by Kōbō Abe
The woman again returned to her stool and crossed her legs. The heel of the shoe on the upper foot was half off and the roundness of her ankle was more provocative. I lowered my eyes. Well, I would attempt some final challenge with these two clues. The badge with its slightly raised center was an equilateral triangle with rounded corners, and a border of silver lay on a blue cloisonné ground. In the center, in high relief, was an S, similarly of silver. It was a deformed character made up of straight lines, and at first glance seemed to be a flash of lightning. Or perhaps it was not an S, but had been lightning to start with. If it were a lightning flash I assumed it must have something to do with electricity, but for the present I had no clue. Yet I couldn’t go through the telephone book from the beginning for the name of a company that began with S, and I was quite at a loss what to do. But from the way it was made, it didn’t seem to be a child’s plaything, and I imagined it had a meaning of its own. As I looked at it intently, I began to have the feeling that it was the badge of some dangerous secret society. But except for the anxiety it produced in me, I had no idea what it might be. After all, it was only something that made me aware that I could not carry it in my hand.
The scrap of note paper was mystifying to me, and the result was the same as for the badge. It bore something like a map, and there were what seemed to be designs for water or gas conduits, and something like the cross section of a pump—they could be almost anything, according to how you looked at them. In the corner were seven finely written numerals … perhaps a telephone number. Naturally I had no memory of having written them myself, nor any recollection of having been given them by anybody. These figures were impossibly vexing as if one were presented with an unanswerable question. But what about actually trying to get the number on the telephone? Using it as an avenue to my past, I might be able to call back my memory.
The phone was in the corner next to the cash register. The woman’s stool was right behind. Even when I passed in front of her, she scarcely changed her position. The knee that was sticking out was about to graze my arm, but she gave no indication of trying to avoid me. She pursed her lips, compressing the air in her mouth, and when she released them made a faint sound like a kiss. It was like a greeting, but if so, it was a very dangerous one. If not, I had no idea what it could be.
But when I picked up the receiver, an uneasiness welled up within me. I had the impression I was undertaking to disassemble a bomb, the technique of which I was unfamiliar with. Perhaps I was jumping right into a waiting trap. Slowly, checking the number, I dialed. How should I start talking if there was an answer? The most important thing was not to let the other person become suspicious. Somehow I would have to prolong the conversation and find out the person’s identity and address. No good … I was getting the busy signal. I tried redialing, but the line was really busy. I let a little time go by as I smoked a cigarette and continued dialing, about seven times in all over a period of close to twenty minutes, but each time the same sharp busy signal sounded again.
Absently I shifted my gaze; the woman was intently biting on her thumbnail. The red-lacquered nail was like a peach stone. Her lips moved mincingly. The end of the nail was inserted between her two lips and was being gnawed by the upper and lower teeth. She had completely lost herself in the act of gnawing. Since it meant she had forgotten herself, she had surely forgotten about me too. I was suddenly uneasy. If she had completely forgotten, would not the street then return to its deserted state? I must make her stop at once. In order to bring her back from her absent-minded state, I placed my bill on the counter. As if surprised, the woman ceased biting her nail, concealing in her fist the ragged and scratched tip of her thumb.
Saying nothing, I gave her the thousand-yen note, and she returned my change in silence. She did not speak, but three times she made the sound with her lips she had made before. I had no idea whether there was any meaning to it or not. Yet for an instant I waited, expecting her to speak. She smiled as if in apology, and I was embarrassed. The freckles on her cheeks suited the smile. Even if she smiled at me again, I could do nothing about it. There must be words before the smile. I was made aware that I was the one who had confused the order, like it or not. Furthermore, I had already received my change and there was no reason for me to stay here any longer.
I HAILED a taxi. It was a dark-blue one with only the top painted yellow. The automatic door closed, screeching as if it were on the point of disintegrating. In the ashtray that had been left open the preceding customer’s cigarette was still smoking. I was some time in telling the young driver my destination, and he furiously tore off his regulation cap and slammed it down on the seat beside him. I gave him five hundred yen and asked him to take the direction I indicated, since it really was quite close. At once his attitude changed, but he did not put his hat on again.
“Say, just what’s the name of the place at the top of the slope?”
“You mean High Town?”
“Yes. I suppose they call it that because it’s up on a plateau.”
The street was choked with light. It seethed up in the final animation of the day. But for some reason I did not feel it to be essentially different from the deserted scene of a while ago. I now no longer understood why I had been so frightened by that deserted view. If the same situation by chance happened again, I would not be upset. Supposing that, in place of people and cars, crowds of emus and giant anteaters began walking around, I would accept that as factual and simply try and understand.
At length, the slope … but the taxi neither slowed down nor stopped. Suddenly the sound of the motor changed, making my blood run cold, but the driver had just shifted into a lower gear without losing speed and now was circling in the direction of the curve. I pressed my feet on the floor and my body against the back of the seat. I held my breath, waiting to see the actual form of the town that had run away.
I was not thrown into a vacuum. Far from a vacuum, it was an immense housing development as far as I could see that stretched away before me. The groups of four-storied residences, although they were on high ground, had sunk to the bottom of a dark ravine, unfolding an orderly fretwork of light. I had not dreamt that such a view would appear. The very fact that I had not posed a problem. Spatially there was no doubt that the town existed, but temporally it was the same as a vacuum. Although it did exist, how frightening it was to say that it did not. The four wheels of the car were certainly turning on the ground and there was no doubt that I was experiencing vibrations. Nevertheless, my town had vanished. I should perhaps never have gone beyond the curve. Now it would forever be impossible for me to go beyond it. White perspective of street lights. Crowds of people hurrying home, becoming transparent with every step. I screamed at the driver who had begun to slow down as if to make some inquiry: Turn back, quick! Get out of this development as quick as you can! I had to get to a place where freedom of space was secure. If it had anything to do with a place like this, I would lose even space, to say nothing of time. I would be plastered into the wall of reality, exactly like the white hand in the restaurant.
Fortunately the other world was safe. It was perhaps well that I had chosen this taxi, a vehicle for anyone’s use. We came out on a main street and I got out of the car in front of the first public telephone. I had only one clue left now: the telephone number underneath the map. If I were not careful I might well have an experience like the treatment I had received beyond the curve a while ago. I picked up the receiver and inserted a ten-yen piece. I dialed, and this time the line was free and I could hear the bell ringing. I was flustered. Evidently I had been off my guard, assuming the line would be busy. Maybe I’d best put the receiver back. Even if there was an answer, in my present psychological state I could not possibly go through with it. I began counting the cracks in the booth window, which had begun to deteriorate. If there were an even number I would hold on, if an odd number I would hang up. But before I had finished counting, the ten-yen piece fell through and a voice answered.
/> It was a woman’s voice, strangely clear, as if she were around the corner. At once a glib lie came mechanically to my lips.
“Excuse me, but I’ve found a purse. There was a piece of paper in it with this number on it. I called, thinking it might by chance be yours …”
The response was more than I expected. Suddenly the woman broke out laughing.
“What? It’s you, isn’t it?” she said guilelessly and smoothly in a low, throaty voice. “What were you saying?”
“Do you know me … who I am …? Someone …”
“Don’t go on with that ridiculous joke.”
“I want you to help me,” I pleaded, concentrating all my thoughts. “I’m in the telephone booth at the foot of the slope that leads to High Town. Please. Come and get me here.”
“You’re terrible … at this hour! Are you tight?”
“Please! I’m sick. Please. Won’t you do something?”
“You’re impossible. Well … wait there where you are. Don’t move. I’ll be right down.”
Replacing the receiver, I squatted down right there where I was in the telephone booth. A rolled-up newspaper lay in the corner; the dried black tip of a turd of human excrement peeped out from underneath. The tip was tapered, and there were ropelike depressions in it. In the depressions some vegetable fibers, like the tufts of a rough painter’s brush, stood out. There was no particular smell, but without thinking I rose. The cracks, like those on the shell of a broken boiled egg, which covered the tapering head end, frightened me. This was excrement that had stood for a long time. The man must have held it back until he had had to go in the telephone booth … it was probably a man … it might have been a woman … but it was probably a man. Some lonely man denied the use even of one of the innumerable toilets in the limitless labyrinth of the city. When I imagined the figure of the man crouching over in the telephone booth, I was stricken with a feeling of dread.
Of course, it didn’t necessarily mean that the man was someone who, like me, had lost a place to go. Perhaps he was a simple vagrant who did not even realize he had lost anything. But there wasn’t much difference between the two. A doctor would be inclined to insist that I had lost my memory, not something beyond the curve. Who would believe such a statement? There was no reason why any normal man would know about a place other than the one he was acquainted with. It was the same with anyone, enclosed like me, in his small, familiar world. Yes, the triangle formed by the place just before the curve, the entrance to the subway, and the coffee shop was a small one. It was too small. But when you expanded the triangle ten times, what then? What would the difference be if you blew the triangle up into a decagon?
Supposing I were to realize that this decagon was not a map to endless infinity. Suppose the savior who would come in response to my urgent call was a messenger from outside the map, who would make me realize that my chart was nothing more than an abbreviated map, full of omissions … then that person would again look beyond the curve which although existing was nonexistent. The telephone cord could also be a noose for hanging oneself.
I slammed the booth door, but just before it closed the force of the spring failed and a crack about one inch wide was left. There were many passers-by, but no one to whom I could speak. Apparently my rescuer had not yet arrived. People hurrying along the street, smiling to themselves. One, a young pregnant woman, was twisting her body, pushing her way through the waves of people, concerned about the drops of water from the frozen fish in her shopping basket. The only person who glanced at me was a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old with a bad complexion. He stepped half way into the booth and with an experienced movement threw something in; then he disappeared into the crowd. Perhaps it was a call-girl’s card or something like that.
A slight opening appeared in the stream of cars. I at once made a dash for the other side of the street. Directly opposite the telephone booth were some plane trees along the street. The rough bark made one think they were quite old, but they were not big enough to hide behind. About five or six paces from the subway was a black opening like some decayed tooth … a narrow alleyway between a small shoe store and a liquor store that doubled as a tobacconist’s. I casually walked over and nonchalantly concealed myself in the alley. Turning eagerly toward my objective, I intently fixed my eyes on the booth, looking through the ceaseless flow of cars. At last a woman appeared. I at once realized it was she, for no one else had passed in that fashion. She stood there looking into the booth and around it. She was the one … the woman from the coffee house who had sat with her knees crossed on the stool, her long hair falling over her shoulders. I was half disappointed, but I also felt it was right. She went down the street as far as the red fire alarm box and again returned to the booth and looked in. She looked uneasily around and went and stood by the fire hydrant. Once she glanced over toward me, but she could probably make out nothing in this narrow, dark crevice. I continued to conceal myself as I watched her. She looked up worriedly at the sky, searching. I continued to wait intently, choking back my screams behind clenched teeth. Nothing would be served by being found. What I needed now was a world I myself had chosen. It had to be my own world, which I had chosen by my own free will. She searched; I hid. At length she began walking slowly away as if she had given up; suddenly she was cut off from view by a car and was already gone. I too left my crevice in the darkness and began walking in the opposite direction. I began walking, relying on a map I did not comprehend. I began walking in the opposite direction from her … perhaps in order to reach her.
I would forget looking for a way to the past. I had had enough of calling telephone numbers on hand-written memos. There was a strange eddy in the stream of cars. I saw that even the passing heavy trucks were trying to avoid the body of a cat that had been run over and crushed as thin as a sheet of paper. And when, unconsciously, I tried to give a name to the flattened cat, for the first time in a long time an extravagant smile melted my cheeks and spread over my face.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
E. Dale Saunders, translator of Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes (1964) and The Face of Another (1966), received his A.B. from Western Reserve University (1941), his M.A. from Harvard University (1948), and his Ph.D. from the University of Paris (1952). He is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, having previously taught at International Christian University, Tokyo, and at Harvard. Among his publications are Mudra: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture (1960) and Buddhism in Japan (1964).
