Inter Ice Age 4

by Kono Abe

  I phoned the guard on duty and inquired whether the lights in the computer room were still on or not. He coughed, clearing his throat, and then responded hoarsely that the lights were out and that apparently no one was in. I made a cheese sandwich, washed it down with beer, and prepared to leave at once. My wife stood there confused, scratching with the fingernails of her left hand the clenched right one, which she held under her chin. Since she assumed that I was only irked at what had gone wrong at the hospital, she was doubtless now feeling guilty as a reaction to her first excitement.

  “Why don’t you drop the whole thing? You must be tired.”

  “Were the seven thousand yen in some kind of envelope?"

  ‘No, just loose cash.”

  I restrained her from setting off to get the money, and put on my shoes.

  “When are you going to have a little time? I’ve something I want to discuss with you . . . about Yoshio. He’s been going to school, but occasionally hasn’t been going to classes, they tell me. The teacher spoke to me about it.”

  “Forget it. He’s still just a child.”

  “Can we go to the shore day after tomorrow, Sunday?”

  “Yes, if the committee comes to some decision tomorrow.”

  “Yoshio’s looking forward to it, you know.”

  One after the other I crushed fragile eggshells within my heart; and as I did so, I went, saying nothing. In any case, they were only fragile eggshells. Even if I hadn’t broken them, someone surely would have. Rather than being nervous about when they would collapse, I should feel all the more satisfaction for having broken them myself.

  As I went out, I could hear the sound of footsteps crossing the street and hurrying up the lane facing the gate. I set out on my customary way in the direction of the main street, whereupon the footsteps left the lane and followed me, pretending casualness. Quite definitely the one who had been loitering in front of the Institute a while ago. Abruptly I turned around and began walking in the opposite direction, straight toward my shadower, who took to his heels in confusion down an alley. Compared with shadowers I had read about in novels, he was frightfully inept. A rank amateur. If he was not, perhaps he was purposely trying to underline his presence. I at once set out in pursuit.

  I was somewhat faster than he. I had not run for a long time, but my school training stood me in good stead apparently. Besides, the fellow hesitated an instant at the next cross street, wondering which way to go, and I shortened the distance between us even more. Catching up with him on some gravel in about a hundred yards, I slipped my right hand through his left arm and pulled him up. He tried to escape, but lost his footing and fell down on one knee. I was on the verge of falling myself, but managed to keep myself upright without loosening my grip. We wrestled, silently, breathing hard, each of us trying to gain the advantage. In the matter of running, the chances of winning favored me, but in the ability of handling my body, I was, as I knew, no match for him. Twisting his body, he suddenly went limp and plunged his greasy head into my stomach. I staggered back. I fell, my breath gone, like a piece of lead.

  When I recovered, I heard the distant footfalls of the running man. Apparently I had lost consciousness a bare instant. But I had no strength to pursue him; the nauseous stench of his pomade clung to me. When I stood up, the area below my ribs ached as if something had been ruptured inside. Crouching down, I vomited, throwing up a mixture of beer and stomach acids.

  When I had cleaned myself off, I walked to the main thoroughfare and found a cab. I had it wait for me in front of Tanomogi’s fiat at Takata no Baba. I inquired of the janitor, but Tanomogi was not there. He said that no, he had not gone out, but he had not yet come home. I had the cab take me at once to the Institute.

  The guard, twisting the towel he had tied around his neck, was terribly nervous when he caught sight of me. He wore nothing on the upper part of his body.

  “Now look here. The lights are on.”

  “Oh . . . yes, I see they are. I’ll just ring up and check. Probably they went on while I was out in back taking a bath. Just a minute, please.”

  Paying no attention to him, I entered the Institute. A dead silence had fallen over the building. The darkness enfolded me and every step I took made the silence ring like a somber sheet of foil. At length a light shining through a door bespoke someone’s presence. The only keys were mine, Tanomogi’s, and the extra one in the guardroom. Tanomogi might just be working late (in which case the guard had lied to me for some reason). Or had he come back to get something he had forgotten? Either way, I was once again brought face to face with still one more happenstance. But surely I had somehow half anticipated catching Tanomogi by coming here. I could not really explain why, but I did have that feeling. Tanomogi would doubtless greet me by saying something to the effect that he had come here thinking to see me. Would it be the truth or a lie? I did not know, but anyway as he spoke he would probably show his affable, smiling face. I mused that I should never have the courage to answer with a smile. I didn’t want to think like this, but the impression was forming that I could no longer give in so meekly to Tanomogi as I had been doing. Though it was unreasonable to suppose that he was conspiring with the enemy against me, it was a very singular happenstance that we had decided to take the accountant who was murdered as the test case for our prediction. And it was quite incomprehensible that from the beginning I should have taken as apparent fact the concatenation of happenstances like this trumped-up story. At least he apparently knew something more than I and was looking into the future a step ahead of me. (It was he who had introduced such extravagant ideas as water mammals and the like, thus backing up the hypothesis that fetuses were being sold.) Otherwise the whole thing would have been considered merely the fantastic notion of a kindhearted accountant. At the time Tanomogi had apparently wanted to say more; but it had seemed too ridiculous; and I had left, perversely, without hearing him out. But now was no time to be obstinate; I wanted something for a clue, anything.

  20

  The door was unlocked. Repressing the pain in my ribs, I turned the knob and thrust it open in a single motion. Surprisingly, cool air struck my cheeks. But I was even more astonished at the person with the hard smile facing me, her hands on the chair before the machine. It was Wada Katsuko.

  Wada was smiling. But her expression changed to one of surprise. She had apparently been expecting someone else.

  “It’s you, is it?”

  “Oh, you surprised me.”

  “I’m the one who’s surprised. What have you been doing here so late?”

  Taking a deep breath, Wada turned on her heels and sat down lightly on the chair. I wondered if she herself were aware of it: She appeared quite unconcerned, whereas I considered her actually a most expressive girl.

  “I’m sorry. I had an appointment to meet Mr. Tanomogi.”

  “Nothing to worry about. Have you been making appointments to meet here?”

  “There’s been a very strange misunderstanding,” she said, turning her eyes away and shaking her head slightly right and left. “We really intended to speak to you a lot sooner, sir, but . . .”

  So it was true. So terribly true. A bitter, involuntary laugh welled up within me.

  “Al right, all right,” I said. “Don’t worry. Was he supposed to come here?’’

  “No, he was supposed to be waiting here. But when I came over to see, everyone had apparently left. I went home for a bit and then to his house, but he wasn’t there either.”

  I was suddenly overcome with a flesh-tingling fear.

  “But the guard just called, didn’t he?”

  “He did, but since he said the professor had come, I took it for granted it was Tanomogi,” she replied, smiling self-consciously-perhaps she did not apprehend the significance of my change of tone.

  From the guard’s standpoint, of course, Tanomogi was also Professor. “But the air conditioning in this room is pretty high. It looks to me as if the machine’s been running until a very
few minutes ago.”

  Wada looked abashed and ducked her head. “That’s why I decided to wait. I thought he intended coming right back.”

  It made sense. There was nothing to be suspicious about. I was a little too jumpy. Even the guard’s confusion was explainable: He had secretly aided and abetted the assignation. Love. If it was love, there was nothing to be concerned about. An ordinary case of love. There was nothing more certain than this everyday sense of continuity.

  “But I hadn’t noticed that things had gone so far between the two of you.”

  “I didn’t want to stop work here, you see.”

  “But it’s certainly all right for you to be earning a living together, isn’t it?”

  “It’s complicated. For all sorts of reasons.”

  ". . . Maybe so.”

  I didn’t really understand the “all sorts of reasons,” but I felt relieved and experienced the sensation of wanting to laugh.

  “While we’re about it, I wonder if you’d use me as a sample case and forecast my future.”

  That would be interesting. If she had been a sample case, I would have known about the affair with Tanomogi and been able to avoid all this fuss.

  “I’m serious,” she said, running her long fingernails slowly around the edge of the machine. “There’s no rhyme or reason why someone should have to go on living.”

  “Come, come. It’s usual enough . . . with someone.”

  “By ‘with someone,’ I suppose you mean getting married.”

  “Oh, anything you like. It’s not that we live because everything can be explained. We want to explain things because we’re alive.”

  “Everybody talks like that. But I really wonder if one would want to go on living after having his future told.”

  “Are you saying you want to know your future expressly to put the proposition to the test? That’s dangerous talk.”

  “Well, what about you, sir?”

  “What do you mean?’’

  “Since you don’t know what your future will bring, you can live now. If living is all that important, how is it possible to abort children who should be born?”

  I swallowed hard and shrugged. Back of my ears there was a sound as of something breaking. Wada had spoken in a terribly casual voice. Of course, it was the combination of happenstances. I said: “There’s no reason to treat something that has no conscience yet the same as a human being.”

  “Legally, no, I suppose,” she continued in a clear, cutting tone, “but it’s rather inconsistent to say that it doesn’t matter if you kill a child still in the womb in the ninth month but that it won’t do to kill one born prematurely. I should think that tolerating such an explanation shows a lack of imagination.”

  “If you go on thinking that way, there’s no end to it. Carry that argument out and it would mean that a woman who had the opportunity of becoming pregnant and who did not take it and a man who had the opportunity of causing that pregnancy but who did not were both ultimately murderers, indirectly.” I gave an unnecessarily loud laugh. “Even now as we prattle on like this, we’re possibly committing murder.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, shifting in her seat and looking up straight into my eyes.

  “Maybe we’re duty-bound to save these children.”

  “Yes, maybe we are,” she agreed without so much as a smile.

  Embarrassed, I walked over to the window as I placed a cigarette between my lips. I experienced a strange, feverish feeling, as if the lubrication between my joints had drained away.

  “You’re a dangerous girl, you know.”

  I could hear Wada standing up. Motionlessly I waited for something. Then, unable to endure the silence, I turned and looked around. She was standing stiffly upright, a hard expression that I had never seen on her face. I tried to say something, anything; but as I was searching for the words, she spoke: “Please give me a direct answer. I’m standing in judgment on you sir.”

  I laughed . . . meaninglessly. Then she too smiled faintly.

  “You’re a very strange girl.”

  “This is a trial,” she said, reassuming her serious expression. “Now, you don’t consider the killing of a fetus a crime, do you, sir?”

  “We’ll never get any place this way.”

  “Then, sir, you really don’t have the courage to put your own future to the forecasting machine.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh, nothing. Let’s drop the subject.”

  Suddenly the brakes were applied, and my heart flew out of my body with the momentum. Wada looked up at the ceiling with big, wide-open eyes and nodded knowingly. If her expression had not been so innocent, I would certainly have cried out.

  But she looked at her watch as if nothing had happened, and sighed. Following the example, I glanced at my own. It was 9:05.

  “He’s late, isn’t he. Well, I think I’d better be getting home.” She raised her eyes and smiled and then quickly turned her body in a movement as if she were dipping something from the air, and in the same stance suddenly left the room. I was taken unawares and did not know what to do. I could only watch her from the window as she spoke to the guard and went unhesitatingly out the gate.

  I tensed my legs and stretched. It was an expression of my feeling that I would not be toyed with further. Incredible that Wada should be so ill disposed to me, that she should adopt such a strange attitude toward me. Taken at face value, it was doubtless nothing at all. Wasn’t it rather that I was the one who was so troubled and bewildered because I thought it strange? I must calm myself and consider things objectively. I must establish priorities of what had to be done for now, and clearly distinguish between what was important and what was not.

  I laid out some paper on the work table and traced on it a large circle. I attempted to draw another, smaller circle inside the first, but as I was doing so the lead in my pencil broke, and I could not completely close it.

  21

  I was on the point of leaving any number of times, but I changed my mind and continued waiting. Surely when Tanomogi knew I was here, he would come. It was about that time right now. Or could it be that he was deliberately provoking me? No, I must stop tiring myself with purposeless conjecture.

  Twenty minutes . . . forty-five . . . fifty minutes. Finally, at 10:10 the telephone rang.

  “Sir? I’ve just seen Wada. . . .” Far from sounding abashed, his voice was even sprightly. “Yes. I’ve something important to show you, sir. If you want me to, I’ll come to your house. . . . I see. . . . Then I’ll be right over . . . within five minutes.”

  I composed myself as I stood waiting by the window. Standing motionless looking into the distant night, I went over again and again the first words I intended to utter when I saw Tanomogi. A thin, white membrane seemed to be stretched between the sky and the rooftops. Beneath lay the elevated station. There myriad experiences and lives jostled each other like waves. It was like the sea, which, seen from a mountaintop, appears calm. There is always order in the distant view. No matter how strange the happening, it can never project from the frame, from the order which this distant view possesses. A taxi stopped, and Tanomogi got out. He looked up at the window and waved his hand. It had taken him precisely five minutes.

  “We missed each other all around.”

  “Mm. Sit down,” I said, indicating the chair Wada had used. I remained standing as I was, with the light behind me. “I’ve been waiting a long time, you know. Did you miss Wada?”

  “No. To tell the truth, I was out all along. I was kept waiting at the place I went to.”

  ‘‘I see. All right,” I said, controlling myself so that my feeling of tenseness would not show in my voice. “That may well be, I suppose. I’d like to have the machine record our conversation together now.”

  “What do you mean?” Tanomogi leaned his head to one side as if he did not understand, but he did not look especially flustered.

  “I’d like to re-examine quite carefully the events
that have occurred since this morning.”

  “A good idea,” he said, nodding curtly and shifting eagerly in his seat. “I was just on the point of attempting to put them in some sort of order myself. Of course, I thought that you wouldn’t feel very much like it. I was a little worried. You remember when you were leaving for home you were pretty upset.”

  “Yes, I guess I was. What was it we were talking about then?”

  “You were saying that you had had enough of playing detective.”

  “Oh yes, so I did. Let’s start right there. Turn the switch.”

  Tanomogi leaned over the power controls and uttered a cry of surprise.

  “It’s been left on! The power light’s burned out. That’s why I didn’t notice it. Amazing!”

  “What about the connection to the recording?”

  “There’s a hi-fi mike.”

  “Then we’ve been recorded all along?”

  “Apparently,” he said as he skillfully opened up the machine with the screwdriver provided for that purpose, closely following the knobs and protuberances of the intricately entwined copper nerve fibers. “Mm . . .You know, Wada persists in maintaining that I absolutely was here until a little while ago. She says the proof is that the air conditioning was going. I thought what she said was strange, but now I understand.”

  I was disappointed. I was more dismayed that he had dodged me so effortlessly than suspicious that this too might have been planned. When he had answered that he had been out all along, I was secretly delighted, thinking I had caught him in a contradiction: the business of the air conditioning. But with the vanguard of the army beaten, one is helpless. There was no use grumbling.

  “Well, first of all, let’s proceed with a recapitulation of the situation,” I said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “In the first place, we picked out a man to serve as a sample case to present to the programming committee. The choice was absolutely unplanned. It was, in fact, pure accident. But the man was suddenly killed by someone. Then the possibility naturally arose that suspicion might fall on us since we happened to be at the scene of the crime.”