by Kōbō Abe
“You can either warm it to expand the air or open a hole in the cork with a nail to let air in,” I said. “One or the other.” I shot the girl a warning look, meaning for her to keep quiet, and went on. “In this case, there’s no way to heat it, so the only thing to do is open a hole.”
“I agree.” Sengoku rubbed his injured shoulder, pursed his lips, and smiled. Something in his manner struck me as servile, though perhaps I only imagined it. “Logically you’ve got to achieve a balance with the external air pressure.”
“Let’s see—where’d be the best place to drive in a nail?” The shill studied the area between the toilet bowl and the floor.
“If you drilled seven or eight inches down in the concrete, you’d come out below my foot.”
“Well, of course we can’t do that,” he said unceremoniously. He was smiling—rare for him—but the smile was cruel. “Your leg will heal with proper medicine and care, Captain, but what happens if you wreck this toilet? The ship is nothing without it. How would you ever explain it to Komono? Disposing of the body has got to be our number-one priority.”
“How about inserting a rubber hose between his leg and the toilet wall?” The girl’s voice was animated, but she didn’t sound very confident.
“There’s not enough room. I may be fat, but I’m no water cushion.” Once again my pulse beat a threatening drumbeat in the calf of my leg. The mere thought of some foreign object being stuck between my skin and the pipe made my lungs start to expand with a budding scream.
“Wait—that’s not a bad idea. A narrow pipe of copper or steel just might work,” said Sengoku. He came over and made as if to poke a finger between my leg and the toilet wall. In his enthusiasm he had failed to reckon with the ferocity of a wounded boar. I grabbed his finger and twisted it sharply up. I have no illusions about my strength—but even so I’m close to average compared to Sengoku, whose muscles are like dried fish.
“Cut it out—you’ll break it!” he screamed.
“Apologize,” I said.
“What for?”
“Never mind; just apologize.”
“I’m sorry. Stop hurting me!”
“I’m in a lot more pain than you are.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you’re really sorry, give it to me straight. However it happened, Inototsu here ended up dead, I can see that—but what ground have you got for saying he died in my place? Tell it to me in plain language. Who’s to say you’re not just making up the whole thing?”
“There were graffiti sprayed all over the walls down at the garbage dump by the tangerine grove—‘Attention sausage stuffers: Dead hogs delivered free of charge.’ ” His voice was so feeble that I let go of his hand. After retreating a safe distance, he rubbed the joint with a sullen look. Once again my clumsiness had earned me an enemy.
“What proof is that?” I sniffed.
“It’s obvious who would do a thing like that, isn’t it?” he said.
“In other words, it had to be somebody who lumped you in with the Broom Brigade, Captain.” In an apparent effort to sort out his thoughts, the shill pressed his forehead against his clasped hands, so that he appeared to be gazing through them. “Or maybe they had the idea you were the Brigade’s real leader. So they took out their grudge against them on you.”
“What was that about sausage—say it again, the graffiti,” I said.
“ ‘Attention sausage stuffers: Dead hogs delivered free of charge.’ You could take it as a kind of death threat, couldn’t you?” said Sengoku, smiling slightly.
Still staring at his clasped hands, the shill went on: “Yes, now that I think of it, Komono and I should have marched right in, in plain view. Komono wouldn’t hear of it. Thanks to his line of work, which involves pulling the wool over people’s eyes, he was beside himself with suspicion, determined nobody was going to pull anything over on him. He hardly looks the part, but it turns out his favorite strategy is—what’s it called?—a commando operation. Penetrating deep into enemy territory with a handful of men. It probably comes from an overdose of TV, more than any influence from his SDF days. So there we were—just like some hostage rescue squad. Well, I’m a shill by trade. What could I do but jump in with both feet?
“We stopped the jeep a fair distance away and then walked. After carefully looking the place over, we synchronized our watches and split up. Three minutes later I knocked on the front door. While the enemy’s attention was diverted—I realize thinking of them as the ‘enemy’ was strange, but anyway—Komono sneaked through a back window into enemy headquarters. Assuming everything went according to plan, that is. What really happened I have no way of knowing. Since my knocking on the door was intended to form a diversion, I guess I overdid it a little; in fact, I broke the glass. The next thing I knew, the lights went out—whether because someone turned them off on purpose, scenting danger, or because the power just happened to fail, I don’t know. I do know that at almost the same moment I heard a pistol shot.” He was silent a moment before continuing.
“What do you make of it, Captain?” he said. “I see it as a case of internal strife. On the personal level it’s murder, of course, but if it were two countries involved, it seems to me they’d both be victims, caught in a trap. And the intended victim, after all, was you.”
“Bravo,” said Sengoku. “I could never have summed it up half so well.” The remark was apparently sincere, meant as neither flattery nor sarcasm. That uncomplicated sincerity of his was what I found most amiable about Sengoku. It was something I, who postured like a hedgehog even with the odds all against me, could never imitate.
I said, “But who’s responsible for the graffiti? I haven’t got any idea. Besides, there’s no motive.”
“Cleaning up graffiti could have been part of the Broom Brigade’s work… . Still, that’s a weak motive for murder.” Sengoku swung his injured arm around in big circles, taking deep breaths. “Komono should be back anytime now with the whole story… .”
“Mind if I borrow that steamer?” asked the girl in a low voice. No need to ask what for. No need even to reply. Cradling the steamer, still warm from the heat of my body, she headed for the work hold. My chest burned with a mixture of shame and something akin to happiness. The fever in my leg shot up to the limit. But it appeared the aspirin was working, for the pain was now minimal, and the high dosage of antihistamines had effectively soothed my nerves. Seeing Sengoku strain his ears, I was even able secretly to enjoy an ironic sense of victory.
Then the situation began to change rapidly. From the work hold there emerged a buzzing sound that matched nobody’s anticipation: a sound that no physiological function of hers could possibly produce, however one wrenched the imagination. Had the insect dealer returned through the maze of tunnels? For someone so terrified of dogs, it was certainly possible. Now that he was leader of the Broom Brigade (which I still tended to doubt—it seemed unreal), he would have access to reliable guides.
The girl came rushing back in. In her confusion and agitation, the movements of her legs were totally out of sync with the swaying of her body. She seemed to be trying to tell us something, but she was gasping too hard for the words to come out. Like a signboard torn off in a sharp gust of wind, she flew over to the bottom of the stairs and snatched up the crossbow. Shoulders heaving, she adjusted her panties through her skirt.
“What’s the matter?” We all three said the same thing at once, our words overlapping.
The answer was not long in coming. Restless footsteps strode toward us down the corridor. The steps were quick, light, and squishy; my guess was rubber-soled sneakers. The girl loaded an arrow into her crossbow.
Two young men the shape and complexion of withered sticks bounded into the room and planted themselves side by side in front of the row of storage drums. They looked to be in their late teens. Their forelocks were teased till the hair stood on end; they wore leather jackets, one red and one purple, and baggy pants tied at the ankles. Evidently some sort of
hoodlums.
“Keep out of our way!” yelled one of them, in a hoarse voice that still hadn’t changed. He drew a chain off his belt. Not to be outdone, I screamed back at him and lunged for my Uzi, forgetting about my trapped leg. Apparently mistaking my outburst for a signal to attack, simultaneously they raised their chains, swung them round, and charged. It was a clever plan, calculated to leave the enemy no time to think. In reflex, the girl pulled the trigger of her crossbow. The aluminum arrow scored a direct hit on the ear of the youth in the red jacket, struck the floor, and rebounded with a light, brief reverberation that sounded ominous, in view of the damage just done. The shill quickly loaded the other crossbow, while Red Jacket put a hand to his ear and stared at the moist red blood on his palm. Without another word, the pair turned and sprang up toward the hatch like a couple of jumping rats.
Had it been them all along? I asked myself. All those times I sensed the presence of something, only for it to disappear so fast that I would conclude it had been my imagination, or rats… . Even the shill, just hours ago, had been lured on in chase for the better part of a mile. These hoodlums were certainly capable of spray-painting graffiti on walls. Nor was it hard to imagine them plotting to eliminate me, in order to take over the quarry for themselves. They must have lumped me and Inototsu together in their minds. The shill’s and Sengoku’s statements took on more and more plausibility.
The request Inototsu had made for disposal of a corpse, before he turned into one himself, needed rethinking. My first reaction had been one of simple dismay at the imposition, but perhaps I’d been blind to what was going on. Those teenagers might belong to an army—an army of termites eating holes in the ark. Perhaps unknown to me, the ark was already spongy with holes, end to end. Then, they were no less my enemies than Inototsu had been. Was one of them dead? Or had the request been meant as a reservation for disposal of a future corpse? Sengoku had indicated it might have been either way. In any case, the bellicose attitude of those two young hoodlums indicated that the situation was extremely tense.
They ran along the row of storage drums and up the stairs toward the hatch. The next thing we knew, they stepped on the hidden trap and fell, exactly according to plan. The shill and the girl howled with laughter, clutching their sides—especially her. But with the agility of youth, the hoodlums grabbed the landing railing on the rebound and swung themselves nimbly to the head of the stairs. They lifted the latch and dived down the tunnel. The dogs began to bark. The door swung heavily shut, with a long, loud reverberation.
The girl at last stopped laughing, wiped her eyes, and said, “Didn’t you leave the key in the jeep?”
“You expect me to go out and get it?” said the shill. “Didn’t you hear those dogs?” He cleared his nose and spat.
“I’ve heard those dogs are savage,” said Sengoku, frowning. “Please, let’s have no more deaths.”
“What do you mean?” said the shill. “You people are the ones who wanted to play war games for keeps, aren’t you?” He nodded his head at the blue bundle, adding, “You had great plans for this toilet.”
Sengoku replied in a spiritless voice, “It wasn’t going to be that kind of war.”
“War? What war?” asked the girl. Curiosity made her voice rise and fall like a kitten arching its back.
“The war against those hoodlums,” said the shill smugly, and then looked at Sengoku for confirmation. “Isn’t that right?”
“Who—them?” she said blankly, losing interest. “But there were only two of them, and they took off like jackrabbits… .”
She came over and circled halfway around the toilet, her eyes on my trapped leg. “Look, we’ve got to do something about the captain’s leg,” she announced. “Let’s all think harder.”
“You’re wrong,” retorted Sengoku. “It’s not only those two.”
He was undoubtedly right. There had to be more of them than that. And as for my leg—in the end the only thing to do was to open a hole in the pipe, which I intended to have done; even so, tracking down the youths’ headquarters might still be the quickest way to a solution. They were stowaways, living undetected in some unexplored section of the ark. Which made it quite possible that they knew all about the passageway to the toilet’s lower mechanisms. Very possible indeed. I had had zero success in locating a passageway to the eastern entrance, by Kabuto Bridge—yet from the outside, one was plainly visible. The opening was midway up a cliff facing the Kabuto River, so it had been left unsealed. What better place for them to settle in?
In the old days there had been a road there, used for hauling rock, but during a huge landslip several months before the closing of the quarry, it had been sliced cleanly away, as if by knife. Compressed air had blasted through the maze of tunnels until the entire mountain howled like a wild beast, jerking half the local citizens from sleep. Over the following two weeks, a waterfall appeared and became a major tourist attraction. Removing fallen rocks from the river took over four months. The cause of it all—whether deliberate or the result of a miscalculation—was apparently the irresponsible actions of the quarrying company at the tangerine grove entrance. Ignoring their allotted boundaries, they had tunneled into the neighboring territory, destroying essential walls and pillars on the way. Seen from Kabuto City on the opposite bank, a portion of the tunnel is recognizable under a canopy of ferns and ivy, but the waterstone, which weathers quickly, has faded into an inconspicuous dirt-black. Through a pair of powerful binoculars you can see rubble lying scattered all around like the aftermath of a bombing raid—and mixed in with it, clear signs of human habitation: tin cans, empty cigarette packs, tissue paper stuck to the ground like jellyfish, comic books, and what look like dried, used condoms… .
“There’s definitely more than two,” repeated Sengoku. “And the skirmishing has gone on three full days now. It’s time for a decisive battle—right around tonight.”
“But your leader is dead,” said the girl, holding her nose and shrinking back as if suddenly remembering the body. “Who’s fighting whom? Who were those two guys running away from in such a hurry?”
“The leadership may change, but not the strategy. The old men are very keen on their strategy.” Something in Sengoku’s way of speaking was terribly disturbing. It made me think of a fishing barb wrapped skillfully in bait.
“How ridiculous,” sighed the shill. “Who gives a damn?” He looked from me to the sheeted bundle and back again. “Maybe we should go ahead and call a doctor,” he said.
Sengoku burst into loud, jeering guffaws.
“What’s so funny?” demanded the shill.
“I was just thinking you wouldn’t talk that way if you knew what the war was all about.”
“I’m talking about a doctor.”
“No doctors make house calls at this hour, and you know it.”
“All right, I give up. What is the war about?”
“Oh, you’d be interested, I guarantee. I’d even bet on it.”
“Of course he would,” snapped the girl. Then, reverting to her professional smile, she added more graciously, “After all, that’s his job. His and mine. It has nothing to do with our real feelings. Don’t forget, we’re sakura. Decoys. Shills. Our job is showing interest to attract customers. Anytime we can be of service, just give us a call.”
“I must say I don’t think you have the proper attitude,” said Sengoku, puffing himself up self-importantly. “When some problem arises, you’ve got to try to understand the other fellow’s point of view—isn’t that the basis of communal living? Before I express any doubts to the captain, I always think back on all the sweet-potato cakes of mine he’s bought and try to figure out what went wrong.”
“Bully for you.” The shill sucked in his saliva and clucked his tongue. “Sorry if our line of work offends you.”
“I—I didn’t mean it like that.” Sengoku stumbled over his words as if he’d lost his bearings. “I mean—I’ve worked in election campaigns, and that’s pretty much the same t
hing, isn’t it?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That cleaning up humanity is part of the Broom Brigade’s business. Also that the kids in the Wild Boar Stew gang are real punks, the lowest of the low.”
“The what, did you say? Wild Boar Stew gang?”
“That’s right. Clever, don’t you think? It’s apparently deliberate provocation. Because the men in the Broom Brigade go around puncturing the tires of their cars.”
“Komono isn’t going to go for any war like that,” I argued, rubbing the back of my knee. “No way.” Even if he was a former SDF man, in love with firearms, at heart Komono was a selfish cynic who believed in nothing but quick, sure profits. Nobody in search of everlasting hope could possibly succeed as a showman like him. “Still, you know, if he ever did catch one of them …”
“Don’t forget, Komono’s got a gold-plated badge with three stripes,” said Sengoku.
“Yes,” said the shill, “and he issues commands like the real thing. He’s probably humoring the old men.”
“No, he’s serious, I think,” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” said the shill. “What is there to worry about?”
“I can’t help it.”
“Even granting the Wild Boar Stew gang is the dregs of humanity—absolute scum—there still isn’t much to choose between them and the old men in the Broom Brigade. Anyway, basically I don’t believe in dividing people into trash and nontrash. Evolution taught me that much.” He gave a quick self-deprecating smile, and added, “Garbage is the fertilizer that makes the trees grow.”
