Secret Rendezvous

by Kōbō Abe

  And so I have continued writing. There doesn’t seem to be any choice but to go along with this deal. The horse definitely knows something. The very fact that he put those noises at the beginning of the tapes proves he has more information than I do—and it could be more than just information.

  What bothers me is how he plans to use these reports. What was his real meaning in calling them a map to help my wife out of the labyrinth? I hope he isn’t going to blame whatever happens on the results of this investigation. The next time I give him one of these notebooks, I’m going to attach some conditions. In exchange for my promise not to pull any tricks on him, I want a clear account of what they’re being used for, and a guarantee of my right to strike out any parts that I might consider self-damaging.

  (The second tape begins with my introduction to the chief of security by the secretary, after meeting with the assistant director. The security room is on the same floor, just across the hall. As we crossed the hallway the secretary whispered to me, “The assistant director is impotent.” Even the widest corridor takes only a few moments to cross. I had no time to think of an answer—but it’s about time that “I” went back to the third person. The man had no idea how to reply. She didn’t seem out to smear the assistant director in particular, so perhaps rather than elicit a specific response, she wanted only to make a strong impression. In that case she succeeded. As soon as a woman brings up any matter relating to sex, a man egotistically assumes that she is being deliberately provocative. Besides, it was only a short time after he and she had shared the unusual experience of viewing the emergency doctor’s erection at close range, in broad daylight, and so very likely a certain sense of camaraderie was at play.)

  The security room was a near-match for the assistant director’s office in both size and shape. Just inside was another door that led to an adjoining room, corresponding to the secretary’s office.

  The broad, double-paned window at the far end of the room ensured both light and quiet Even the set of chairs, black synthetic leather over metal pipes, was exactly the same. There the similarities ended, however. The assistant director’s office was decorated with great simplicity: apart from some touches of color in the frame of a sketch of two mating horses, everything else, from the carpet to the plastic calendar, was the same, or nearly the same, shade of blue-gray as the walls. In comparison, this room w*as a riot of confusion. Even* w*all in sight was covered with panels of dials and switches, with bunches of multicolored electrical wires weaving between them, stretching every which way and hanging down to the floor, which was stacked with tools and parts. With a little more organization or coherence, it might have resembled a broadcasting studio or a computer room, but without any sense of planning it w as more like a wholesale supply house for spare electrical parts.

  A man in white, hunched over a workbench by the window*. his back to the door, swung around in his revolving chair and removed his headphones.

  “Hello again there. I should have mentioned this before, but I’m the chief of security.”

  It was the driver of the white van, who had driven off with the assistant director before. The man was partly relieved to have met him already, and partly suspicious. Every last little thing seemed just too coincidental….

  The chief went on talking, as though he had seen through the man’s distrust. He spoke rapidly, in a carefully controlled voice that somehow called attention to his throat muscles.

  No. don’t bother to introduce yourself No need for any introductory remarks, either, I know all about you.”

  “But how…”

  The chief raised a fat, fleshy palm and silenced him. Picking up a black instrument about five centimeters square from the workbench, he flicked a switch. A thin noise like the whining of a mosquito started up. Smiling in a satisfied way, lower lip thrust out he half rose, extending the implement across the table toward the man. The mosquito became a horsefly. At the man’s left coat pocket, the noise turned into a harsh electrical buzz.

  “Let’s have a look at what’s in there.”

  “This…”

  “I know; it’s a woman’s rented garment, right?”

  There was no help for it if he knew already. Reluctantly the man pulled out the wad of beige cloth that had been stuffed to bursting in his pocket. The chief removed the belt of the dress with a practiced hand, opened the back of the buckle with a fingernail, and plucked out a pair of small mercury batteries. The noise of the instrument ceased immediately.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “It’s an FM transmitter. Since you were carrying this around the whole time, it was child’s play to follow everything you did. Once you see how it works there’s no mystery to it, eh? Now you know how we were able to make it to the scene of the accident before, just in the nick of time.”

  “That’s a pretty rotten trick. Now that you mention it, that old guy at the agency said he used to be a magician–-”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it. It isn’t only that one store. There’s a tiny transmitter inside every rented costume and accessory.”

  The chief struck his heel lightly against the floor, spinning his chair around, then leaned forward and began manipulating a big panel left of the workbench. The wall beside it was crammed full of tape decks, nine rows down and six across, making fifty-four in all, their reels all facing outward. Several of the reels were slowly turning; now and then one would stop and another would start, but there seemed to be no special sequence.

  From a corner of the room came the mutter of voices. They were from a speaker, but the fact that they were hidden made the sound incredibly lifelike, as though the owners of the voices were there in the room. They were not discussing much of anything; it was a man and woman counting up money, but the sound was so graphically real that somehow it seemed wrong to listen in. Speakers and amps probably had something to do with it, but that was not all. It was their way of abbreviating everything they said in such a way that it was comprehensible to the two of them, but to no one else.

  “This is take-out B3 … doesn’t seem to be very interesting, does it.”

  The chief turned off the switch and explained. Except for a few special cases, renting clothes from one of the agencies nearly always meant a “take-out”—the man himself had been mistaken for one. A “take-out” simply meant escorting a patient out of the ward or area where he or she was supposed to be.

  Most of the hospital inpatients, however, had no street clothes. They were allowed to see visitors in their own rooms or in the interview rooms, and any who were considered well enough to go outside were outpatients anyway. It was one thing for single patients to hide street clothes, but when married patients did it they invited the suspicion of the spouses, which frequently led to a family quarrel.

  What kind of people would go to all the trouble of bringing in rented clothes to patients? The answer was simple: adulterers. Perhaps because their lack of street clothes furnished a handy alibi, patients would become quite bold sexually. For both men and women, the rate of illicit intercourse among hospital patients was said to be something like 3.5 to four times that among ordinary people. There was even a special clothing-delivery service for secret rendezvous between patients. (On this point I should mention that the assistant director did not agree that the sexual desires of patients were directly attributable to their mere possession or lack of street-wear. I will touch on this again in more detail later as part of the assistant director’s philosophy of patients, but for now I will simply point out that his view differed.)

  Once the problem of clothing was solved, next came finding a suitable place. For those whose sexual needs could be taken care of with a simple back scratch or so, place was no particular problem. Inside the maple grove that covered the entire southeastern slope surrounding the main building and the red clay lot was a cemetery owned and operated by the hospital. The gravestones were flat, the trees provided abundant shade, and even the farthest ward was within a ten-minute walk. The
difficulty was that there were too many centipedes; besides, tetanus bacilli had been detected in the soil, so it was necessary to be on guard against any violent activity that might involve the danger of external injury. In such a case there was likely to be a sense of constraint in such open surroundings anyway, making it preferable to remain indoors after all. Fortunately, inside the urban area that encroached on the valley between the main building and the outpatient wing were a dozen or more love hotels aimed at such clientele, mouths pursed up like tiny holes, open and waiting.

  The security room window afforded a fine lookout over their relative positions. Into a hollow between two elevations in the ground, shaped like the curved neck of a gourd, ran the two-lane trunk highway out of the northwest. Passing through a tunnel under the saddle between the hills, it headed off toward the sea. Both sides of the highway were densely packed with stores, offices, and apartment buildings; the boundary between that urban area and the hospital area, however, was not clear-cut. The main hospital building was of simple construction, with the tall, narrow central section supported firmly by four rectangular blocks at the base. The outpatient wing, however, was nothing but a cluster of structures piled up haphazardly on the hill, looking somewhat like an old battleship.

  The man was able to gain some idea of the route he must have taken in shadowing the emergency doctor. First they had gone along the inner side of the main building, following the boundary line with the urban area until just before the highway. Then, taking the underpass and coming out by the sea, they had come back through the Jizo tunnel and finally arrived on the other side of the hill. Unfortunately, that lay in a blind spot from the security room window; presumably, it was in the direction of the Himalayan cedar, bent over with the weight of its branches, that completely hides the left front of this room where I am now writing in this notebook. According to the security chief, these uninhabited houses in the projected cemetery expansion site are quite popular with people who use them. As long as you didn’t mind going without amenities like a shower before and after, or use of a toilet, they probably would make pretty good secret meeting places, at that.

  The chief and the acting director were strongly interested in the sexual impulses of these adulterers, and decided to try eavesdropping on them. By sheer chance they had such unexpectedly good results the first time that it became a passion with them both. However, there was no way of guaranteeing that their prey would always oblige them by going as hoped to a place that had previously been bugged. At the same time it was too impractical to try to bug each and every place that could conceivably be used for a rendezvous. Complications with monitors, the expense of maintaining batteries, the trouble of changing them (in continual use they last about eighty hours) … too much waste was involved. After repeated trial and error, they finally hit upon the plan of enlisting the service agencies to insert small FM transmitters inside rented clothing, which was essential for a take-out. As a result, they were now able to get a bead on all the heavy romances, effectively and securely.

  “I don’t know what the point of all this is, but it’s too damned kinky for me.”

  “Go ahead and talk; that little item you sneaked out of the emergency doctor’s room is still there inside your pants pocket, isn’t it?”

  Cornered, the man went on the defensive. Just how serious was the chief about helping him search for his wife? To convey his irritation he glanced openly at his wrist watch several times, but the chief paid not the slightest attention. Indicating the fifty-four tape recorders behind him with a thumb over one shoulder, he went on complacently.

  Already an organization had been formed, made up of over four thousand fans of these rendezvous tapes. For a monthly fee of two thousand yen it was possible to rent out a new one every month. Proceeds came to nearly one hundred million yen a year. For the security room that was an important source of revenue, thanks to which they had been able to purchase three high-speed transcribers. At the end of last year they had introduced a microcomputer, so that automatic recording of love scenes was now possible. Whenever a take-out customer appeared, the agency involved would phone the security room and report the code number of the transmitter out on loan. When that number was fed into the computer, the sound-oscillating repeater would go to work, picking up the sound of clothing being removed, and the deck in the security room would automatically begin recording. At present, they could handle up to eight thousand subscribers with no difficulty.

  “But your case, now, was a little different.” The chief dropped his voice and stared down at the thick acrylic resin table. His eyes, reflected there upside down, stared back up inquisitively at the man. “Because usually take-outs don’t start until around two p.m. at the earliest. And there you were right off the bat, first thing in the morning. Somehow I didn’t feel like leaving it up to automatic recording, so I listened in from the start. But it was all for the best, wasn’t it, since as it turned out we made it there before it was too late….”

  At last they seemed to be coming back to the mainstream. The man held carefully to the rudder, trying not to steer off course.

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe it’s already too late, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Don’t be so fainthearted; that’s a no-no.” When he smiled his mouth became almost circular, the canine teeth like placid retrograde animals. “The emergency doctor’s condition still isn’t too good, but for the time being nobody’s planning any action against you on suspicion of accidental infliction of injury, or illegal entry.”

  Casually, but unerringly, he drove the nail home. The man was not about to be taken in by any round-mouthed grin.

  “It was out of my control. I didn’t know what was going on, and then that guard, the one and only witness, went and told me a story so plausible and believable …”

  He pulled out the day’s sixth cigarette and put it in his mouth.

  “No smoking.” The chief gave the reprimand tonelessly. “You don’t need to worry about that guard, either. We’ve taken care of him. He may have sent a deposition to the assistant director; shall I find out?”

  He pressed a button on the interphone and called the station.

  The station, on the ground floor of the same building, was for the security force. At any given time of day or night, eighteen security personnel were on duty, defending their posts in eight-hour shifts. What with delivering rendezvous tapes to subscribers, collecting fees, soliciting and enrolling new members, patrolling specified areas, and going out on emergency calls involving quarrels or burglaries, there was plenty of work to keep them all busy. In particular, replacing worn-out batteries for all the two hundred and some dozen fixed bugs was a big job; strong-legged young men would go around together in pairs (since much of the work could only be done riding on someone else’s shoulders) and get the job done in half the time it would take one person. That time when the man had been taking a leak out by the alley near the spaghetti house while waiting for the doctor, the shaven-headed duo in sweat pants who had suddenly appeared and jabbed him in the side had been such a pair. They had meant no harm, it seemed, but had merely gone by to check up on him, following walkie-talkie instructions from the chief.

  All the men on outside duty, including those two, were patients from the ear and nose, dermatology, or psychiatric wards; a lot of them were into karate and judo, so if he handled it right he should have a lot of customers for his jump shoes, the chief added, skillfully employing just the right words to stir up the man’s fighting spirit.

  The buzzer on the interphone sounded, and someone who slurred his words like a student reported back. When they sent the guard somewhere or other, they had sent his deposition along with him. The chief explained that the somewhere or other, the name of which the man had been unable to catch, wTas the Psycholinguistics Center; to back up the guard’s testimony, they had taken him there for a lie detector test.

  The chief called the Psycholinguistics Center to see about the test results. The detailed
analysis wras not yet in, but so far it appeared that in the main the guard was telling the truth.

  “That was the assistant director’s wife.” The chief put down the receiver and spoke as if he had a condom on his tongue. “They’re separated now, but she’s quite an authority on lie detectors.”

  “Any new facts turn up in his testimony?”

  “Not likely.” He peered inside the back of the buckle on that rented dress. “Your code number is M-73F, so you might as well remember it. With that code number it’s possible to isolate all the segments having to do with you from all these tapes, at any time. Your information is pretty accurate, though, isn’t it?”

  “Are you kidding? All I’ve heard yet is this insane story that she’s vanished from someplace that it’s impossible to escape from. I guess the information that there is no information is one kind of information, all right, but.. .”

  The telephone rang. It was a notice of the second (or, not counting the man, the first) take-out customer of the day. She was a tall, dark woman of thirty-two or -three, and the clothes she had rented were a loud T-shirt and narrow bell bottoms, the sort of thing that would appeal to a young man. As he operated the computer’s input unit, the chief murmured in a muffled, rather breathy voice, “There’s a big difference between seeing and hearing. A lot of people find this system rather disappoint* — >> mg.

  Seated on his chair, the man moved his center of gravity forward. He felt like a cat teased once too often that had instinctively ruffled its fur.

  “So, getting right down to brass tacks—can I get some kind of assistance from you or not?”

  “I suppose there isn’t any choice; not with the direct recommendation of the assistant director behind you.” The chief lifted his chin and slowly stroked the back of his hand up over his fat throat. “As you see, normally I’m the only one here in this room. I don’t even let the other security personnel in here very often. The impact of this information is too great. You’re the first person from the outside that I’ve ever let in.”