The Box Man

by Kōbō Abe

  Immediately inside the door was a spacious music room with a piano. He saw the sound-absorbent wood dotted with holes that gave him an itchy sensation just looking at it. On the floor lay a green carpet. At the same time as he closed the door behind him another inner door opened, and the lady instructor entered. Behind her came the sound of flushing water. She had evidently finished urinating after he had been discovered. In a corner of his conscience her white buttocks projecting into the toilet bowl overlapped with the swirl of the flushing. Since he could not raise his face he experienced an oppression as if he were face to face with her naked buttocks.

  “I’ll lock the door,” she said, going around in back of him, and there was the sound of a key turning over.

  “You’re not ashamed, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Your voice is beginning to change. What you did is natural, I suppose, but I hate dirty acts. You are probably ashamed, but I am a lot more. To the extent you’re embarrassed you make me feel embarrassed too. What are we to do? If I gloss it over, you’ll just repeat the same thing.…”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “I wonder.”

  “I really won’t.”

  “But even so, I can’t very well let you go completely unpunished, can I. I think it would be best to make you experience the same feelings that you caused me.”

  The lady teacher turned to the piano and suddenly began to let her fingers run over the keyboard. It was a section of the piece she habitually played last of all. It was splendid, like piled marbles, quite different from the sound audible through the wall. It was like a silken flag softly streaming in the breeze. Increasingly D thought himself wretched and dirty, and finally he was unable to stop the overflow of tears.

  “What do you think of this piece?”

  “Oh, I like it.”

  “Do you really?”

  “I like it very much.”

  “Do you know who the composer was?”

  “No.”

  “It was Chopin. Wonderful, marvelous Chopin.” Suddenly she stopped playing the piano and stood up. “Well, then, take off your clothes. Strip naked. I’ll go in the other room.”

  D did not at once take in what she had said. Even when the lady teacher had withdrawn, he simply remained standing absently for some time.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you so slow?” came her voice from the other side of the door. “I’m looking at you right now through the keyhole. If you really think you embarrassed me, you can surely do what I ask.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “But I told you! Take off your clothes. Since you put me in exactly the same position, no excuses now.”

  “Won’t you forgive me?”

  “Certainly not. Would it be better if I reported it to your father or your mother?”

  D was defeated. His stomach sank to his bladder, and his chest seemed to become hollow. He didn’t particularly dislike getting naked. Concerning that point, in his own way he assumed that they would come to a mutual understanding. But he was not at all self-confident. If he were to strip, like it or not, he was sure to get an erection. Would the lady instructor ever pardon his reacting like that? he wondered. It was unbelievable that she would. She would get angry and this time would certainly not overlook his offense. Or if not that, she would hold her sides with laughter. Whichever, he was too miserable. Since he realized that he was so wretched, he wondered if his erection would not go down a bit. But it wouldn’t work. Just by thinking of being naked he had already started to get a hard-on. Even while he was being laughed at, his erection would keep on growing.

  He resigned himself. Braving his own ugliness, he took off his coat, stripped away his shirt, and lowering his trousers, he was stark naked. He was firmly erect. Yet there was no reaction. Beyond the door everything remained perfectly quiet. It was not simply that there was no sound, but a hush like some substance was cowering there. Her gaze, turning into black light, came piercing through the keyhole. From his field of vision the color vanished and there was only chiaroscuro. Sensation vanished from the soles of his feet. As he tottered along he began to pass water. It was not urine, but a seminal emission. He could not stop himself once he had started. He fell on his knees, and covering his face with his hands, he pretended to cry. There were, of course, no tears. In an instant his viscera dried up like a beach at dawn.

  “Do you understand now?” Her voice on the other side of the door was dry too. He nodded. Indeed, he understood very well. He understood profoundly, more than his nod to her indicated, more than he himself realized.

  “You had better go home now.”

  The inner door opened a crack, and the key to the front door that came flying in fell soundlessly to the floor. It was a door he could have opened without a key from the inside.

  • • •

  The door of the hospital that I finally reached is locked, and a card announcing that there are no examinations today has been hung out. In the back the friendly dog sniffs hoarsely through its nose. I ring the bell. Being impatient, I push on it without letting up. There is an indication that someone is coming. Suddenly the door is flung open, and the girl with wide-open arms hastily invites me in. She walks away toward the inside as she says something quickly. I do not really catch what she says, but apparently she is grumbling to herself, mistaking me for the fake box man (or the fake doctor). The best thing is to correct this sort of misapprehension at once. Coughing, I begin to explain.

  “I’m not the doctor. I’m the real thing … the genuine article. The former photographer who was waiting under the bridge last night.…”

  With parted lips she quickly scrutinizes me from top to toe. Her expression is vague with surprise.

  “I’m in a quandary,” she says. “You didn’t keep your promise, did you. Take off your box right away. Maybe you don’t know it, but …”

  “Oh, yes, I do. You’re talking about the doctor. I saw him a little while ago in the street.”

  “Take it off … please.”

  “But I can’t. That’s why I came running in such a hurry.”

  “That won’t work … not at the point we’re at.”

  “But I’m naked. Stark naked. After I saw you at the hospital I took a shower at the bathhouse and was waiting for the underclothes I washed to dry. I’ve got to put something on before I can leave the box. I planned to come here after disposing of it. Because I want you to see how I keep my promises. But I fell asleep. I slept so hard it was like being rolled over and crushed under a construction roller. Furthermore, I had a series of dreams, and since I could not sleep in them, although I remained lying down until a while ago, I’m still suffering from lack of sleep. But when I opened my eyes, my underclothes and trousers that had been hung out to dry had vanished. What a mess! I had the impression that near dawn I had had a dream in which a lot of children raced around with a flag attached to the end of a pole, but perhaps it wasn’t a dream but actually happened. When I thought about it I had the feeling that it wasn’t a flag but my trousers. I didn’t know what to do. Somewhere, somehow, I had to get at least some trousers. I would find some trousers, any old rags would do. As I thought about it, I headed in the direction of the town, whereupon a box man, exactly the same as I, was walking in the area at the end of the embankment. Too late, I thought. I had no time for trousers. I had to get to the hospital.”

  Suddenly she begins to laugh. Supporting her body bent double on her heels, she shakes with laughter. At first the laughter is unpleasant and jeering; but in the midst of it the sting leaves it, and it turns into amused laughter. She finishes laughing, relaxed, and her tone changes to a cheerful and friendly one.

  “I don’t mind if you’re naked. A promise is a promise.”

  “I’m sorry. Can’t you lend me some trousers? Any old ones will do.”

  “Well, then, I’ll strip too. Anyway you mean to take my picture, I imagine. We don’t have to be shy, do we, with both of us naked?”

&
nbsp; “There’s not much point in seeing a man naked, is there?”

  “Oh, you’re wrong,” she replies expressionlessly, beginning at once to take off her clothes. Blouse … skirt … brassière. “I don’t like that box. I can’t stand it another second.”

  She stands without reserve before me naked. About her lips there is a touch of teasing. But in her eyes lurks dark entreaty. She is naked, but she doesn’t seem to be at all. Being naked suits her too well. But that is not true of me. The lower half of my body, particularly, that peeks out from the box is exceedingly comical, I imagine. “Close your eyes a while. Turn in that direction.”

  “All right,” she says, her voice filled with laughter, and turning her back, she leans her shoulder against the wall of the corridor. As I take off my boots, I have the feeling that my whole body is shaking slightly. Quietly I extricate myself from the box, noiselessly approach her from behind, and put a hand on her shoulder. As she does not try to resist, I reduce the distance between us even more. I tell myself emphatically as I do so that I must forever maintain this closeness.

  “Is it all right? What if the doctor should come back?”

  “He won’t. He doesn’t even want to …”

  “The smell of your hair is so good.”

  “What a beautiful, firm ass …”

  “I confess … I was a fake.”

  “Ssh … don’t say any more.…”

  “But these notes are the real thing. They’re the will the real box man gave me to keep.”

  “You’re all sweaty.…”

  (But there’s no need to apologize. Writings left behind by the dead can’t always be taken at face value as inevitably relating the truth. Those who are going to die have jealousies and envies that are incomprehensible to those who remain. Among them are those perverse ones whose hatred for the empty promises of “truth” cuts to the bone and who at best nail the coffin lid on with lies. One can’t very well swallow the bait whole by just claiming it is the writing of the dead.)

  In His Dream the Box Man Takes

  His Box Off. Is This the Dream

  He Had Before He Began Living

  in a Box or Is It the Dream of His

  Life After He Left It …?

  My destination was the house located at the top of a slope at the exit from the city. After having traveled far and wide in a horse-drawn carriage I have finally just arrived before the city gate. Judging from the length of my voyage, the house is probably at the entrance rather than at the exit of the town.

  Furthermore, the horse-drawn carriage is only a manner of speaking, for the vehicle was drawn not by a horse but in fact by a man wearing a cardboard box over his head. More precisely it was my father. Father was already over sixty. Naturally he had certain conservative aspects, and since he wholeheartedly refused to break the custom handed down from ancient times in the village that at a wedding the bride must be met with a horse-drawn carriage, he himself had gone out to do so, taking the place of the horse. However, so as not to cause me embarrassment he had hidden himself in a cardboard box. It was also out of consideration for the bride lest he shock her.

  Of course, if I had just had the money to hire a horse-drawn carriage, my father would never had had to go to such extremes, nor would I ever have asked him. However, it would be simply too bad to give up the wedding because I could not pay the fee for the carriage. Indeed, I could only depend on my father’s good offices.

  But my already sixty-year-old father was not after all a horse. Since he was panting up a rough, sloping road, his progress was not one tenth that of a real horse. Nor could I very well get down and push from behind; the carriage crept slowly along. Time alone went wildly by. Furthermore, with the merciless jolting there was no reason for me to be blamed if the demands of nature finally reached their limit.

  The carriage stopped. Father undid from the box something that looked like a leather belt (I don’t know its name) that attached to the horse’s belly and, looking up at me from the open observation window in the front of the box, smiled weakly a wan, exhausted smile. I smiled back at him stiffly, and slowly crawled down from the baggage cart. I said a carriage, but actually it was a baggage cart. There was no agreement that it shouldn’t be a baggage cart, and after I got married I could do with it what I wanted. Breathing hard, I ran shufflingly to the side of the road, at the same time opening my fly. As the pressure drained from my belly I experienced in a profound feeling of liberation as if I were flying away over some distant range of mountains.

  “Chopin! What a thing to do!”

  From behind me came Father’s perplexed cry. I had been too careless. Between the bride’s house and the road stood a great thicket of palms, and I was sure that I was completely screened off by them. But my bride had tired of waiting. Apparently she had caught the sound of the carriage from a distance and had come out right to the roadside to welcome me. Out of timidity and constraint she had concealed herself, ironically, right behind the palms that served as a shield for me. Our gazes crossed. It was certain that she saw my penis. Her white garment fluttered between the branches, and I could hear her light, running steps and the sound of a door being slammed as with a wooden mallet. Everything was lost. As I crossed over the wavering rope stretched between hope and despair, my breast aflame, and as I was about to reach the opposite side in just one more step, the ax had fallen. I was profoundly disappointed.

  “You’re her guardian, Father. Do something, I beg you.”

  Tears of resentment came welling up. As I sobbed compulsively, my urine still kept flowing. It dug a hole in the ground and formed a light yellow pond that gave off steam as it spread out.

  “Listen, Chopin, it’s best you give the whole thing up,” reasoned my father sympathetically as he tapped in a staccato on the belly of the box with a hand that he had stuck out through the hole. “You had better stop this useless struggling. A man who’s got a mania for indecent exposure is not suited to marriage … it’s common sense … to young girls today.”

  “But I don’t have any mania for indecent exposure!”

  “It probably seems so to her. You were seen, you know.”

  “But we’re going to be married anyway, so what difference …”

  “Out of consideration for your father who has gone as far as to take the place of a horse, couldn’t you bow out like a man? I beg of you. Fortunately there were no other eyewitnesses. No matter how many hundreds of volumes of Chopin’s biography may be written, I won’t want anyone to know of this scandal. A fate governed by urinating is not at all suitable for a biography. Really not at all. Of course, I don’t say you’re at fault. Responsibility should be placed on the prejudice about indecent exposure and on the municipal administration that neglects the construction of public toilets. Well, let’s get going. You don’t have any attachment to this town. Let’s go to a big city where there are a lot of public johns. If only we could find a public toilet, we could urinate and defecate to our heart’s content.”

  The wound to my heart would not be cured by going to a city. But why did my father refer to me as Chopin? Thinking that I was not the only one who was hurt, I decided not to persist. Hold on … I quite agreed with Father when he said that this town was no longer any place to stay. My defenselessness as I stood urinating made me feel keenly uneasy.

  We abandoned the carriage. But my father flatly refused to take off the box. As the responsibility for the present situation was half his, he insisted that it was his duty as my father to go on playing the role of the horse for the time being. Thereupon I got astride my father’s box and turned my back on the town I had lived in for so long.

  When we arrived in the city we at once took a garret room with a piano and decided to put our time to good use. I had the impression that we had simply turned and entered her house from the back, but that point was not clear. Handwork is best for diverting attention from grief. Father got hold of some art paper and pens somewhere or other. Using the piano as my desk, I devoted my
self to drawing her from memory. Needless to say, as I became more practiced, the portraits turned into those of a nude woman.

  “Chopin, your talent’s not bad. I admit that, and I think you realize it, but then our financial situation is not so terribly brilliant. So how about it? Try to go easy on the paper and paint smaller pictures.”

  Father was right. But whether the paper was large or small was not the point. It was easier to draw smaller pen sketches. I continued working, gradually decreasing the size of the paper. Since I was proportionately more rapid finishing a drawing when I reduced the dimensions, I used more and more paper. At length, using a magnifying glass and attaching pieces of paper the size of the flat of my thumb with pins to my board, I accustomed myself to drawing lines so fine that they were indistinguishable to the naked eye. Only during the time I concentrated on this work could I be with her.

  At one point I noticed something strange. The garret room, which should have been perfectly quiet, was filled with people. Why had I not noticed until now? From the door to the front of the piano a queue had formed and apparently stretched out into the corridor. The person at the head put money into the box (my father, of course) beside the piano and received with great deference the picture I had just finished painting. I was not all that taken aback. I also sensed that this situation had been going on for quite some time. That is, the food had got much better lately, and the old piano that served as a desk had at one point transformed into a new grand. Father’s box as well had made great progress; from cardboard it had turned into one of genuine red leather with buckles. All unbeknownst to me we were apparently beginning to be widely accepted by the world. No sooner did I make a picture than it was sold, and no matter how many I went on sketching, the line of buyers showed absolutely no signs of slackening.