by Kōbō Abe
From imagination alone, it was a most striking face, large, sharply outlined, with a mobile expression. I tried in vain to sketch it, but I could not. There were spots on it, like pale, indistinct smudges on a wall—perhaps freckles. But the face aside, I could recall the appearance of the hair. It was rather fine, black and long. Softly masking the left half of her clear forehead it looked as if it would be difficult to comb. There was a metallic gleam to it. I had come thus far, without knowing how. Possibly she was consciously avoiding having her expression read. Or had she exhibited in the short time I had been here five or six quite different expressions at the same time? She may have taken some dislike to me. If she had, this affair was more than I had anticipated, insidious, wheels within wheels. It would soon be three minutes since she had gone into the kitchen. Suddenly fretful, I lit a second cigarette. Rising from my seat, I walked around the table and stood by the window.
Individually, the panes of glass were small, but the aluminum frame left the view unobstructed. Across the flagstone walkway, about ten yards wide, rose the north wall of East 2. There was only an emergency stairway along the smooth, dark, windowless surface. Immediately down to the left ran the main road I mentioned before, which permitted an unimpeded view for some distance. When I brought my face close to the glass I could see my own parked car. When I crowded as closely as possible up to the bookcases at the left edge of the window, the vista stretched to a point just before the slope beyond the road; this joined the corner line of the next building at about a thirty-degree angle, and thus the view of the walkway was delimited by the far end of East 2.
At a point about the middle of my car, on an angle with my line of vision, the street light suddenly and eerily went out. Perhaps an automatic cutoff switch, functioning with hypersensitivity, had gone out of order somewhere. But, perhaps, too, it was time for the light to go out. The number of passers-by had increased amazingly from what it had been—not only women coming back from their shopping, but men returning home from work. Perhaps a bus had pulled in. Looking down on them as I was, I realized very well that man was a walking animal.
No, rather than walking, I had the feeling he was fighting gravitation, diligently lugging around his heavy bag of skin packed with viscera. Some were returning, going back to the place they had left … leaving in order to return. They go out to obtain walling material to make the thick walls of their houses thicker, stronger than ever to return to.
But sometimes, though rarely, some men go out never to return.
“WELL THEN, what about clues? Tell me in detail whatever occurs to you.”
“I can’t. There’s absolutely nothing at all.”
“Just anything that comes to you. Even if you don’t have proof or anything to back it up.”
“Well, all right … There are the matches, for one thing.”
“What did you say?”
“A matchbox. A half-used box of matches from some coffee house. It was in his raincoat pocket along with a sports paper.”
“I see.” Suddenly her expression changed. Looking again at her face, which quite confused me, I found it rather unpleasant. Her face—the shallow smile quite suited it, as if the disappearance of her husband were a kind of satisfaction—was strangely composed, in perfect balance. Or could it be that after a half year of sorrow and despair the mainspring that controlled her will had been completely broken, and she had sunk to the depths of distraction at having been abandoned? Perhaps she had been a beautiful woman. Her features seemed to have slipped out of their proper place; it was as if I was looking at her through an unfocused lens. “If you think the matchbox might be some sort of clue …”
“No, not particularly. It’s just that it was in the raincoat pocket, and I thought …”
“Now if I could just get you to sign this application, we’ll get on with the investigation. But as I’ve explained to you, the deposit which you pay covers the investigation expenses for a week. In case we cannot locate your husband within one week we take no remuneration, of course; but there is no question of returning the thirty thousand yen on deposit, you understand. In case the investigation continues, that will mean another thirty thousand. And besides that, we are obliged to charge for the actual expenses connected with the investigation.”
“Is this the place I sign?”
“But I can’t carry on much of an investigation with the vague information you have given. It’s all right, I suppose, since it’s our business to get it, but don’t you feel as if you were throwing thirty thousand yen out the window?”
“Oh, what a mess this is!”
“There must be something, something more concrete, like who you want me to tail, where you want me to look.”
“If only there was,” she sighed, turning her head slightly to the side. She raised the glass of beer to her mouth, drinking alone, for I had refused, since I was driving. “But I can’t believe this whole thing happened. He had all kinds of opportunities, nobody could understand … nobody.”
“Opportunities?”
“Business ones, I mean.”
“You’ve done some investigation yourself, haven’t you? It’s already been half a year.”
“Yes, my younger brother has.”
“Ah. He was the one on the telephone, wasn’t he? He talked as if he represented you. If that’s the case, it would be simpler if I addressed myself directly to him, I think.”
“But … well … I don’t know exactly where he is.”
“Come now. It’s a vicious circle, a man looking for someone who’s disappeared and who has himself disappeared.”
“My brother isn’t lost, you know. He always telephones me once every three days. He does. As long as he phones, there’s still hope. I have such terrible thoughts. I can’t stand not knowing my husband’s motives.”
“But it doesn’t seem all that terrible, does it, really?”
“It’s strange. Maybe I’ve just got into the habit of being patient.”
“Since you’ve entrusted things to your brother, haven’t you done anything yourself?”
“I’ve waited. Every day, every single day.”
“You’ve just been waiting …?”
“My brother was against my doing anything, and then I was afraid to leave the house empty, too.”
“Why?”
“Well, it would have been awkward if by any chance my husband had taken it into his head to come home while I was away. We would have missed each other altogether.”
“I’d like to know your brother’s reason for not wanting you to do anything.”
“Ah, yes, I suppose …” Her expression became more and more distant, more and more vague; the dark spots under her eyes, like a veil enfolding her dream, suited her well. “I suppose my brother had a mind of his own. But it was too much for him after all. I couldn’t wait any longer either. Well, finally my brother gave up and we decided to go to you.”
“Mrs. Nemuro, are you something of a drinker?”
The bottle of beer she was absently pouring into her glass immobilized in mid-air; she was stunned.
“Once in a while,” she said, nodding her head distractedly, “since my husband’s been away. When I’m just waiting here alone, I dream with my eyes wide open. It’s a strange dream. I seem to be following him. And then he pops out right behind me and starts tickling me like this. I know it’s a dream, yet I laugh and laugh with the tickling … it makes me feel very funny. A strange dream.”
“It is indeed. I think it would be well if I met your brother.”
“I’ll tell him the next time he calls. But … I wonder … if he’ll be very anxious to meet you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“How shall I say? I just feel it. I’m afraid I don’t express myself very well.”
“Is it all right then? I’ve got to have information. I’m sure you understand, don’t you? I don’t intend to go prying into your brother’s affairs at all. I’d just like to get him to give me the informa
tion he has. Isn’t it a waste of time to start in all over again on what your brother’s already done? As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have anything more to say here.”
“I’ll tell you everything I know. But what?”
“Well … any clues.”
“Oh, but there aren’t any, no matter what you say.”
“All right then, let it go.” I too was ready to give up. “Now, let’s begin by your explaining things as they happened.”
“Well, it’s all terribly simple. Too simple, really … surprisingly so. Let me see,” she said, rising lightly from her seat and running to the window corner where she beckoned to me with a finger. “Over there. Can you see it? About ten paces in front of that street light. There, near the sidewalk on the lawn. See that small manhole? Right there, he vanished into thin air. Why? Why in a place like that? There was no need for it, absolutely none at all.”
THE DARK street … too dark … The street, which until a short while ago had been too white, linked as it had been with the milky sky, was now a street in the depths of a gorge, sunk at the bottom of a sky stained with street lights. I stepped off ten paces from the light, groping for the manhole cover with the tip of my shoe—the place where the husband had, so she said, vanished.
Women out for their evening shopping and of course the red baby carriage and the boy with his bicycle were wiped away with a paintbrush of darkness, workers who had gone directly home were already settling down in their respective filing-cabinet homes while their friends, thinking it too early to return, tarried along the way … the abandoned gorges of unfinished time. I stood motionless in the very place where he had vanished.
The wind blew, threading its way between the dwellings. Freezing blasts of air, striking the sharp corners of the buildings, howled in a bass that the ear could barely catch. Even so, the moaning of this great pipe organ penetrated to the very quick of me. My whole body became gooseflesh, my blood congealed, my heart was transformed into a red, heart-shaped ice bag. A trampled asphalt walkway. The broken, abandoned rubber ball visible as a white speck on the lawn. The cracked corpse of the street, illuminated by the street lights that gilded even my dust-speckled shoes. One could scarcely hope to arrive at any place worth mentioning along such a street.
Yes, of course, it was a half year ago, August to be exact, and the summer heat was at its worst. The asphalt was as sticky as gum and swarms of insects clustered around the street lights. The grass was a green pond rippled by the wind, into which the castaway ball had sunk to the bottom. One had to stamp one’s feet, not because of the cold but because of the swarms of mosquitoes that welled up from the manhole. Supposing the husband had paused at such a place … No, that was wrong. It was still morning when he had passed here for the last time. Moreover, early morning; the street lights had blinked off and the insects had sunk into the depths of the grass. It was the time when the gorges stripped themselves of their darkness and again became the hillside town, so white, so close to the sky. Perhaps it was a marvelous morning of blue sky, a day with a strong southwesterly breeze. The first beat of the city’s heart is a signal; within a five-minute period hundreds of filing cabinets are unlocked at one click and swarms of different but indistinguishable workers, like a wall of water released from the floodgates of a dam, suddenly throng the streets … a time of living.
“YES, it’s true. They’re like a legion of rats cast under a magic spell. You know, like in the fairy tale.” The woman spread her arms wide, perhaps intending to show the width of the street. Her eyes blurred, no doubt from having drunk the beer alone, and looking from one to the other of her outstretched arms, she murmured as if in surprise, “How dark!” Suddenly she stood up, switched on the light in the room, and then went into the kitchen. She continued speaking in the same tone through the curtain. “It’s not only the sidewalks; even the streets are packed. And they’re all rushing for fear they’ll miss their bus … little by little they swarm together in the middle of the street.”
“But a bus can’t keep its schedule in such a crowd, can it?”
“Of course not,” she said, holding in her hand another bottle of beer, as she came back into the room. “They rush all the more because it’s unreliable, I suppose.”
Placing the bottle on the table, she casually turned toward the window. With the light on, it was already evening outside. The Picasso print was reflected in the panes. As if threatened by something, she roughly pulled the curtains that covered half the wall, and their lemon-yellow color transformed the room. Lemon-yellow it was, but it was not very fresh. A rather withered and shop-worn lemon. The masterless room, which had been like a cast-off cicada skin, suddenly came alive again, thanks to the color. One could say that it was not the lost man that had been missing but simply the lemon color. Suddenly a stuffed cat appeared above the bookcases. Below the cutaway view, Formula I, was a small sconce and on it a lace-net glove. A room well suited to lemon-yellow. A woman well suited to lemon-yellow. Her room. A room for her, adjusted to her life. I tilted my head. My sixth cigarette. And she with her second bottle of beer. Something was suspicious.
A place about ten paces from the street light in the direction of the hill. Where there was a small manhole on the border of the lawn. There he was, absorbed in his thoughts, walking slowly along the edge of the sidewalk, skirting the crowd of workers, hurrying down the street as if pursued. Someone in the neighborhood had observed him. Even if it was true that this was the last sight of him, what could it possibly mean?
“Wouldn’t it be more intelligent to assume that rather than running in the direction of the bus, which was unreliable, he had quietly gone down the hill with the intention of taking the subway from the very first? That very morning he must have had an appointment in S—– station, for if he were going directly to work the bus would have been more convenient.”
“But he didn’t keep the appointment.”
“It is significant that his not keeping the appointment was deliberate and willful.”
“You’re wrong there. I’ll put it another way. How shall I say …”
“Did you say he’d been going back and forth to work by car until three days before he disappeared?”
“Yes. He put it in the garage with something or other wrong with it.”
“And what about the car now?”
“Yes, I wonder what’s happened to it,” she said, her eyes wide in what one could only suppose to be surprised innocence. “My brother would surely know.”
“Your brother again? But unfortunately your brother isn’t available.”
“Oh, my brother’s the one who had the idea of helping you like this. It’s true. Please believe me. My brother’s like that.” Then suddenly her voice became more intense. “It’s true. My husband didn’t break his word. He didn’t, really. I’ve proof. It just occurred to me I have. That morning, he left once and then came back again right away. That’s important, I think. It was only a minute after he had gone downstairs. He forgot the paper clip. It occurred to him that he should clip separately some of the documents he was supposed to hand over at S—– station.”
“I’ve heard that already.”
“Oh dear. I suppose you have.” The girl smiled tightly with her lips, showing her teeth, but she could not conceal the anxiety in her eyes. “I’m always talking to myself. I’m sorry. It’s a habit. No one objects no matter how many times I say things to myself, you see. It’s stupid … the paper clip … I always thought so. But I wondered if the fact that he came back for it wasn’t proof he really intended to keep the appointment. Since I’m asked by everyone, I’ve got in the habit of repeating only that.”
“Everyone?”
“The ones I talk to when I talk to myself. But the clip business is so trivial. It’s all right for attaching papers, I suppose. But I realize my only real hope depends on that little clip.”
I WALKED slowly ahead, halted, turned on my heel, and walked back again over the rough asphalt sidewalk. With normal s
trides, it was thirty-two paces from the corner of building number three. When I looked up, the row of street lights, artificial eyes that had forgotten how to blink, seemed to be waiting for a festival procession that would never come. The pale, rectangular lights reflected in the windows had long since abandoned such festivals. The wind slapped at my sides like a wet rag. Raising the collar of my coat, I began walking again.
If I believed her literally—or the words she spoke to herself—within these thirty some paces an unreasonable and unforeseen event had lain in wait for him. And as a result ofit he had not only disregarded the appointment at S—– station, but had boldly and irreversibly stepped across a chasm, turning his back on the world.
“ALL RIGHT. Purely in terms of imagination, the following is conceivable. For example—don’t take it amiss—a blackmailer who knew some weakness of your husband’s. For example, an old mistress, a child he may have had by her—these things happen—some youthful error still outstanding that could crop up like an unexpected ghost. Furthermore, it’s August, the month when they say dead souls come back to earth, just the right season for ghosts. And women aren’t the only ones who come back as spirits. A sometime accomplice in embezzlement, now ruined by dissipation, is a fine candidate too … a vindictive second offender just out of prison. Don’t you know of some habitual blackmailer who may have been arrested through secret information given by your husband? Of course, the trap might also have been set by some perfect stranger. We’ve had our hands full with forgery cases lately. Apparently, forceful methods are in fashion … like secretly taking out insurance on a man in one’s own name and then killing him by running him over in a car. Of course, unless the body is discovered and the identity confirmed, it isn’t worth a yen. But I should imagine that’s not your husband’s case. Perhaps, since there’s still no word from the police, we should consider the case as accidental death or the same as accidental death. If it’s murder, he’s probably incased in cement at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. But if that’s true, it complicates matters. It would mean that he was involved with a pretty dangerous gang. A smuggling organization, maybe, or a counterfeiting ring.”