by Kōbō Abe
But it was the view of the opposite side of the river, separated by the bank, that caught my attention. Until now it had not been visible, being concealed by the levee around the pear orchard, but a broad expanse of naked terrain clear of fields, houses, and woods was brilliantly illuminated from three sides, like a stage, by great projectors three feet in diameter. About a hundred yards to the left a field office and a number of mess buildings, like blocks of light, were brimming with animation; it was as bustling as a miniature city. Bulldozers and power shovels were biting into the front of the hill. Patterned stripes cut by the caterpillar trucks ran in and out among them. A dump road connected the highway with the work site. Suddenly the sound of a siren howled across the river bed, and the roar of motors and machinery that had reverberated through the black sky slipped into silence. Three trucks set out in the direction of the work site from the mess hall. Every truck, it appeared, had more than enough relief teams, and as I watched the ceaselessly lit area I realized that there were three reliefs working round the clock. “Now is the period of peak activity,” he said, raising his voice. I drove the car into the dry river bed.
When we drew near the site, I could sense an even greater animation than I had from the river bank. They had placed boards for shelter from the rain over the folding doors in the back of the buses, and the rear alcove was turned into a counter where, standing up, one could consume boiled vegetables, saké, hot dogs, and noodles. Behind the counter was a gas range and, at the moment, what appeared to be a cook with a white apron was seated cross-legged on a rather thick cushion. As the counter rose only about four inches from the floor, one had to bend rather low to pick up the food.
There were six miniature buses in all—I wondered if the fuel supply workers had lied to me or whether only tonight there were fewer than usual—and three of the six had a number of customers. In the center of the semicircle of buses, three girls and two men stood round a bonfire burning in a drum. The men wore low black boots and quilted jackets with wild vertical stripes and tawny waistbands—no doubt about what kind of crowd they were. The girls were swathed in heavy coats up to their ears, and the tops of their heads were all one could see. Their vulgar hairdos, teased by the blaze that spurted from the drum, were quite appropriate for a dirty mattress. A young man, carrying kerosene drums in both hands, clumped heavily over the stones from the direction of the river. Perhaps he had gone for water. It might be a good idea to disinfect the boiled vegetables here with a little saká. He went straight toward the bus at the right-hand edge of the semicircle. For some reason no customers were there nor were the lanterns burning.
Indeed, as the fuel supply workers had said, he seemed quite well known. In the livid light, the cook’s yellow, conspicuously dropsical, unshaven face displayed a nonetheless friendly sloe-eyed smile as he wiped his hands on his apron.
“Pretty chilly.”
“What about a cup of warm saké?” said the brother invitingly.
“I’ll take noodles, since I’m driving.”
I was not bluffing or being particularly obstinate. I had the tendency to arouse a policeman’s antipathy more than was necessary. Perhaps it was because in some way our professions seemed to have too many points in common. For my own protection, I should try not to hurt feelings. If I could drink I would, of course. But if I did, I would have to leave my car here. If tomorrow, with the trouble of coming all the way out here again, I could still make the money seem right on the books, well, that would be another story. Supposing, for instance, that by coming again I was clever enough to put my hands on M and be able to get hold of some conclusive testimony …
He put the noodles, newly made, which were cleverly wrapped around his chopsticks, into the boiling kettle, carefully stirring them so they would not spread out. The characteristic smell of lard and flour stung my nostrils pleasantly.
“Say, if you’re cold, I’ll borrow a muffler for you.” He turned to the unshaven cook and said: “Give him something.”
I had refused before the cook began searching the shelf behind him, whereupon the brother said hurriedly: “Come on, give us a raw egg on the house.” He stood up abruptly and walked off in the direction of the bonfire. The men there greeted him as they stood with their arms stiff by their sides, their legs apart, their shoulders back, only their heads bent. He simply nodded. Apparently, he was the leader. But the girls disinterestedly waved their hands. He was apparently more than a good customer. Well, the men at the fuel supplier’s had described him as a tough. This self-styled brother met the description.
“You in the same gang as that guy?”
“No, only a friend.”
The cook looked down at his hands; perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed to be faintly smiling. With his empty hand he vigorously began to scratch his crotch. In an instant my appetite left me—-but, well, his hand was on the outside and the crockery had apparently already been boiled. I would stand it this time.
If it were true that the brother was a thug, my intuition about him had been correct then. It was ridiculous of me to expect straight information from him. Of course, he had said he was going to use blackmail to get the money to pay for the expenses of the investigation. If the point of the investigation—or better, of its failure—was to give him an alibi for his wrongdoing, then it was a kind of vicious circle and he was not lying. There was no longer any room for me to do anything. As long as the investigation fee was not paid with a fake check or a rubber check—any money would do—it no longer had anything to do with me.
Standing round the bonfire, the brother and the men were talking casually together. The three girls remained aloof and indifferent. I had the feeling that somewhere, some place, I had witnessed precisely the same scene. The air holes pierced in the body of the drum shone green. A red pillar of flame spewed up into the black sky, scattering a fiery dust. The chill penetrated my body from my feet upward. I could not feel much of a wind, perhaps because we were cut off by the embankment, but directly above my head the sky resounded. It was like the static of a radio turned to full volume on no wave length of any station. A thousand shriveled fingers were strumming on the twigs and branches of the copse on the hill. I measured with my eye the position of the veneer partition with its tiny door beyond the unshaven cook. It seemed closer to the driver’s seat than to the center of the bus. Indeed, if that were really true, there would seem to be enough room for a mattress. I flexed my toes in my shoes, trying to get the blood moving.
“Can you get it inside?”
“No, not here,” said the cook, skillfully scooping up the boiled noodles in a metal net and shaking them firmly to drain the water. He glanced at me probingly out of the corner of his eye. “Better drop it. You can’t call them women … coming to work in a place like this.”
“Well then, isn’t there any other kind of fun?”
“We just rent the room. It’s that guy’s regular pad. Unfortunately, I puke just seeing a female cat. I asked a doctor … said it was diabetes. I hate having a cat in heat hanging around: I want to club it to death. You can’t club people to death. What a laugh. Well, anyway, I wish I had had diabetes when I was young. Once I let those bitches in here, I’d never get out of it. These eggs here are raw and over there they’re hard-boiled. Besides, whether or not I let them use the place I have to pay squeeze money to the syndicate. So what’s the difference?”
I broke an egg in a bowl and warmed my palms on the hot porcelain.
“You think it’s interesting? Well, I wonder. I suppose I should thank my lucky stars if I can finish paying off the monthly installments by the time I shut this place down.”
“Are you in business with your own car?”
“It hasn’t been the paying work I expected. There’s a traffic law, you know. The Road Traffic Control Law, or something—anyway, even if you’ve got a car you can’t park just anywhere you want to do your business.”
“Pass the pepper.”
“After all, there’s a
limit to places like this—a dry river bed or the seashore—places where the traffic laws don’t apply. Besides, I’m on the lookout for a spot that’d be good for business. If I don’t give my contribution to the syndicate, I can’t open up. That’s the trick of it.”
“You’ve only got to get in the good graces of some syndicate some place, don’t you?”
“It’s pat or be eaten. Nobody leaves me alone. But I’m not saying this because you seem to know that guy. He’s not too hard on me. And he’s not always plucking the goose. Like he promised from the first, we depend on each other. Well, when I finish my monthly payments and if the car lasts that long, I’m going to the seashore in the country this summer and try to get something.”
The brother had said it was useless to look for traces of the husband here. The Dainen Enterprises’ director and the young clerk Tashiro had stressed the same thing. And now … Having checked M Fuel Supplier with my own eyes and walked myself through F—— Town, I too was inclined more and more to the same idea. It was the M Fuel Suppliers alone that connected F—— Town with him. It was merely a commonplace, ordinary relationship of wholesaler and retailer. Yet, inasmuch as it was commonplace, the appearance of the brother on the scene posed something of a problem. Other than being the brother-in-law of the missing husband, he had no business connection with him. He was indeed connected through F—— Town with the husband and that constituted a link; what in heaven’s name could it mean? Was this just one more of his “happenstances” he was so fond of?
Of course, the thought occurred to me that the link between F—— Town and the husband and the other link between F—— Town and the brother were quite unrelated and independent, but then, the plot was too close to perfect. Since my client was the sister of the one and the wife of the other, both links possessed an inseparable point of contact. Maybe, by having joined the two links perfectly, I was producing more of a fiction. Even the director of Dainen Enterprises and young Tashiro had joined the accomplices by agreeing with what the brother had said, and it was conceivable that they might escape to some zone of safety out of my reach. If I wanted to follow the chief’s advice, I should take the attitude that I was getting money to stop my ears, not to listen for something; to close my eyes, not to look around; to nap the day away, not to accomplish anything.
Well …
For the second time the siren howled like a frightened calf. Finally the brother came back, biting his lower lip, grinding the pebbles under his feet, and making no attempt to hide his anger. The cook at once filled a steaming mug which the brother snatched up.
“Big joke. They told me there were only three girls. Are they up to something or what?”
“You know, nothing but colds just now,” replied the cook, shaking his head vehemently left and right. Taking up a green kettle with an enamelware handle, he filled to the brim another mug he had set out.
“Colds? Come on!” he laughed nervously, turning slowly to look at me. “Bad people do bad things. I give up. I let them do business for a fixed fee—those old bags, nobody else would have anything to do with them. Why don’t they really work hard and earn enough money and get out of the business? They’re too old to be protected by pimps.”
Suddenly the ground trembled and the darkness reverberated. Work had begun. The figures of several men came running down with short, dancing steps, outlined against the band of light that followed the horizon of the embankment. The relief gang was coming, probably after a quick bath or a swallow of saké.
“There are only three girls? What are you going to do?”
This time, before taking the mug in his hands, he bent over and took several preliminary sips. The light that gathered in the bottom of the thick cup glistened. A ray shifted to his jaw, tracing a moon-shaped arc.
“Is this supposed to be your business?”
“Business?” he inquired, sniffing slightly and smiling bashfully. “Well, it’s different from a robber or a highwayman, I guess. When you have a permanent building it’s a bother, of course. But according to the law it’s okay as long as you move around by car. Interesting, isn’t it? The philosophy of the law here is a respect for human life in case of flood.”
“Was it quite some time ago that you started here?”
“Right after the work began. About last July, I think.”
Last July? Let’s see. Yes, the month M Fuel Suppliers became connected with Dainen Enterprises. The points of contact between the two links had strengthened. But were there two links, really? On the contrary, wasn’t there probably only one? In August the husband had vanished. I should make up my mind and ask about this; what in heaven’s name can the basis for shaking the fuel suppliers down be? No, if it were simply a question of asking and getting an answer, he would have exposed the trick himself long ago. Then should I pull in the net of the investigation with him as the object? But if I deliberately closed the net and if I caught my client along with him, then what? I was going round and round in depressing circles.
“Come on, I’ll have a drink too. It’s okay if you park around here, isn’t it? I can’t stand this cold.”
“Very commendable precaution,” he said, looking up at me cunningly. “As far as this place is concerned, you can have confidence in me. You can park here, if you want. There’s no ceiling, but I control this side of the embankment practically like my own house.”
“Maybe so, but …,” the cook muttered inaudibly, sliding the mug in front of me.
“What do you mean by that?” Grimly the brother took him to task. “For Christ’s sake, what are you griping about? Come on, speak up.”
“I’m not griping,” he replied indolently, swinging his body. “And don’t say I am.”
“Well, speak up then. What’s the matter tonight?”
Like a bored monkey, the cook continued to swing his body.
“Hey! Look! Looks like the customers made a damn good start this evening. Maybe a little too good.”
“A fine business.”
“Really, haven’t you heard anything?”
“What?”
“Well …” For the first time the cook seemed worried and raised his bloated face, looking directly at the brother. “I’m talking about the rowdiness around here tonight for some reason. Just when the construction chief is absent.”
“Come on, let’s have exactly what’s on your mind.”
“I don’t know. It’s just hearsay. There are no girls around and I’m relieved about that. But, what I don’t like is that the girls aren’t the only ones taking off. If what they say is true, they must be a bit short-handed, aren’t they? Of the young boys in your gang only three showed up this evening, didn’t they.”
“So what’s the rumor? I’m asking.”
“Everybody knows. Well, since it’s about you, I count on you taking the necessary precautions. Boy, it’s really bad when you don’t know what they’re saying.”
Our bus was the only one where customers had not gathered. In the space of several minutes, as we were absorbed in our saké, around each lantern four or five men—at the most seven or eight—welled up, as it were, out of the darkness and formed a human fence. But I did not sense a particularly uneasy atmosphere, perhaps because I did not know the usual pattern. Everyone of them, in the same hunched-over stance, merely pecked at his dish of boiled vegetables and gulped down his saké. If I were forced to find something worrisome, it would be, I suppose, the number of men wearing work helmets, although they were off duty. But even so, the helmets might be simply to keep out the cold. The five silhouettes, their stance unchanged, stood quietly around the bonfire. It looked as if no one was still bantering with the girls.
Suddenly, a sharp tensing appeared in the muscles of the brother’s throat. He seemed to stretch his neck forward slightly, like a bird ready to strike, his hands still clasping the unfinished glass of saké. Abruptly he strode off in the direction of the bonfire. He walked on the balls of his feet, trying to keep from stumbling on the stones,
and his back, swallowed by the larger darkness, was no longer like a wall.
“What’s going to happen with those guys?”
“He’s not a bad fellow,” said the cook, beginning to shake his head in his usual fashion and taking another cigarette. “He’s not bad, really, but he’s not likable. And since he knows a thing or two, he’s even worse. It was especially stupid for him to let the guys in the bunkhouse order food and drink on credit. He’s been giving hush money to the head clerk in the office, you know. He gets him to take what they owe on credit out of their salaries.”
“I see.”
“It’s no fun leaving home to work in a place like this. And when you can buy on credit, even though you know you’re going to regret it later on, like it or not, the purse strings manage to loosen.”
“But it’s funny to go on a rampage because of that, isn’t it?”
“Well, you see, payday’s after tomorrow—the fifteenth. What about another sniff?”
“Well, okay … for cash …”
Placing his cigarette on a corner of the range, the cook chuckled, and when I looked, drawn toward a section of the frame of the chassis where he had glanced, I could see from where I sat the whole scene in the river bed mirrored in an oblong, curved reflector. The five shadows around the bonfire were all looking into the fire, motionless and quiet, like people in a picture. The cook continued speaking as if to himself.
“No, he’s not a bad sort. Look, all these girls are rejects. The men living on a work site like this would fuck a hole in a tree, otherwise they’d take to their heels with soft pricks at the sight of them. The girl with the biggest clientele beats a mare’s cunt. She can take on a hundred men, and right in the middle she snores away. The story goes she’s put away a hundred thousand yen.”
“Does he have some enemy?”
“Look,” he lowered his voice abruptly, “I don’t like the way the customers are gathering a little before the corner over there … pretty strange. Don’t you think it’s funny? I don’t like it … this rumble. The one on the embankment must be a lookout … there.”