by Kōbō Abe
“How long do you think we were asleep?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sick of it.”
“I hardly slept all day yesterday.”
“I saved you half a banana.”
“Shall I help you go to the bathroom?”
“I already did, by myself.”
I tried to stand up, and fell over. My left leg was so fast asleep that I could hardly tell it was there. Groping in the dark, I spread out the girl’s towel, smoothed my uniform jacket out on top of it, then added my pants and shirt. I picked up the girl and laid her down on top of the pile. At least the floor was level there; that was one good thing.
“Wait here, all right? I’ll be right back.”
“I want to go home.”
“How can you? You just ran away.”
“I don’t want to run away.”
“I’m going to go find you a wheelchair, okay?”
“I want to take a bath.”
‘Til give you a bath later. Is there anything else you want? I’ll try not to forget the urinal, either. And it’s dark, so we’ll need a flashlight.”
“If I’m not in bed I’ll start to turn all funny shapes.”
“I’ll get you a quilt, then.”
“What one?”
“Something to go with the wheelchair. What’s your favorite color?”
“My mother’s quilt…”
“The one in the museum, you mean? It must be all moldy.”
“Then let’s go back.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll get your mother’s quilt.”
“I don’t care. I’m scared.”
“Here, feel these biceps. When I was in school I used to be a boxing champion.”
The back of her hand was cold and dry, but her palm was hot and moist. She seemed awfully tense. I stroked her cheek, then ran my fingers through her hair once or twice.
“There’s lice here.”
“I’ll come right back…
One hand on the wall, one arm groping ahead like a feeler in the darkness, I ran off, dressed in nothing but my shorts.
It is not sour grapes; I actually do think that in the end those haphazard actions of mine were for the best. If I hadn’t made what appeared to be the stupid blunder of going to sleep for nearly twelve hours, then everything would have been completely different.
That underground passageway was an old corridor between the old hospital building, now a weed-buried relic reduced to its foundations, and the cartilage surgery department; cartilage surgery was part of the old complex anyway. The passageway connected the cartilage surgery (formerly general surgery) basement with the third floor of the old main building, and had evidently once been in frequent use.
Afterward I found out that we had gone almost to the end of that passageway. In less than ten meters or so I would have had to stop and choose between a flight of stairs leading up on the left and another corridor going off to the right. Since we still had no wheelchair at that time, it probably would have made more sense to go up the stairs, where a faint light could be seen. At the top of the stairs the corridor turned right and ran into a rotting wooden door. As I looked through the keyhole of that door, blue sky would have been shining over lush summer grasses, for all the world as though promising safety. Had I pushed down the door and stepped outside, I would have been greeted with cries of laughter from overhead. We would have been trapped in a concrete box, with the owners of the laughter looking down on us from the old building’s clock tower, one of my pursuers’ best observation points.
But after twelve hours went by, my pursuers had begun to relax their lookout. The wards had been searched so carefully in every nook and cranny that by then they were practically a safety zone. I managed to find a Swedish wheelchair of the latest model, as well as everything else we needed, from three kinds of flashlights (large, medium, and small) and a hi-fi FM radio to a big thermos bottle.
The girl was delighted with the wheelchair. Its big, silver-chrome wheels were beautiful, and its springy black leatherette seat was smart-looking. The fingertip-control brakes were handy, and so were the levers for controlling the rotation of the left and right wheels. Best of all, though, was a marvelous lightweight handle that allowed fine adjustment of the chair-back angle, over a range of 130 degrees.
And so, thanks to that wheelchair, we were unable to climb the stairs and instead went on deeper and deeper inside the labyrinth of the old hospital building.
To call it a labyrinth is neither a figure of speech nor an exaggeration. Units constructed gallery-style around a courtyard were joined together by corridors to form square wings, three units on a side, that were built around even larger courtyards. There were three such wings, laid out so that their adjacent sides formed an equilateral triangle; the entire layout thus had all the complexity of three overlapping honeycombs. Furthermore, since sections of old-fashioned thick concrete and brick were mingled together, some parts had preserved their old structure while others had disintegrated and lay buried under heaps of earth and sand. Even if I had been familiar then with the overall layout of the place, I doubt if I could have told how I managed to arrive where I am now. If I were to start out today from that same underground passage, I would have no confidence whatever in my ability to find this place again.
That day, I began first of all by making sure of the most direct route to ground level, from an old lavatory up through a manhole. After that, whenever I had the chance I explored around a bit and tried to find other ways of getting in and out. Most of them were dead ends, forcing me to retrace my steps, and very few had any openings leading outside. Except for the terrible odor, like the smell of stuffed animals going bad, it seemed that I had finally stumbled on the ideal hideout. There weren’t even any lice.
A couple of times, though, I had cause for alarm. Once was yesterday morning, when I went out to see the horse at the old firing practice range; while I was gone, the girl said she had heard voices through the wall. They were fairly loud, she said; one person just on the other side of the wall called to someone else far away, who gave a short answer, at which the person by the wall went off laughing derisively. But that’s impossible. In the first place, there is no such thing as “the other side of the wall” in this room. I’ve checked it out carefully again and again so there’s no doubt in my mind: except for the side with the door leading in and out, there is nothing beyond any of the walls except dirt and sand. At most there could only be a mole tunnel or two. She says flatly that the voices did not come from by the door, and I suppose I should believe her. That hall is wired with a three-way alarm system, anyway. So it must have been either a dream, a ringing in her ears, or a trick of the wind in the ventilator. I decided not to worry myself unnecessarily over it.
The second source of alarm is something that happened just now, while I was on my way back over the longest route, the one leading back from the animal cages by the museum. Fairly close to the hideout, I came upon a cigarette butt in the hallway. It had been rubbed out on something, and had about two centimeters left before the filter. Naturally, there was no trace of smoke, nor was it even hot to the touch. But what bothers me is that it was neither wet nor dried out, and that the whiteness of its paper seemed so fresh. Of course, mummies have been found looking as good as new, and a cigarette is a far simpler thing than a mummy, so maybe it’s nothing to get excited about. Besides, the brand was Seven Stars, the same as mine, which is some reassurance. If it’s something I did unconsciously, then no harm done; anyway, it’s easier to assume that that’s what happened. Let me see … how long ago did Seven Stars come out on the market?
Slowly, every so often, the ground began making howling noises.
5:02—
I removed the polythene bag I had stuffed into the ventilator and listened again. There it was, the noise of big drums. Evidently they were going to go ahead and follow the traditional forms. Refracted in the underground labyrinth, the reverberations roared like the ocean. Right about now the horse woul
d be putting the scissors to the tape, to the accompaniment of light, scattered applause, his body stiffly erect above the waist.
Across that part of the evening sky visible through the ventilator hole move clouds like overboiled rice cakes. Blobby and swollen, they look as though at any moment they might burst open in a sudden gush of water.
The time is finally drawing near when we will have to leave this hideout. To keep these notes from getting wet I will put them inside a plastic bag, and seal the top firmly with cellophane tape. That crack in the wall shaped like a baseball cap will be a good place to hide the notebook. The brim-shaped part comes right out, and inside is an empty, pocket-like space.
I use it now as a safe in which to store cash, my railway pass, and the FM transmitter that I took from the chair leg in room eight.
In another thirty minutes I will wake up the girl.
From my point of view, it would actually be best to act alone as far as possible until I have gotten my wife safely back. At this point I have no idea what shape I may find her in, or under what conditions we may ever be able to meet again. It seems fairly certain that the pill thief had some connection with her disappearance, yet there’s nothing to go on but circumstantial evidence. It could even be that I’ve only been made to think so by the horse’s clever insinuations. Maybe my wife really was sick, and was hospitalized without being able to contact me for some minor reason. From her point of view, I would be the one who vanished without a trace that day. Or she might have taken a temporary job in the hospital library or somewhere, partly to track me down. Nor could I ignore the possibility that she lost her memory after being hit by the pill thief. In the worst event, she could be a captive somewhere, held forcibly through physical restraint, drugs, or hypnosis, deprived of free will.
In any case, I must take proper steps to deal with each of these possibilities. If necessary, I am even prepared to use violence. With the spring action of the jump shoes and this twenty-five-centimeter steel pipe I plan to carry under my arm, I should be able to achieve pretty good striking ability. The girl doesn’t like jump shoes—she says just watching other people bound around makes her feel as though she’s shrinking—so I’m a little rusty, but there is an innate reflex involved; it’s not as though just anybody could jump with them on.
Having a wheelchair-ridden girl with me in that sort of situation will clearly put me at a disadvantage. If I’m not careful, we could both come to harm.
But the worse conditions become, the fewer chances there will be to come back to this hideout any more. I may have all I can do just to clear an escape route in order to smuggle my wife out of the hospital. To escape from there I would have to run downhill to the north, toward town—the opposite direction from here. If I leave the girl here when I go, then it means deserting her. I could resign myself one way or another if this notebook should end up forgotten in that crack in the wall, never to be seen by human eyes again. But the girl is different.
I packed a short supply of food in the trunk under the wheelchair.
Four bottles of Coke, five rolls, four croquettes, two cucumbers, two hard-boiled eggs, some salt wrapped in tin foil, a quarter of a pound of butter, a chocolate bar, four overripe peaches, some paper napkins…
The girl smiled, half opening her eyes, still wearing the radio earphones. One hand was stuck, as always, in her crotch. I have decided not to be too hard on her about that any more. No sooner did she smile at me than she was fast asleep again. Her body has gotten all out of shape. I keep changing her position to keep her from becoming too terribly misshapen (the Swedish wheelchair is well designed for that purpose, too), but no matter what I do, the more I touch her the rounder she becomes, like a rice cake or a lump of candy or a dumpling. Much as it galls me, I have to hand it to the horse for his skill as head of the cartilage surgery department.
Watching the girl become more and more infantile, I fall under the illusion that time is moving backward. But what she still has not lost is the expression in her eyes. If people are attracted to this girl, it must be because of those downward-tilting eyes, always gazing off so far in the distance that they cannot see what is right in front of them.
What to do with the uniform. It would be handy for blending in with the crowd, but also I have a feeling that it might become an easy target for pursuit. Since everything depends on the anniversary eve party, I finally decided that I might just as well take it along. Even if I don’t use it myself, it might come in handy as a pillow for the girl.
What I hated most to leave behind was my sales briefcase.
It contained nothing of any particular value; only thirty jump shoe catalogues, fifteen order blanks, and fifteen bonus gift certificates. This may sound petty, but that briefcase is genuine Italian leather; I splurged on it more than I really should have. I know I should resign myself, but it’s hard to see what I ever did to deserve such a loss.
6:07—
Time to go. The route is 8484332. That is the number of the route leading out by the museum, with the turns numerically encoded for easy remembrance.
“I dreamed about some rotten soap.”
“Soap doesn’t rot.”
“Why not?”
“If it did, it wouldn’t be soap.”
Perhaps I should take the notebook along, after all. Rather than go to all the trouble of having someone else come and retrieve it for me after I’m outside the hospital, it is safer to contrive some way to carry it out myself. It will only be necessary when my back is to the wall anyway, so it makes more sense to keep it close by so that I can adapt myself to circumstances as they arise. I decided to insert it between the springs and the seat bottom in the back of the wheelchair. Barring some need to repair the wheelchair frame, nobody is likely to think of looking there.
EPILOGUE
I climbed up between artificial rocks, carrying the wheelchair in my arms, and saw that the square in front of the museum was already filled with spectator seats for the anniversary eve party.
“That’s the museum. Look, on top, there’s a flagpole.”
“That’s an antenna.”
“It’s a flagpole.”
“Well, maybe they use it for both.”
Suddenly a voice spoke from the shadow of a parked car.
“Whoever heard of a flagpole without a flag, on a holiday?”
Like instant adhesive, the voice fastened down the soles of my shoes and stuck to the wheels of the wheelchair. All my fighting spirit poured out of me, as though a barrel had split open. Unable to believe my ears, hoping against hope it was someone else, I turned warily around, only to have my fears confirmed: it was indeed the assistant director’s secretary.
She stood with a slightly set smile on her face, carrying in one hand a tattered old department store shopping bag. Her light-brown blouse and cocoa-colored skirt, neither of which I had seen before, did a good job of sheathing her usual bared-fangs look.
“So you knew all about it.”
“You get better-looking all the time.”
“This is a life-and-death matter for us.”
“I just saved you a lot of trouble. This is what you were after, isn’t it?”
The secretary looked up at me, biting her lip, and took a layer of newspapers off the top of the shopping bag. A wad of spongy scarlet cloth was rolled up and stuffed inside. The girl turned as rigid as an infant having convulsions.
“I’m scared.”
“Well, if you don’t want it I’ll just throw it away. After all the trouble I went to, smashing the showcase window and stealing it for you …”
Angrily the secretary lifted up the wad of cloth on the end of a stick she had picked up off the ground, and waved it around as hard as she could. It looked like the scarlet corpse of a cat run over by an automobile.
“Is that your mother, who had watafuki disease?”
“It’s all stiff, like old felt. And it smells like mothballs; you can’t use it without a gas mask.”
Suddenly th
e girl clutched at the scarlet rag, stifling a scream. Then she moaned, choking with tears. The secretary stepped back, overpowered, and I felt a wave of jealousy at such strong emotion.
“She’s happy.”
“That’s how nice I wanted you to be to me.”
With the secretary’s halfhearted assistance, I spread the quilt between the wheelchair and the girl. The scarlet quilt contrasted oddly with the functional beauty of the wheelchair. The girl grabbed both ends of the quilt, turned her head to one side and said in a nasal, teary voice, “It’s just the smell of mothballs, so I guess it’s okay, huh?”
I began to feel tired. I sat down on a stone step and shared a bottle of lukewarm Coke with the secretary. Absorbed in her quilt, the girl had no time to spare on a Coke. The secretary pressed a bare foot, sticking out from under her skirt, over against my leg.
“This is like a picnic!”
The sky was as black as an internal hemorrhage. It looked as though it might rain at any moment. I tossed the empty bottle into a clump of grass, and a woman screamed. Undaunted, the secretary screamed right back:
“Pipe down!”
It was a depressing start. If my plan had been discovered already, there was no chance of carrying it out. On the other hand, it was senseless to think of retreat.
We walked across the square in front of the museum and down the street by the park; soon the sidewalks became crowded with rows of concession stands smelling of acetylene gas. I decided to cut through the park by the side entrance; inside, it was as deserted as before. White smoke filled the air, followed by the bang of promotional firecrackers.
“Looks like she’s gone back to the shape she was in before she came to the hospital.”
“Will it get any worse?”
“Depends on how long the tensile strength of her bones can withstand the pressure of her internal organs.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just imagine what would happen to an umbrella if its spokes started to melt. You get the idea.”
