by Kōbō Abe
The patient was a rather small woman … [he began to say “a real looker,” and corrected himself] … very attractive, with a round face, light skin, and big, round eyes. She was dressed only in a light robe (thin cotton or synthetic fiber, pink with a pattern of black tulips), a sash (black and green net), and cotton panties (orange bikini). She carried no other belongings. I noticed from the ambulance card that her age was thirty-one, but was unable to obtain her cooperation in verifying her name and address, so I never did make sure of those.
As soon as the patient was left alone with me, she began to act extraordinarily shy, flushing red all the way down her neck. (I only mention this, by the way, in the hope that it may shed a useful sidelight on her character and appearance.) She asked if she could borrow a phone to call her husband, and I explained politely that the only phone available for outside calls was, unfortunately, the pay phone in the waiting room. Then she begged me to loan her ten yen, getting more and more upset; when her husband came, she said, he’d pay me back with a hundred or even a thousand yen. As luck would have it, though, I had nothing on me at the time but thousand-yen bills, so I couldn’t help her out. When I told her half-jokingly that a coin or two might have rolled under one of the benches in the waiting room, she took me seriously and started off to have a look. I felt sorry for her then, so I loaned her a pair of slippers and told her that if she’d just wait there, her husband was bound to come eventually, but she wouldn’t listen. She brushed me aside and started off again. Since I was responsible for my post there, I couldn’t leave, and besides, I didn’t want her to get the wrong impression, so I made no attempt to follow her.
When she didn’t immediately return I assumed she might have found a ten-yen coin after all, so I buried myself in the magazine I’d been reading. As more time went by and there still wasn’t any sign of her, it occurred to me that maybe the call hadn’t been completely canceled for some reason, and the doctor on emergency duty had come out and run into her in the hallway. I remember feeling a sense of relief then, because I happened to have heard some gossip about that doctor, that he was quite a ladies’ man. I’ve been asked over and over why that should have made me feel relieved, and I still can’t explain it. Later, though, when I found out he had never even set foot outside the doctors’ lounge that night, I regretted my hasty suspicions, and felt sincerely sorry. Concerning the patient’s subsequent whereabouts, I can only say that it is all an utter mystery to me. I only know that nobody went through the side entrance again after that.
I have read through the above statement and hereby swear that the events took place exactly as recorded here, in token of which I affix my seal.
At this point let us return to the man’s room. By that time the aluminum lid on the hot-water heater would have been rattling. To calm himself the man thought that he would make a cup of coffee, but search though he might, he could not find the filter paper. He was swept anew by a cold sense of loss. It was as though the ambulance had carried off not only his wife, but also, along with her, all the petty details of daily life. He sipped on plain hot water, standing up. Beads of sweat were beginning to cover his forehead, but the sharp bits of ice jabbing his stomach showed no sign of melting.
Somewhere a cat was meowing. No, that was the siren of an ambulance racing along a street hundreds of blocks away. Maybe they had finally realized their error and were coming to bring his wife back again. He opened the window. On the corrugated tin of the blinds shone a spider’s web, moist with night dew. The siren stopped. The rutting cat must have found itself a new mate. At that hour, when the streets were deserted, the whole town turned into a den of mechanical cats in heat.
There was a fragrant wind, smelling like roasted beans. Must be time for the camera-film incinerators to start up. As the wind penetrated his brain, his sense of reality returned. He closed the window. Bicycle brakes squealed, and the morning paper was delivered with noiseless, rubber-soled footsteps. He felt little inclination to read it, but was unable to stop himself. First he scanned the political news on page one, then turned to the horoscope section on the back page.
High-browed; long-necked; lobes long and full; round of skull; belly full and heavy; soles thick; food, clothing, shelter adequately provided.
Suddenly it began worrying him that his wife had not taken along a change of clothes. In that condition she probably couldn’t even take a taxi. About all she’d be able to do was phone him from the hospital. Surely, though, she could find somebody who would lend her the price of a phone call. Once told the ridiculous set of circumstances that had visited themselves upon her, anybody would smile benignly, take pity on her, and feel moved to generosity.
He decided to wait for her to call. While waiting, he read through the newspaper three times. Why on earth should it take so long to find ten yen? There was a photograph of a noodle shop that had burned down in a propane gas explosion. Down on the bottom right-hand corner of the same page, a tiny ad for a lost dog caught his eye.
He came to a decision. He himself would call 119, the emergency number for fires and ambulances, and see what he could find out.
Appropriately for an emergency number, someone answered before the second ring had finished.
“This is 119, emergency. Go ahead.”
As the voice encouraged him, he was struck by a feeling that he had acted too soon. Feeling awkward, he softly replaced the receiver. Immediately the bell began to ring; despite himself, he backed up in consternation against the opposite wall. Plainly it was arranged so that lines were held open automatically until the caller’s business had been settled. The bell rang on and on, torturing him without letup.
There was no choice but surrender. He lifted the receiver.
When he began to talk it was just as he had feared: circumstances did not lend themselves to easy explanation. It was hardly surprising if another person could not grasp an event that made no sense to him, either.
The person at the other end of the line answered patiently, choosing his words with care. It was highly unusual, except in cases when someone had been stricken suddenly out in the street, to have a member of the family asking what hospital a patient had been admitted to. The ambulance would never set out without specific orders in the first place, and therefore it was only logical that some member of the family had to be involved. Therefore it was open to question whether a member of the family who denied having given such orders, even though the patient had in fact been accommodated, could really be a member of the family. He felt no obligation to give out any information. Emergency records were restricted, and no one needed to know their contents except the parties concerned, who already knew without being told.
The man was far from satisfied, but powerless to argue back. Wiping sweaty palms on his shirttail, he stretched his back and tried to collect himself. Anyway, emergency operations were evidently handled with surprising efficiency. No rush; it wasn’t even six o’clock yet. His wife could still only have had contact with a few members of the night staff, at most. It wouldn’t be an impossible coincidence at all if none of them had happened to have ten yen.
Besides, the sun had come out. It was a ray of light that shone only early in the morning, and even then only for a few minutes in the summertime, just lighting up the seams in the tin blinds, but a ray of light nonetheless. Darkness always makes a man fainthearted. He certainly didn’t want to start a clumsy disturbance and embarrass his wife. He shaved, washed his face, and bit into a washed tomato, then inspected the contents of his briefcase and checked on the remaining number of jump shoe catalogues.
A jump shoe is a sporting shoe with a special air-bubble spring built into the undersole. Each one contains a synthetic rubber tube, sealed airtight, whose stability equals that of a good rubber ball. By riding skillfully on the bounce, it is possible to increase one’s jumping range by an average of thirty-seven percent. The shoes already show signs of increasing popularity as a leisure-time game, especially among elementary and junior high
students, and it is rumored that with a little marketing ingenuity, this revolutionary product could easily develop into a new official sport.
Today he wanted to wrap up a total of at least six accounts, big and small. There was a current trend in office purchasing divisions, normally not too business-minded, to show surprising interest in health-improvement devices; some had even set up special “Keep the Doctor Away” booths. He chose a cheerful necktie, bright blue decorated with bunches of silver keys.
For the time being, he made up his mind to stroll down as far as the nearest fire station, which also served as ambulance dispatcher. He was still smarting from the call to emergency, and didn’t expect to accomplish much there beyond easing his mind to a certain degree. When he arrived, however, the assistant chief, a man of chestnut-brown skin yelling exercise commands to younger men outdoors in the courtyard, turned over his role to someone else in order to apply himself fully to the man’s problem. In spite of being so close geographically, they were in a different zone, he explained, and went to the phone to call the proper station for him. While they waited for the return call, he even served the man a cup of fresh hot tea.
There was indeed a record of an ambulance dispatched at 4 a.m. that morning. When the name and address the man gave matched those on record, with no further ado he was told the name of the hospital where she had been taken. After the unfortunate beginning he had had, this time everything went almost too smoothly. He felt like laughing out loud. Using the fire station’s big map, the chief showed him the hospital’s location and how to get there. It seemed too far, but when he was reminded that conditions for accepting emergency patients had nothing to do with distance, he yielded. The time seemed too early, but he was unwilling to let this chance slip away, now that his luck had finally started to improve.
Already at 7:32, a line of fourteen or fifteen people had formed at the bus stop. He transferred from the bus to a private railway line, then to the subway, then back to another bus.
He got off the bus as directed at the stop in front of the hospital. Down a broad lane intersecting the bus route at right angles were the hospital gates, easily recognizable. Rows of cherry trees stood arching their leafy branches, while the ground lay covered in caterpillar droppings like grape seeds. It was obviously a special lane for hospital use, seldom traveled. The gates were still shut. One side was painted black, while the other was covered with dust and reddish rust. They must be halfway through a repainting job.
There was a public phone booth on one corner of the intersection. It was then six minutes to eight, and since it appeared the gates would not be open for some time yet, he decided to try calling his office. None of the sales department staff was in. He tried calling one of the young employees who lived out in the dormitory behind the company, and caught him just as he was putting on his shoes. The man asked him to take over his morning agenda; with no idea how long it might take to track down his wife, he had little choice. The employee readily agreed, not even bothering to hear out the man’s explanation. Jump shoe sales were following a sharp upward curve just then, and shoe salesmen were engaged in a frantic night-and-day scramble for customers. Having been handed a big union purchasing division scheduled for that morning by the section head himself, the young man hardly had cause for complaint.
Appropriately enough for the chosen leader of the shoes team, the man’s own sales record was always far and away the best. It was commonly agreed that he had a special knack for winding up important sales. One factor might have been his skill in demonstrating the use of jump shoes for his customers. When he ran with a pair on, it was like watching the last spurt of a first-class middle-distance runner in slow motion— although he had plenty of speed, too. He could even do effortless somersaults without a flying start, like a trampoline acrobat. Since he burned up energy in proportion to his work load, he would eventually become extremely tired, but to a layman’s eyes he seemed to show superhuman stamina; his reputation was accordingly excellent. And since he himself never made any claim to extraordinary powers, no fraud was involved. Merely by a display of acrobatic feats (suppressing a slight twinge of shyness), he could be confident two times out of three of bringing any deal to a safe close. There was no reason to fret over the loss of a single morning.
But whatever else happened, he did want to attend the afternoon sales conference. The company president, who had been off at a Canadian toy fair, was expected to be there. The man had finally got down on paper a plan to improve the air-bubble spring, a project he had been hard at work on for a long time, and he wanted to hand it to the president himself. He still maintained the pride and ambition he had felt as winner in the student inventor contest and hoped, if possible, to achieve some recognition for his technical skills. It could have been only imagination, but he had an idea that his present position as head of sales was due mainly to his interest in sports, and to his experience as a nude model. It was not a thought he relished. His sales record was good enough, but he was scarcely in his element now. If he could succeed in obtaining a utility model patent, he might well be able to enjoy a substantial raise in pay.
A shadow fell through the glass walls of the phone booth and merged with his.
A woman of about his age was peering inside, her body pressed close against the corner of the booth. Even when their eyes met, her gaze behind rimless glasses never wavered, exactly as if she were observing some inanimate object. She was attractively dressed in navy-blue slacks that plainly revealed the outline of her thighs, and a white blouse with a pattern of off-yellow raindrops; her spine was perfectly straight. In view of the location, he assumed that she was a nurse. He hung up the receiver and stepped outside. Holding back the door, he offered her his place.
Since she never budged from where she stood, however, they ended up standing awkwardly nose to nose. Her hair smelled like burned matches. In the slanting morning light, the lenses of her glasses were delicately tinged with color. A perspiration stain glistened in the hollow of her bosom.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Addressed suddenly in a secretive whisper, the man floundered for words.
“Nothing, I’m okay…”
“Solid muscle, aren’t you? I’ll bet you go out for sports.”
She gave his elbow a little pinch, and ran her fingers lightly along his biceps, all the way to the shoulder. For a medical examination, it was awfully provocative. Instinctively, he stepped back. But then, backed up against the wooden enclosure around one of the trees, he could retreat no farther.
The woman went on in a teasing tone.
“My, what’s the matter, goose bumps? You must be here for neuralgia, or asthma. You muscular people always have trouble with your autonomic nerves. Have you got an introduction to one of the doctors?”
“I didn’t come because I’m sick.”
“Oh.” Her voice fell, but she soon recovered. “But you know what they say—it takes a thief to catch a thief. Instead of relying on the advice of some friend, it’s really safer to trust yourself to someone recommended by a professional. The cost varies according to the doctor’s level, of course, but there are always young doctors who are cheap and yet tops in their fields. It’s nearly hopeless trying to decide what doctor in what department is right for what illness, if you haven’t got lots of experience and a backlog of trust.”
As she wound up her speech, she handed the man a business card.
* * *
Founded Ten Years Ago
Emergency, outpatient, inpatient, discharge, other
All formalities carefully handled
Official Introduction Service
MANO AGENCY
Byoin-mae 8
Namiki Lane
TEL 242-2424
* * *
Suddenly a voice rang out over a portable microphone.
Parking, this way! Parking, this way!
Another portable microphone replied.
Economy hospital set! Everything the patient needs
! This morning only, special sacrifice sale!
The woman bit her lower lip slightly, and gave an embarrassed laugh.
“There’s a lot of competition.”
On both sides of the cherry-tree-lined street, tightly packed stalls were bustling with preparations for the day. Some people were throwing open storm doors and shutters, sprinkling water around, and putting out flags; others, already set for business, had taken up position in chairs under the eaves, portable mikes in hand. They ran multiservice agencies, with signs that advertised expert troubleshooting.
“I’m really fine. I don’t plan to be examined or anything.”
“It doesn’t have to be for a medical examination, you know. We help with any kind of problem.”
“I can take care of it one way or another myself.”
“Just the other day we found a buyer for a wholesale dealer in magnetic chessboards that you play on in bed, and he was delighted. And we made all the arrangements for a TV man who wanted to photograph the expressions on people’s faces in their dying moments. …”
“All I want is to go to the night reception desk or whatever it’s called, you know, the place where they admit emergency patients, and check out a couple of things with whoever’s in charge there.”
“You don’t seem to be a newspaper reporter….”
“Nope.”
“You say you just want to check out a few things, but it isn’t that easy. They have a reputation for strictness over there. Only ambulances can go in. They can’t make any exceptions, because once they bend the rules, all sorts of tramps and drunks start making up excuses to sneak in.”
“If I walk right in through the front door, and go through all the proper procedures…”
