The Ark Sakura

by Kōbō Abe

  The shill buried his face in the large bowl of noodles, slurped up a mouthful, and then muttered, mouth full, “Rats! If only I’d had something like this before, I’d never have let that little bastard get away.”

  “What was it, a rat?” asked the girl innocently.

  “We’ve made our toasts,” said the shill, “so shall we move on to the business at hand?” He wiped his mouth and stared straight at me. End of truce. “Let’s have it, Captain—who the hell was that guy?”

  In my stomach, the beer and noodles formed a lump of sticky tar. What had he seen? What was he trying to say?

  “What do you mean, who? There isn’t anybody else. How could there be?”

  “Don’t try to play games with me.”

  “You must have imagined it.”

  “Hold on a minute, please,” said the insect dealer, and washed down a mouthful of sardines with a swig of beer. “As the captain’s adviser, naturally I’m on his side—but in any case, I think we’d better get the facts straight.” He turned to the shill and said, “Now, Mr. President, tell me the truth. You had on that miner’s light before you even left here; are you sure you weren’t planning on doing a little exploring all along? If people think you’re bullshitting them about having seen some suspicious character, how can you blame them?”

  “Very observant, Komono—I’ve got to hand it to you.” The shill opened a second can of beer and flashed a friendly smile. “All right, it’s true that I thought I’d take a little walk after I finished using the john. But that doesn’t make me crazy enough to go so far for no reason.”

  “I’m still suspicious.” The girl raised her head from the bowl, a noodle trailing down from her mouth; she sucked it in with almost invisible speed and went on: “Then why didn’t you call for help? If you trusted the captain, that’s what you should have done.”

  “You keep out of it. And I don’t trust the captain.” He thrust out his arm in my direction and snapped his fingers with conviction. The thought crossed my mind that his story might possibly be true.

  “What kind of a guy was he, then?” I asked. “When you first laid eyes on him, where was he and what was he doing?”

  “Then you admit he exists,” he said arrogantly, kicking the floor. “Who is he? Why are you hiding him?”

  “I’m not hiding anyone!”

  “You asked me what he was like, didn’t you? That shows you know something.”

  “Don’t get so excited.” The insect dealer reached across the table and took his third beer from the girl. Purple spots were starting to show on his forehead and cheeks; he probably had low resistance to alcohol. “What we need now is a lie detector. But think about it; even if you have an obligation to tell the truth, the captain here doesn’t. You two were never invited on board, after all—you’re a couple of crashers.”

  “The hell you say.” He sprayed us with saliva. “I thought I made it clear—I can’t sleep without my pillow. He’s the one who’s forcing me to stay against my will.”

  “That’s a bit strong. Don’t forget, legally he’s not a certified ship’s captain.” The insect dealer tapped the area above his stomach and emitted a loud belch. “In other words, he can call himself captain all he likes, but without the consent of the crew, it doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “In that case, we settle it by force—”

  “Or by an election. I don’t approve of violence.”

  “I know!” The girl’s voice was bright, as if she’d made a great discovery. “All he has to do is pay us a salary. People always follow the orders of whoever’s paying their wages.”

  “You may be onto something there,” said the insect dealer slowly, staring at her as if appraising collateral. “The captain may be well off, at that. He’s poured a lot of money into fixing up this place. But his photography business doesn’t amount to anything, and he doesn’t seem to have any other means of employment … so who knows, maybe he’s a man of independent means, who made his fortune by selling off some piece of land or other. Maybe that fishermen’s inn outside under the highway was really registered in his name.”

  “Aha. If that’s true, that changes everything.” The shill sank back in the chaise longue, setting down the crossbow and lowering his eyes. “Then we naturally have certain obligations to fulfill, and the captain has certain rights. Maybe I misunderstood the whole situation. How could I help it? Back at the department store rooftop you made it seem as if the ticket and key were for sale.”

  “That’s right,” the girl said, nodding.

  “But you two didn’t pay!” The insect dealer shook his big round head slowly, with a triumphant smile.

  “Did he?” Suspicious, the girl turned to me.

  He answered her question himself. “I’ll say I did—to the tune of six hundred thousand yen.”

  Swept along by his tone of conviction, I could hardly demur. It was true enough that with eupcaccias going at twenty thousand yen a head, and thirty of them in the suitcase, his figure had some basis in reality.

  “Something’s funny.” The shill was not to be put off. “You’ve been letting on that you’re a paid crew member, but this means you’re no such thing. You’re a paying passenger.”

  “What, for a paltry six hundred thousand yen? Even for a screening test to permit me to come aboard it’d be a real bargain. I’m really grateful, let me tell you. You should be too—especially considering that neither of you has paid for your ticket yet. When you figure it all out, it’s as if you’d each been paid a handsome sum already. Let’s have no more complaints.”

  The shill and the girl seemed completely taken in. You had to give the man credit for being a smooth talker. I began to understand why he had asked for carte blanche in dealing with the shill.

  After a pause while he drained his third beer, he continued: “Well, as far as I can see, everybody’s had their say, and nobody’s come out the winner. There don’t seem to be any real victims among us, either. All we need now is some guarantee of mutual trust. Mere verbal agreements aren’t enough, and real intimacy—the kind where you look right up each other’s behinds—takes too long. In the old days, people exchanged hostages as a kind of mutual check. So I have an idea. What if we all show each other a few old scars? Everybody’s got something he’d just as soon people never got wind of—a tail he doesn’t want grabbed. Why don’t we all bring ours into the open, right now? Then nobody would feel tempted to do anything nasty like running to the police.”

  “How do we know the other guy isn’t making it up?” asked the shill. “How about you, Komono—can a guy like you bring yourself to be that honest?”

  “You don’t understand. Anybody can invent a story that makes him look good, but it’s next to impossible to invent weaknesses for yourself.” He half shut his eyes and licked his lips, serenely confident. “If you think you can do it, try.”

  “You might be right,” said the girl, opening her second beer.

  “When I’m borrowing money, I can think of things, all right… .” Grudgingly, the shill opened his third beer.

  The insect dealer gave a couple of dry coughs and went on. “Captain,” he said, “would you mind setting up a tape recorder? It’s a peculiar thing, but for some reason people can’t lie when a microphone is staring them in the face. Besides, later the tape could serve as material evidence. You’re excused, of course; this ship itself is your weak spot. Let’s flip a coin to see who goes first, shall we?”

  Nobody objected. First the girl won, then the shill.

  “Okay, turn on the tape, recorder.” The insect dealer started his confession. “My basic reason for joining the SDF was that I liked uniforms and guns. I was disappointed right from the start. From the time I was a kid, I was no good at fitting into groups, see, so I hoped I could straighten myself out with that uniform—but it got to be too idiotic. I decided I’d have been better off becoming a priest. Finally I got so fed up with it all that I took to stealing pistols and selling them to yakuza on the black
market. As to who my smuggling partner was, you’ll probably be hearing soon enough from the horse’s mouth… .” He glanced at the shill, who reached out and covered the mike with his hand.

  “Hey, no fair.” His speech was slurred; apparently he was the kind whose liquor didn’t show in his face. “Everybody’s got the right to decide for themselves what to tell about, right? Besides, the statute of limitations ran out on that ages ago.”

  “Okay, we’ll write that one off. Take your hand away. Anyway, three times it went off without a hitch, but the fourth time I blew it. They had a room displaying small arms from around the world, including a Belgian gun called an M.W. Vaughn. Ever hear of it? It’s one helluva gun—functions like a machine gun, and it’s no bigger than a pistol. Its only flaw is the price tag. So what was I supposed to do, just stand there with my tongue hanging out? My grades were high, so I was able to get a special study pass. The room had nearly a thousand guns on display, and right in the doorway was a computer-controlled surveillance apparatus. The system was surprisingly lax. When you went in you inserted your pass in the apparatus, which recorded your name and weight, and then when you went out you put your pass in again. It was set up so if your weight showed a discrepancy of ten ounces or more, the door would lock and an alarm would sound. So how do you think I did it?”

  “You must have taken it apart and carried it out piece by piece,” said the girl, stating the obvious.

  “Of course. Piece by piece, starting in the middle, till finally only the gun barrel was left. That alone weighed almost two pounds.”

  “I’ve got it.” This was the sort of problem I liked. I thought I could give a better answer than she had, anyway. “All you’d have to do is carry in something that weighed a little over a pound, and leave it there.”

  “Too lacking in originality.” He disposed of my idea like that. “They’d already anticipated that little tactic. When you got up to go, you pushed a switch to signal you were through, and if at that time the weight for the area around the desk in a three-foot radius wasn’t zero, a red light flashed. Even the wastepaper basket sounded an alarm if you put in anything weighing more than two ounces.”

  “Hmm, that makes it tough.” The shill was staring into space, tracing squares in his lap.

  “Don’t keep us guessing.” The girl crossed her legs on the chaise longue, slipping off her low-heeled sandals and throwing them on the floor.

  “There was one blind spot.” Bobbing his head up and down, lips pursed in triumph, he went on: “What do you think it was? The drinking fountain. After setting everything up so carefully, they went and installed a drinking fountain. That set me thinking, and finally it hit me. Are you ready? I brought in three cups’ worth of water in a plastic bag and dumped it down the drinking fountain.”

  Silence, as everyone absorbed this.

  “And you failed anyway?” The girl’s voice was hushed.

  “Hell, no. I made clean off with it.”

  “But wasn’t that why they threw you out?”

  “Oh, my luck ran out. I had all the parts sewn up in my pillow, nice and cozy, and then those bastards go and conduct a metal-detector test right in the barracks, of all places. There was no way out. Hiding loot is always harder than lifting it.”

  “That may be a tail,” said the shill, “but if you ask me, it’s like a lizard’s tail that’s already broken off—not worth a damn.” He sprawled back against the armrest of the chaise longue, and slurped the rest of his beer. “Once you were discharged, the charges were dropped, weren’t they?”

  “The hell they were. I’ll have you know I’m on the wanted list right now; I skipped out before they could make me stand trial. All right, now it’s your turn. Let’s have it straight, please.”

  The shill looked wordlessly from me to the insect dealer and back again. He sniffed, and looked at the girl. Then, as if resigned, he took a sheaf of cards out of his hip pocket and said, “Take a look. Why the dickens they do it I don’t know, but they all issue these cards, like bank cash cards. Twenty-six of them I’ve got, and all from different loan companies.”

  “It’s so they can exchange data among themselves, using computers.”

  “Counting the ones without cards, it comes to over thirty companies. I’ve borrowed a grand total of seventy million yen. I used to be a collector for loan sharks myself, so I know all the angles. I’m notorious. Almost every one of their offices has my picture on the wall, marked ‘Wanted.’ ”

  “So that’s why you were in disguise.” I felt relieved, as one of my unspoken questions about him was answered.

  “I understand there are hit men out looking for me full time. I’ll bet the reward is pretty high, too.” He paused. “That’s all. You can turn off the tape recorder.”

  “Hmm,” said the insect dealer. “Not bad, not bad. Yes, I’d say that qualifies you to come on board.” He pushed the pause button and said, “Captain, you’d better confiscate those cards as material evidence.”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” That familiar sleight of hand. The cards were gone before my outstretched hand could reach them. “The tape’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “Well, all right, if that’s the way you want it. Then shall we proceed?” The insect dealer made a circle with the fingers of one hand, and peered through it at the girl.

  “No, I can’t.” Her face stiffened, as if coated with starch.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too embarrassing.”

  “Of course it’s embarrassing. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth anything, would it? Come on now, don’t hold back.”

  Suddenly the effects of all the beer I had drunk began to tell on me. Filled with a mixture of revulsion and anticipation, I could not look squarely at her. My pulse was pumping like a treadle under my ears.

  “I don’t mean that,” she said. “I mean it’s embarrassing because I haven’t got anything to tell.”

  “Look, why don’t you let her off the hook?” It was the shill, coming to her support for once. Was there some secret between them he didn’t want her to divulge? “There’s no way she could get out of here on her own, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because one of the loan collectors who’s after me wants her as security. Let’s get back to where we were. We’ve all shown our tails now, and we’re all on an equal footing. You can be honest with me, Captain, so tell me, what’s going on? Who is that character I was chasing before?”

  The insect dealer resettled himself on the parapet and began to rock backward and forward; apparently the beer had dulled his fear of heights. The girl, still sitting cross-legged, stretched out her arms, her clasped hands turned palm out. Her too-short skirt was like a rope around my neck. The gazes of all three of them seemed to grab me by the lapels and shake me without mercy.

  “I truly do not know. Until I heard you tell about him, I had no idea—the whole idea was frightening. But the more I think about it, the more it explains. You see, I was blaming it all on rats. Would you mind telling me in detail what you saw?”

  “You first. I’m not going to have you changing your story to fit mine.”

  “Relax, will you?” The insect dealer changed his forward-and-back motion to a right-and-left sway. “Here’s our chance to prove to the captain that he wasn’t wrong to let us on board.”

  “Watch out, don’t fall!” the girl cautioned. Abruptly he ceased moving, as if caught in a freeze-frame.

  “My story is simple. Somebody poked his face in from a back tunnel, so I followed him. That’s all.”

  “Are you sure it was a person?”

  “What else could it have been? There sure as hell aren’t any rats that big.”

  “To tell the truth, for some time now I’ve sensed the presence of an intruder. But it’s too quick for a human. I’ll see something move out of the corner of my eye, and by the time I look that way, it’s gone. The center of your field of vision registers shapes, but the periphery is sensitive only to movement, you know.
So a rat and a person could look the same.”

  “Does a rat wear sneakers and a jacket? I’ll grant you he was fast. Seemed right at home in there, too. He followed a complicated course, and kept running ahead without ever slowing down or showing the least hesitation. Just when I’d think I had him cornered, he’d find a way out. He knew his way around, all right.”

  “How far did you go?”

  “How do I know? I doubt if I could find my way back again, either. We went down a couple of flights of stairs, but it was uphill most of the way. Twice we came on running water, and once it was wide enough and deep enough to call it a sort of river.”

  “You went all the way there?”

  “That’s where I lost him. Just when I thought I had him, he vanished into the air. How on earth he got over that river I can’t figure out. Aren’t there any other ways in and out of this place? There must be.”

  “I don’t know too much about that end.”

  “Well, I sure hope it doesn’t turn out that somebody you didn’t know about’s been living over there, watching every damn thing you do.”

  “Did you notice a peculiar smell?” asked the girl.

  “Yeah, maybe I did,” he said.

  “Just before the river there was a narrow bottleneck, wasn’t there?” I asked. “That’s the far boundary of the quarry. I’ve had it in mind to close that off—but still, it’s unbelievable! It’s a good four miles that far and back, as the crow flies, and you’ve got cliffs, valleys, and all kinds of hurdles in the way. I never thought those people would go so far as to cross over that boundary.”