The Ruined Map

by Kōbō Abe

  “If that were the case, I’d have to be the first to die,” she said, her tone of voice suddenly normal again as she tossed back her remark. “Do you want to try on my husband’s shirt? I hope it fits you.”

  “But I’ve lost my job on account of him. The chief’s got an extreme case of police phobia. If there’s any possibility at all of getting involved in complications, it means dismissal. What about it … will you let me go on with the investigation for the remaining two days plus, even though I’ve lost my status?”

  “Maybe it’s my fault.”

  “You changed the front curtains, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve put on some coffee. Yes, let me think, it must have been the day before yesterday … the day of my brother’s funeral. That’s right, it was right after your visit. The coffee stain just wouldn’t come out. Then I sent them to the cleaners. I was talking to someone who absolutely had to have a cup of coffee. I prepared it all right, but as I was carrying it out, he suddenly tickled me from behind …”

  Suddenly I felt a rising nausea. A violent pain radiated from my eyes, reverberating against the back of my skull, focusing at the back of my neck, knotting my throat.

  “Was this fellow another dream about your husband?”

  “Yes, I guess so. I guess it was, when I think about the tickling.”

  “I liked the others … the lemon-yellow ones better, you know.”

  “They’ll be back in two or three days.”

  “I have fifty-eight hours to go. A whole two days and ten hours … until the investigation contract expires … it said a week, but with Sunday out, it comes to six days.”

  “I’ll go out to work. I’m worrying about expenses.”

  The nausea was growing worse. My stomach was as heavy as lead and I was chilled.

  “There are apparently some eighty thousand taxi drivers in Tokyo alone. There are about four hundred companies, but if you include the independents, there may be more than a thousand. Even if I want to visit taxi companies every day, at the rate of five per day, you can see how long it would take to cover them all.”

  “Do you feel bad?”

  “A little, yes.”

  “Then you’d better lie down …”

  The pain in my head and the nausea had reduced my vision, and all my senses concentrated shamelessly on her small hand that lay on my arm, as if that were the cosmic axis. I leaned forward, desperately fighting down the vomiting that threatened to erupt at any moment. For the first time I passed through the door to her room. I saw the white bed still rumpled from her sleeping … and the depression she had left in the sheet. I could clearly catch her scent despite my stuffy nose. The depression she had left lay away from the center, slightly toward the wall … a vessel for my sleep … the purple membrane between a frog’s spread toes.

  “Sorry. Anyway, the map I drew was too simple compared to the actual town.”

  “It’s not good to be talking when you’re nauseous. There are still thirty-four hours to go.”

  She sat down at the foot of the bed, staring at me intently from some place I could not see. Was she really looking at me? I wondered. Or, like the guest she had had to coffee, was I being made to join the phantoms who played the foil to her monologues with herself?

  For whom does it beat … this enormous heart of the city that goes on pulsating, not knowing for whom? I changed my position and looked for her, but she was no place to be seen. If that were the case, where in heaven’s name was I, looked at by that nonexistent her?

  “What time is it now?”

  “After five.”

  Suddenly the floor lamp at the bedside was lit and she was standing in front of me. The quilted pajamas had changed into a soft yellow kimono; the hair net had vanished and long tresses cascaded across her shoulders.

  “Five after what?”

  “Just about five minutes ago the contract expired.”

  “What?” Taken by surprise, I rose up in bed. “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t get upset.” She glanced over her shoulder, and taking three or four steps, stopped in the middle of the room. “I go to work from tomorrow on.”

  Her faint freckles spilled from her face just before she looked around, leaving a delicate taste on my lips. An unrecognized recollection pressed hard on my chest. How did I know so well that she had been doing something before she had turned on the light? Now her gaze followed the wall beside my bed to the waist-high window immediately beside the mirror stand … the chestnut-colored curtains with a white-dotted crystal pattern.

  “What were you looking at?”

  “A window.”

  “No, no. I mean what were you looking at through the window?”

  “Windows … lots of windows. One by one the lights are going off. That’s the only instant you really know somebody’s there.”

  “Well then, it must be evening already.”

  “Five after.”

  “Has it been as long as that?”

  “No. I’m going to bed now.”

  She shook her head, exposing the nape of her neck, and slowly swung her long hair in great arcs, to the right and to the left. Through the kimono the flesh of her hips and the two supporting columns could be distinctly seen twisting and turning. I quietly slipped my body to the edge of the bed and placed my left foot on the floor. Leaning my whole weight upon it, I left the bed. I took a step forward, and stretching out both hands, I thrust them under her arms and suddenly tickled her hard. Giving a short cry, she wrenched free of me and made as if to escape. But she went neither for the door nor for the window—she came directly at me. We crashed together and fell onto the bed. In my eyes faint brown freckles smiled … and the beautiful purple membrane was stretched taut. The depression she had left in the bed … the vessel for my sleep.

  A wardrobe stood on the other side of the bed. It had large, burnished, light metal fixtures; the surface was painted a smooth dark-brown teak color, and it reflected like a mirror anything within two yards. Somewhere—perhaps in the kitchen—she was humming in a low voice. Since I could hear only the higher tones, I could not tell what the song was. I put on my coat and began walking … and she too began to walk … when she crossed in front of the lemon-yellow curtains, her face became black, her hair white, and her lips white too, the irises of her eyes became white and the whites black, her freckles became white spots, white like dust that has gathered on the cheekbones of a stone image. I began to walk too … Muffling my footsteps, I began to walk in the direction of the door.

  I SLOWLY came to a halt there. I stopped as if pushed back by the spring of the air. The weight which I had shifted from the ball of my left foot to the heel of my right flowed back again and came down heavily on my left leg. The slope of the road was steep.

  The surface of the street was not asphalt but a rough-textured concrete with narrow grooves about five inches apart, apparently to prevent slipping. But they did not look as though they would be much help to pedestrians. The purposely rough concrete surface was covered with dust and tire shavings, and on rainy days, even if one wore old rubber-soled shoes, it would surely make for difficult walking. No doubt the pavement was made in this way for cars. If so, the grooves every five inches would be very effective. When the drainage of the street was obstructed by melting snow and sleet, they looked as though they would be useful in channeling the water into the gutters.

  Yet there were few cars, despite the care taken to build such a road. Since there were no sidewalks, four or five women carrying shopping baskets had spread out over the width of the street and were walking along completely absorbed in their chattering. A young boy perched on a roller skate and imitating a horn came sliding down the middle of the slope. Hastily I gave way to him, for I too had naturally been walking down the middle of the street.

  I slowly came to a halt there. I stopped as if pushed back by the spring of the air. The weight which I had shifted from the ball of my left foot to the heel of my right flowed back again and cam
e down heavily on my left leg.

  On the left-hand side was a high protective wall where rocks were piled up on a slight incline. To the right, beyond a little ditch, rose an almost perpendicular cliff. Its surface was screened by a similar protective wall, but from there the road made a wide curve to the left and soon came to the plateau at the top of the slope. If one advanced five or six more paces, the view would suddenly open up and the town on the plateau would be visible. There was no room for doubt. It was a road I was so used to taking that I passed by quite oblivious to its very existence as long as nothing drew my attention. The road had become completely familiar after how many hundreds of times I had been over it. Now I was going over it as usual … and I was returning to my own house.

  Unexpectedly I came to a halt. I paused as if forced back by the spring of the air. I halted, in spite of myself recoiling at the strangely clear impression I had of the sloping road that I usually took no notice of. The reason for my stopping was clear, of course, to me alone, but it was hard to believe. Why, no matter how I tried, could I not remember the scene that must lie beyond the curve just ahead, the scene which I must know by sight as well as I did this stretch of road now before my eyes?

  It was not yet anything to make me feel uneasy, though. When I thought about it, I had the feeling that I had many times before experienced similar lapses of memory. I would wait a minute. I had had the experience of having my eyes go out of focus and of losing my sense of distance as I gazed at a wall covered with small square tiles. Nor was it especially strange for me suddenly to forget, for no reason at all, the name of an acquaintance. I put my left heel on the ground, steadying myself; it should not take too long and I would wait until the focus was right. For I was certain that beyond the curve lay the plateau with its town, and in it my house. Although I could not remember it, its existence was an indisputable fact.

  The sky was covered over with a thin smooth blanket of blue-gray cloud, typical of the season, making the time—4:28 by my watch—an ambiguous early evening. The street was light enough for me to be able to make out the five-inch-spaced grooves, yet not light enough to cast shadows. On the protective wall to the left—doubtless due to its material—the moss, mottled with dampness, was rapidly absorbing the darkness, changing the surface into a mass of shadow. At the top of the wall a vague, weathered line diagonally blocked my view; only there was the sky suddenly bright. It was, of course, impossible for me to see what lay beyond, but, if I remembered rightly, there were only three small wooden houses and a building surrounded by clumps of trees that seemed to be an inn or a lodging house, forming a cluster half way up the slope. Another road led away from the foot of the slope, and as I had seldom been there it was not surprising that my memories of it were somewhat hazy. I wanted to pin my hopes on the fact that such contours of memory, vague as they might be, had been preserved. If the scene before my eyes was not opening up some avenue to the past, such memories would never have arisen. Actually, if I was imagining I recognized a completely unknown place, shouldn’t all the worlds outside my vision completely disappear? But it was only the town on the plateau beyond the curve that had vanished.

  The low ground at the foot of the cliff on the north side—ha! I could even give the direction, though I couldn’t ascertain the position of the sun—was already well known to me. At this point a row of houses lay below, and I could see only a labyrinth of vegetable plots formed by the roofs of thatch and tile, a forest of antennae absorbing electric waves, and the chimney of a public bath, standing almost as high as the stone wall in front of me. But I was confident that I could faithfully follow in my memory the entire stretch of road that led to the public bath at the end, in the middle of the labyrinth. The street that the old men, smoking their cigarettes, sitting in front of the bath, waiting to be first in, used to like to walk down … the street where after three o’clock, women would hurry along, wash basins in hand. And the roundabout way by the edge of the cliff where the little trucks carrying fuel came and went. I seem to recall that once the broken handles and frames of placards had grown to a large pile by the side of the road.

  Shifting my weight, I tried to reduce my breathing little by little. As I reduced it an uneasiness gradually welled up within me. Or was it perhaps that my breathing slowed down because the uneasiness had come welling up? Far from coming into focus, the town on the plateau beyond the curve became more and more of a blank as if continually erased by some supereraser. The color vanished … the contours, the forms vanished, and ultimately its very existence seemed to be negated. A sound of someone walking up the slope drew closer. An office-worker type passed me, carrying a document case under his left arm and an umbrella in his right. He was leaning forward, walking on the balls of his feet, and with each step he swung the handle of his umbrella forward. Apparently the snap was broken, for the folds of the umbrella opened and closed quite as if it were breathing. Of course, I did not have the courage to address him, but for an instant I felt inclined to follow him. Perhaps it was best to forge ahead unfalteringly like that. In any event, I should be able to see beyond the curve in five or six more steps. If I could make certain the reality of the scene with my own eyes, I felt that things would resolve themselves quite simply, as easily as flushing down with water a pill that has stuck in one’s throat. Now the man was just rounding the curve. His figure disappeared, but I could hear no scream. Perhaps the town on the plateau existed, as the man was convinced it did. What he could do should not be impossible for me. Anyway, it was a question of a bare five or six steps, and a loss of scarcely ten seconds of time. It was not worth considering that it might come to nothing.

  But was it really not worth considering? If I went ahead without waiting for my memory to return, and if by chance the scene turned out to be one I didn’t know, how would I bring things under control? Even this scenery on the slope, which I thought I knew so thoroughly, might suddenly be transposed into an unknown world for me. There was the possibility. Perhaps the row of houses midway up the slope was merely an imaginative collage, and even the memory of the labyrinth at the foot of the cliff could be called a very ordinary association of ideas coming from the chimney of the public bath. I suppose I could easily infer from the way the slightly dirty moss was growing, extending its oozing domain from the protective wall to the concrete pavement, that this was the northern side of the slope.

  In the final analysis, supposing this sensation of familiarity was actually not really memory, supposing it was merely the false sense of déjà-vu disguised as memory, then even my conclusion that I was now on my way home became similarly merely a pretext for rationalizing this feeling of déjà-vu. If that were true, my very self would be open to doubt, something I could not call me.

  Unable to hold my breath longer, I let it out. Passing by the man with the umbrella who had overtaken me, a young girl in a long green jacket went hurrying down the slope with a springy step, jingling the coins in the purse which she clutched in her hand. As if by sleight of hand, someone was constantly vanishing beyond the town that was out of sight, and appearing from it. Using the fact that I had come to a halt as an excuse, I took out a cigarette and put it between my lips, fussing purposelessly and interminably over striking my match. I would have been glad if some acquaintance had chanced by. But supposing, as with the town on the plateau, even faces which I should know by sight were to change into unknown strangers, what then?

  Nausea rose in my gorge. Perhaps it was because I had strained my eyes, trying to force myself to see something invisible. In addition to the nausea, I was dizzy. Whatever, I had been hesitating much too long. If I did not have the courage to round the curve, I would have to resolve to act differently. The instant I began to change directions, a comical blast on a horn sounded behind me. A dented three-wheeled truck loaded with vegetables was coming up the hill, sending up a cloud of white exhaust. But was it an illusion? I wondered. I tried to avoid it by moving toward the protective wall, and from one instant to the next th
e three-wheeler was nowhere to be seen. But that was not the only thing to vanish. The forms of people instantly were suspended and the surroundings were completely depopulated. I was overcome by an unbearable sense of loneliness. I was wretched, as if I had had ink eradicator poured over me, and I rushed full speed down the road I had just come along. However, the abrupt slope was much harder to go down than to climb up. The smooth concrete paving gave poor footing and the antislip grooves were almost useless for pedestrians. I had to keep my balance by knee action. The protective wall, which had shifted now to my right, gradually grew higher, and the street lights were lit at the point where the slope leveled off. A sign with the name of the town, white letters on a blue ground, was nailed to a lamp pole. I felt it was the name I had expected, but the self-confidence I had experienced before was gone.

  SUDDENLY the road broadened out and led into a main thoroughfare with sidewalks. The lights at the foot of the slope were on, but scarcely ten yards from there the streets were still light. Yet in whatever direction I looked, it was deserted, and I was overcome by an unspeak able terror. It was as if I were trapped in a landscape where the painter had forgotten to put in the people. And since there were no people, naturally no cars were to be seen. All the same, there were signs of living beings right over there. For instance, the smoking butt of a cigarette lay by the edge of the sidewalk. From the length of the ash, it gave the impression of having been tossed away a few seconds before.

  First I began running to the right. I could see the entrance to a subway and felt that the main part of town lay in that direction. Surely the intersection with its traffic light would seem to be the center; there were also an insurance building, a bookstore, and some small food shops. In every one the door was open and the goods spread out in apparent expectancy of customers, but neither customers nor clerks were to be seen. The traffic signal changed from green to yellow, from yellow to red, and from red back again to green, but there were neither moving cars nor stopped cars. However, the smell of exhaust gas in the air was almost the same as usual. Apparently people and cars had vanished but an instant before.