by kind. Thirty dozen cans of hardtack. Seventeen cartons packed with eleven-pound vacuum-packed bags of uncooked rice. Two hundred meals’ worth of dried noodles. Assorted dried vegetables. Miso, soy sauce, salt, sugar. Five big cartons of canned foods, including stewed beef, tuna, sardines, and so on. There was also a complete kit for cultivating vegetables by hydroponics, and an assortment of seeds.
On the middle level was a cubbyhole with a complex jumble of irregular undulations, less like a room than a model for a fallen castle. I kept all sorts of supplies there, from hardware to everyday items like razors, soap, toothpaste, as well as medicine, bandages, and other first-aid supplies. There were also rechargeable batteries, light bulbs, solid alcohol for fuel, film, a whetstone, solder and soldering iron, adhesive, assorted fishing line, fire extinguishers … If I didn’t get busy and make a list of everything, I was in danger of losing track of it all myself.
The lowest level was the most comfortable. This was not mere storage space but a real room, with seven chairs, a table, a slide projector, and a screen. The front wall, moreover, was hung with a large rough sketch of the quarry, which I had made two weeks before—too soon to include the results of my latest survey. Still, as a three-color ground plan, it wasn’t too bad.
On the adjacent wall were twenty-eight gas-and-smoke masks; wrench, hammer, crowbar, and other tools that could double as weapons; thirty-five twelve-volt batteries. Along the opposite wall were seven small automatic guns—remodeled toys—along with empty cartridges and boxes of ammunition, raw materials for gunpowder, five crossbows and one hundred and two arrows. In addition, there was a box of sand marked, in large letters, SAND FOR FIRE EXTINGUISHING. Inside the sand there were forty-three leftover sticks of dynamite, which I intended to leave hidden right there for the time being. All I had to do was plant a flag next to the map, and the room would look exactly like one of those underground strategic command headquarters you see in the movies. What sort of flag would look best—the Rising Sun? I have a feeling that’s not it. I’ve never given the matter deep thought, but somehow I have a feeling no flag would look quite right.
“He doesn’t seem to be anywhere in here.” The girl stood in front of the map, studying it with her head tilted sharply sideways, as if she couldn’t tell which way was up. “Although it’s not surprising, with that entrance.”
“You’re well prepared, I’ll grant you that.” The insect dealer ran a finger over the tabletop, then rubbed the accumulated dust on his trousers, twisting his lower lip as he spoke. “Still, isn’t there something a little childish about your taste in furnishings?” Evidently a reference to the model guns. Did he really think they were there just for decoration? Then let him go on thinking so.
“Supposing he went down the ceiling tunnel,” said the girl, her head still sideways as she traced the surface of the map with a finger. “That’s this black line, right?”
“All the parts I explored myself are in black. The red lines are hypothetical, based on a map done by the quarry companies, on file in the city hall. Strange, don’t you think?—they overlap, but there are no actual points of congrue
nce. Probably because everybody ignored the agreement, and went off digging on their own. Small wonder the roof caved in.”
“And the blue lines?”
“The solid ones are canals and waterways, the dotted ones are underground veins of water.”
“By the time you need firearms, it’s always too late.” The insect dealer picked up a crossbow and aimed it at the map. “Those black lines go off the bounds of the map.”
“I’ll add on the rest as the need arises.”
“I’ll bet he’s left the bounds of the map too,” said the insect dealer.
The girl turned around and shrieked, “Stop that! It’s dangerous!”
“No, it isn’t—it’s not loaded.” As he spoke, the insect dealer pointed the weapon directly at her face. “But it feels awful, doesn’t it? Even when you know it’s a joke, it still does. There’s just something about firearms I don’t like. They never settle anything, anyway.”
“Quit preaching; it doesn’t suit you,” I said, adding, “Look, they’re only model guns. And the crossbows are for rodent control.”
The girl came around the table, reached out an arm, and flicked the bowstring. “Can you really shoot rats with one of these?” she asked.
“Sure. If you hit one square, you could knock it dead.” The insect dealer held the bow down with his foot, and slipped the bowstring in place. Deftly he fitted in an aluminum arrow and set up the sight, adjusting for distance before handing it to her. “Go ahead and try it,” he said. “When you look through the hole, the target should be sitting on top of the sight.”
“I don’t know why, but it scares me a little.”
“There’s nothing to it, because it has no kick, unlike gunpowder.” He set an empty cigarette carton lengthwise on the back of a chair some thirteen feet off. “Here’s your target. Don’t make any conscious effort to keep your arm steady. Just relax, take a breath, and hold it.”
There was the snap of the string being released, and—beginner’s luck, of course—a bull’s-eye. The cigarette carton was in pieces, and the arrow, having shot clean through it, ricocheted back off a wall. She twisted and whooped in triumph.
“Wow, I hit it! Is it okay if I borrow this for a while?”
“Sure,” I said. “Those are legal.” My feelings were mixed. In line with the insect dealer’s opinion, my prize stockpile of weapons was beginning to seem terribly juvenile. “Hunting is forbidden, but you can use them for fishing.”
“Where can you fish?” She was holding up the crossbow and aiming through the sight this way and that. “Feels a little heavy. But it seems to have a lot more power than an airgun.”
“The only trouble is, it’s not suited for live combat,” said the insect dealer; unhesitatingly he selected an Uzi sub-machine gun from the gun rack, and gave its barrel a few meaningful pats. “Loading it takes too much time. If you’re conducting a preemptive strike, with plenty of time to aim so your first shot scores, well and good; but in combat, you’d probably be better off with a slingshot. A crossbow is capable of inflicting a mortal wound only if fired at a range of one hundred feet or less, so if your first shot misses you have to fall back on your fists. This Uzi, now, is another story.”
“You seem to know enough about it. Where did you learn all that?” I asked.
“I wasn’t in the Self-Defense Forces for nothing. But, Captain, aren’t you the one who knows a hell of a lot? Your average person wouldn’t think of an Uzi. That’s not used by regulars so much as it is by commandos.”
“Come on, it’s only a toy. While I was watching the news about the Reagan assassination attempt, I noticed the Secret Service men were all using them. I liked the small size and the design, that’s all.”
“Sorry, I don’t buy it. This has been converted into a real gun.” He scraped the rust off the cocking bolt, sniffed the muzzle, and peered at the breechblock, then stuck in a finger and explored the interior. “And I’ll be damned if it hasn’t been test-fired. Some guts. No cracks or other damage, so it must have been a success, too. What is it? Single-loading? Semiauto? Don’t tell me it’s an automatic.”
“Pull out the magazine and have a look. Toy bullets.”
“Give up,” he said. “So you stuck in a couple of blanks for camouflage, and for warning shots. Very smart. But I have news for you—back in your cabin, around that machine, there were metal shavings on the floor. Right? As I said, I didn’t sign up for the SDF for nothing. I always liked guns. I knew right away what you’d been up to.”
Further protest seemed futile. The third shot, and all the rest, were in fact real cartridges, albeit homemade. “You know your way around guns, all right,” I commented.
“Want me to check them out for you?”
I was tempted to take him up on the offer. I had test-fired each one five times with no problems, but I was still uncertain as to how they might hold up in a shoot-out.
“You don’t think much of my arsenal, though, do you?”
“I’m only saying it won’t serve the purpose. It’s certainly interesting. This looks like some special steel, though; about all you can do is reinforce it and make up the difference by adjusting the amount of gunpowder.”
“I can’t do it!” the girl cried. She was sitting on a forty-four-pound keg of active carbon, both feet braced on the crossbow, unable to fit the bowstring into place. “Not enough strength in my back, I guess.”
“I don’t think you can do it bare-handed,” I said. “Afterwards I’ll lend you my leather driving gloves.” I fixed it for her, and grabbing five arrows, she ran up the tunnel stairs.
“Look at her go. You can’t stop her.”
“She’s charming. Makes me feel like getting out my camera for the first time in a long while.”
“Weapons have a way of changing people.”
The insect dealer pulled the trigger on the Uzi, replaced the cocking lever, and held the weapon in his arms. “Captain,” he said, “are you sure you aren’t a misanthrope at heart? You’re too exclusivist.”
Suddenly there was a shout from the work hold. It was the girl.
“Come on out or I’ll shoot!” Perhaps because the high tones were absorbed by the moist, uneven surface of the stone walls, her voice sounded lower than usual; that in turn might have explained the note of urgency in her voice, which seemed to preclude the possibility of a joke. There was a muffled response.
The insect dealer and I raced neck and neck up the stairs. We arrived on the scene just as she was relaxing and lowering the crossbow from her shoulder. The shill was climbing down from the hole in the ceiling. He appeared nimble and surefooted. He turned his head and looked at us with a provocative smile.
12
EVERYBODY’S GOT A FEW
SCARS ON THE SHIN
We all knew this was not a propitious moment for sounding one another out. Round one, a time of mutual sizing up, was over, and now we were about to enter on the decisive round two. The important thing now was to control your breathing, and try to anticipate the others’ moves. Everyone seemed to feel the same way; and so until the beer was opened we observed a careful truce, keeping the sensitive matter of the shill’s expedition firmly off limits.
Supper was instant Chinese noodles topped with chopped green onion, a couple of ham slices, and an egg. To go with the beer, I opened, as promised, a can of sardines. I could have come up with a fancier menu if I’d wanted, but it didn’t seem necessary.
Besides the noodles, we lugged five cans of beer per person up to the bridge. I sat in the chair by the stairs, the insect dealer sat on the parapet, and the shill and the girl sat at either end of the chaise longue; this had the drawback of being so low that their chins barely reached the tabletop, but it had the compensating advantage of greater comfort.
The insect dealer downed his first beer in one gulp. The shill, having taken charge of the crate of beer, promptly tossed him another, over the table, and then picked up the loaded crossbow from the girl’s feet.
“Komono,” he said, “mind setting your empty can over there? I want to try a little target practice. Let’s see, now, where’s the safety catch on this?”
The girl put her chin on the shill’s shoulder and removed the pin at the base of the trigger for him. Even assuming there was something between them, her manner was far too intimate for so public a setting. Was she a born flirt, or just an innocent? Dogs that fawn on everyone appeal only to children.
“Knock it off, you two.” Even as he set up the can on one end of the parapet in compliance with the shill’s request, the insect dealer spoke in a disgusted tone of voice. “Hurry up and eat, or your noodles will get cold.”
The shill pulled the trigger. The can appeared to sway slightly, but he had missed. In the distance we heard the arrow ricochet.
“Some marksman!” The girl laughed and stole a glance at me. “Why, I could hit a pack of cigarettes straight on, bang.”
