The Box Man

by Kōbō Abe

  Writhing in a pain that floods to the very tips of its toes, the sham fish suddenly arrives at the fatal suspicion that he is perhaps fake. The instant doubt begins, everything becomes very strange. When one has the body of a fish, without any vocal cords to begin with, to say nothing of hands or feet, one is plagued in one’s use of such words. Double perception is as irritating as an itch.

  Perhaps all such happenings are dream sequences.

  Nevertheless, the dream is too long. It has been going on for so long that one can no longer remember when it started. However protracted, one will supposedly awaken from it sometime.

  To ascertain that one is dreaming, the first thing—and it’s reliable, for I have tried it several times myself—is to give the back of the hand a good pinch. But unfortunately a fish doesn’t have nails to pinch with, nor a hand to pinch the back of. If that doesn’t work, you can jump heroically from a steep cliff. That too I remember having succeeded at any number of times. Certainly if a fish is capable of that, there’s no particular inconvenience in not having arms or legs. But what kind of a fall would a sea fish have?

  I have never, of course, heard of a fish falling. Even a dead fish floats to the surface. It’s much more complicated than a balloon falling in air. As far as the descent is concerned, it’s a reverse fall. A reverse fall …

  Indeed, does such a way of waking from a dream exist? I suppose a fish may well drown in air by falling in reverse, upward, toward the sky. The danger of death is the same. It’s the same as a fall on land, and one of necessity awakens from the dream.

  Yet once having pushed his thinking this far, the fake fish, with a timidity unexpected in a cold-blooded animal, still hesitates. They say that when one is able to realize that one is dreaming one is already near the end of the dream. The fish has done all he can do to wake up, and although it is waiting a while longer to see just what will happen, it will not influence the outcome.

  The fake fish decided to wait. His very determination touched with the pallidness of the sea seemed to have paled.

  Days, weeks passed, and the time had come for the fake fish to reach his decision. A storm had broken. A great tropical storm bore down, causing the bottom of the sea to tremble. Great waves rose, making the timid and indecisive fake fish demonstrate what little courage he had. But he was in no hurry to die. He simply gave himself over to the movement of the waves.

  Suddenly a wave crest like the blades of fifty electric saws marshaled horizontally bore down on him. Sweeping the fake fish before it, it broke momentously against the cliffs and tossed the fish high into the air. And the fake fish drowned in the atmosphere.

  Now I wonder if he awoke from his dream. No, one does not have a shellweed dream so casually. It is altogether different from an ordinary one. As the fake fish died before awakening, he could not expect to awaken from his dream again. He still had to go on dreaming until after he died. Ultimately the dead fake fish apparently would exist forever as a fake fish, as if it had received the latest freezing treatment. They say that among those fish tossed up onto the seashore after the storm there were not a few unlucky ones who had fallen asleep suffocated by the flowers of the shellweed.

  But for some reason I have not yet become a fish. I have apparently dropped off any number of times, but I am still the box man I was. On reflection, a fake fish and a box man don’t seem conspicuously different. The fake me becomes something not at all myself when I put on the box. Perhaps I who have been immunized against being something fake no longer possess the capability of having the dream of a fish. No matter how many times box men keep awakening from their dreams, they apparently end up being only the box men they always were.

  The Promise Is Fulfilled, and

  a Letter with Fifty Thousand

  Yen Covering the Cost of the Box

  Was Dropped from the Top of

  the Bridge. This Was Barely

  Five Minutes Ago. I Attach the

  Letter Herewith.

  I trust you. No receipt is required. As for the disposal of the box, I leave that up to you too. Before the tide goes out, tear it up and throw it into the sea.

  • • •

  Something strange has happened. I have read and reread her letter. Can there be some other way of interpreting it? At this point, I can only give a literal explanation. I try smelling the stationery with green lines that has been folded in three. It simply has the faint odor of disinfectant.

  I assumed arbitrarily that the doctor would come. My various strategies all presupposed an attack by him. However, she herself was the one who came. Yes, she herself came. She came herself. She herself … the reason is quite unclear … oh, it’s clear enough … she was simply carrying out her promise. I wonder why I am upset? Didn’t I quite expect betrayal on her part? Perhaps so. A betraying woman like her quite suits me. I’ll indeed be at a loss if the promise is kept. But just a minute, perhaps I have committed some important oversight. For example, I might well try rethinking her position … and her role in the affair.

  I don’t think there is any point in continuing writing. Since I have neither killed nor been killed, there’s nothing further to explain.

  A letter adrift in space … address unknown … shall I tear it up and throw it away?

  Calm down now. Look here, fifty thousand yen. But since I have the money, simply disposing of the notes isn’t enough. She wants me to dispose of the box. With the fifty thousand yen, its ownership has already passed to her. If I intend to respect her will, I suppose I shall have to dispose of it as I promised. Even so, I don’t understand. Who in heaven’s name would stand to gain by my doing such a thing? Fifty thousand yen just to throw the box into the sea—it’s too much money. Am I so offensive? I must not flatter myself; by rights the motive must be something more practical. Some more matter-of-fact reason so that she should not feel she has lost something even in paying fifty thousand yen.

  I don’t understand it at all. It is just as well that I’m in a fog. I wonder, should I insist on returning the fifty thousand? She is sorely mistaken if she thinks I’m not capable of doing it.

  But such an interpretation doesn’t hold. It’s a plan she divised so the doctor wouldn’t get the box. For some reason he wanted it very much. Perhaps at first she too fell in with his plan. Or else was pretending to. But as the time to carry it out at last drew nearer, her doubts began to grow. Whatever she thinks, she can’t believe anything good will come of it. But no matter how she remonstrated with him, the doctor turned a completely deaf ear, and in the end she could do nothing but oppose him. Fortunately the box man seems to have an uncommon affection for her. If she leaves the disposal of the box up to the box man himself and he disappears, whatever the doctor may think up, she will be able to contain him before he does anything.

  Indeed … somehow I feel it makes sense … the box may perhaps be worth fifty thousand yen, depending on the doctor’s reason for acquiring it. The circumstances are totally different, depending on whether her motive for interfering stems from her own selfishness or from a desire to protect the doctor. But I recognize that at least there is a conflict between them. And if that’s true, then it’s not a bad sign.

  However, I do not fancy disposing of the box as she wishes. I still know too little about her to trust her. At least I had better put off disposing of the box until I check her real motives once more. I have the right to do that much. And then, frankly speaking, I am dissatisfied. It’s fine that she herself put in an appearance, but it was altogether too businesslike. She didn’t even come down the embankment. When she had sped past the “No Playing in the Water” sign, mounted on a bicycle made of some light alloy and equipped with five-speed gears—illuminated by the lights of a freighter, her raincoat gleamed as if gilded … through the fabric the outline of her body was clearly visible … and then the movement of those calves and knees which so disarmed me—she had gone out on the provincial highway, ignoring the frantic signals I flashed with my flashlight. After a while a
trembling circle of light came slipping over the surface of the ground about two yards ahead of me. It was the beam of her flashlight shining between the balustrades of the bridge. I couldn’t very well look up, it is too awkward for a box man. Then there was a sound, and not far from the trembling circle of light something fell. It was a vinyl bag weighted with a stone. In it were the letter in question and five ten-thousand-yen bills rolled up. She went off without doing anything else. While she had come as close to me as could be, she had gone off without saying a word. The movement of her calves disappeared into the darkness, the glitter of the wet raincoat vanished, and last of all the red taillight of the bicycle faded away. When I had read the letter and counted the bills, I suddenly began to hear the sound of drizzle, which should not have been audible. Perhaps it was the blood coursing in my head.

  Fifty thousand yen. I should like to tell her alone that for the person paying out perhaps it is an extravagance, but for a box man it is a paltry sum not worth accepting. Generally people know too little about box men. They take too casually the meaning the box has for a box man. I’m not bluffing. With pure bluff alone, one can’t go on living in a box for three years. They say that even in the case of the hermit crab, once it begins its life under its shell, the back part of the body, being covered by the carapace, becomes soft and thus breaks into pieces and the crab dies if forced out. A box man can’t very well take off his box and simply return to the ordinary world. When he takes it off it is to emerge into another world just as an insect metamorphoses. I secretly expected that my meeting with her would provide that opportunity.

  From the human chrysalis that is the box man,

  Even I know not

  What kind of living being will issue forth.

  In a Mirror

  The rain had turned to a light drizzle, but the wind had risen. With every sigh of the breeze splashing drops flew like the waving tentacles of a jellyfish. It was quite impossible to see through. However, perhaps because of the placement of the buildings, only the red gate light of the hospital at the top of the slope that was my destination was always and from everywhere visible. It was enveloped in dark green and seemed like a stain in my eyes. I had taken the road any number of times, but this was the first time I had walked it wearing a box. Considering that, it seemed terribly far. Usually when I was in the box, distance was seldom a serious obstacle.

  When anyone comes into contact with the scenery around him, he tends to see selectively only those elements necessary. For example, though one remembers a bus stop, one can have absolutely no recollection of a large willow tree nearby. One’s attention is caught willy-nilly by the hundred-yen piece dropped on the road, but the bent and rusty nail and the weeds by the wayside may just as well not be there. On the average road one usually manages not to go astray. However, as soon as one looks out of the box’s observation window, things appear to be quite different. The various details of the scenery become homogeneous, have equal significance. Cigarette butts … the sticky secretion in a dog’s eyes … the windows of a two-story house with the curtains waving … the creases in a flattened drum … rings biting into flabby fingers … railroad tracks leading into the distance … sacks of cement hardened because of moisture … dirt under the fingernails … loose manhole covers … but I am very fond of such scenery. The distance in it is fluid and the contours vague, and thus perhaps it resembles my own position. The scenery has the gentleness of a garbage dump. One never wearies of looking at such a view as long as one is peering out from a box.

  But the effect of the box was reduced to nothing as I took the rising road to the hospital. The red light remained far off in the distance. A stain the color of blood deep within my closed eyes. The road was of gravel, and the space at my feet was not so dark as elsewhere. This scenery seemed to urge people to keep going, its details were all abridged. After that, a dimly white sky (clouds were beginning to cross from the west). Perhaps it was because the night was too dark (hence I abhor the night). It might also be, perhaps, that my destination was too well defined.

  Despite all of that I shook my box and continued doggedly walking. But the box could not make time along the road. Since the ventilation was bad, I broke out in a sweat. Even the insides of my ears itched with the dampness. As I leaned forward, the box tilted, and there was the sound of it striking my hips. The very fragile sound of something made of paper.

  Suddenly I heard the violent breathing of some beast. A huge growling mongrel brushed against my knees with its shoulder, and ran off at once. His wet back appeared to be dyed red. When I raised my head, I saw the red gate light. The mist peeled away and a closed iron portal came into view. There was a special bell for night use painted with a phosphorescent color. I didn’t want to ring the bell and have them open the door. Nor did I want to come face to face with the doctor. Stepping over the hedge, I entered the garden.

  The dog had arrived before me and was waiting, but he made no pretense of barking. I had won him over by giving it some food beforehand. A light was burning faintly in one window. A luxuriant tangle of weeds twined around my feet. Apparently the remains of an old flower bed. I stumbled over the edging stones, and the dog, misunderstanding, frolicked around me. When I stood still and took a breath, sweat poured out and ran into my eyes.

  Her room was in the back of the building, second window from the left. She had dropped the money to me less than an hour ago—possibly she was still awake. Even if she had dozed off, it would only be a light sleep. I need have no concern that she would set up a din on waking up surprised. I wanted to have a serious talk with her (even through the window, if that were possible) return the fifty thousand yen, and get her to cancel the promise I had made to throw the box away. Depending on her attitude, it was conceivable that I could assist her in another way.

  But I wondered why there was a light in the window facing the garden. Over there was the waiting room, next, the examination room, and further inside that I assumed were the examination instruments. Twelve o’clock had come and gone, and I thought that one way or another they had forgotten to turn the light out, but for some reason I was uneasy. To be on the safe side, I decided to have a little look.

  The window was rather high and the lower half was frosted glass. I could see only the ceiling. The light that came from below what seemed to be a floor lamp spread out diagonally in a parabola toward the inner part of the room. In order to see more, I needed something to stand on. It was out of the question to turn on a light and look around. Fortunately I remembered I had put the rear-view mirror from my car in my tote bag. I had had the feeling that it would come in handy and had stashed it away instead of tossing it out. After wiping off the dirt, I held it up diagonally and peered into it from below. Stretching my one arm and looking up through the space in the narrow window was laborious work. But my labors bore fruit. Contrary to my expectations (I had assumed that top and bottom would be reversed), I was able to view everything at an almost perfect angle.

  The first thing I could see was an electric table lamp sitting on a corner of a big work desk. Then a large, whitish expanse. As I held the mirror stable, the white separated into walls and a door. Walls and door were old, and the several layers of paint could not conceal the scratches on the surface. The typically high hospital bed in the corner by the window was, of course, white too. The bookcase, crammed with old magazines and books, was painted white like the rest, but was somewhat less fresh. The room was simply spacious and without interest on the whole, though there was a stereo set beside the work desk; it was apparently the doctor’s sitting room-study.

  Indeed, the room itself was of little importance. When I put my recollections in order later, such was the arrangement. There were two people in it. I was completely fascinated by them. Other things were merely the reflections of mosaic fragments, compounded, as in the eye of some insect.

  One was the girl, and since it was in the same building as her room, it was natural for her to be there. She was stark naked. She
was standing facing me stark naked in the middle of the room, and she was talking to someone about something.

  The person who was being addressed was a box man. He was seated on the edge of the bed and was wearing a box exactly like mine. From where I was, only the back and the right side were visible; it was a cardboard box, exactly the same as my own—from the degree of dirtiness to the remains of the printed letters giving the name of a commercial product … to say nothing of the size. It was a fake replica of myself, imitated by design. And inside … the doctor, I presumed.

  Alone in the room with the naked girl … it was as if I could vividly feel her nakedness with my hands. But when … where? No, I must not be deceived, this was not a memory but a hallucination stemming from my desire. I could not believe that I had come visiting like this, that my objective was simply the repayment of the fifty thousand yen. Somewhere in my heart I must have secretly wished for this scene really to materialize. Yes, seeing her naked … stripping her naked body even more bare until I could see a nakedness beyond mere nudity.

  (Marginal note—red ink: Why do I persist in staring like this? Perhaps because I am too cowardly. Or perhaps because I am too curious. When I think about it, I fancy I have become a box man just to go on being a voyeur forever. I want to spy on all sorts of places, and the box is a portable hole that occurred to me under the circumstances, it being impossible to punch holes throughout the world. I also feel like running away and also like pursuing. Which is it to be?)

  My desire to spy on the girl was clearly beginning to exceed the capacities of the box. I have the feeling that my mouth is packed full with distended and aching gums. But I alone am not to be blamed. She too had dropped an indirect hint. Aside from the fifty thousand yen paid by the doctor for the box, she suggested a special bonus from her to me as a photographer.