by Kōbō Abe
When my shoulder had been treated I tried patching together the story of her life, which she told me in bits and pieces: Until accepting her present position as apprentice nurse, she had been a poor art student (let’s not ask whether she had any talent in these circumstances) and made a living by posing for those who belonged to privately run art schools or amateur art clubs. (She said it had left a bitter taste, resembling regret.) Two years ago she had had an abortion in this hospital (she was beginning to exist for me physically). Her convalescence was not satisfactory, and while she was in the hospital free of charge for about three months, a nurse who had been working there left, and the girl had taken her place for no particular reason (an aspect of her personality irked people and was hard to understand). She was busy with her work, but then she was assured of all her treatment in payment for it. As long as there was no special emergency, she had enough time to paint her pictures in the evenings and in her time off. But income aside, the modeling she had done before was apparently the work she liked best. It was not because she could take it easy, she insisted innocently. And while it wasn’t especially pressured work, it had been tiring, and one needed stamina. She had said that the excitement of exposing her naked body as a model was the spice of life and inspired in her the will to create. (I considered that wrong. Incidentally, pictures of her are completely nonrepresentational and have no connection with any model.) She spoke as if she would still be doing modeling if the doctor had not strongly objected.
However much she was interested in my profession as a photographer, this was an obvious provocation. From the air-gun bullet that had come from the wound in my shoulder and from the way my hair was raggedly cut, she must have already guessed that I was a box man without his disguise. But I had overlooked her pretense. I had the feeling of licking her wound with the generosity of a protector. At such times a discharge came from my eyes. I braced myself, determined to break her with my own hands before she was broken by someone else. Teeth sprouted on my upper and lower eyelids. At the wild idea of nibbling at her, my eyeballs flushed hot and I got erections.
In a sense, this wild idea materialized. The naked girl … I who spied on her … I was indeed watching the naked her. But it was a conditional nakedness. It was a nakedness already looked upon by someone else, and that was the fake me. Far from being satisfied by seeing her naked, my jealousy increased because someone else had seen her. When one’s throat becomes dry, it serves no purpose to be shown a picture of oneself drinking. At the same time as I was looking at her, another I was looking at me looking at her. I recalled a dream in which I had writhed desperately as I floated near the ceiling and looked down on my own dead body. I was ashamed and laughed scornfully at myself. The strength left my arm, the mirror tilted wildly, and the room flew off. I shifted it to my other hand and this time rested the edge of the mirror on the windowsill to keep it steady. When you’re thirsty you can’t help running in the direction of illusory water, even though you realize it’s a mirage.
The two were facing each other separated by about four paces. Her attitude was relaxed, and to my regret I could not detect the slightest antagonism between them. I wondered if she had already reported on what had happened an hour ago. Supposing that the two were in league with each other, they would really be laughing at me. A foolishly honest box man who had only been waiting to be tossed fifty thousand yen like a reward to some dog, spending as he had promised a half day watching the whirlpools under the bridge … box head … toilet box … sheltered man in a box … box juggler.
But on the part of the naked girl I could feel not the slightest malice or machination. Though I experienced a sense of humiliation as before, no feelings of hatred welled up in me. I intently followed on her heels. My water jar that had been stolen by the fake box man. Her naked body was far more charming than I had imagined it to be. It was natural; there was no question of my imagination being able to catch up with her actual nakedness. Since this nakedness existed only while I was looking at it, my desire to see it became poignant too. Since it would vanish the minute I stopped looking, I should photograph it, or get it down on canvas. The naked body and the body are different. The naked body uses the actual physical body as its material and is a work of art kneaded by fingers which are the eyes. Although the physical body might be hers, concerning the proprietorship of the naked body, I had no intention of retreating in impotent envy.
Her naked body was supported by the left leg, as if it were floating lightly in water. It was as if a mysterious cord stretched straight from the tips of a magician’s fingers. The toes of her right foot were placed over the instep of the left, and the bent knee opened slightly outward. What, I wondered, attracted me so much about that leg? Was it that it suggested the sexual organs? Judging from the cut of clothes today, perhaps one could consider the reproductive organs belonging to the legs rather than to the trunk. But if that were all, many other legs are more sexy. When one lives in a box, one looks principally at the lower half of people, and it’s the legs one is familiar with. The femininity of legs, whatever you say, lies, I think, in the simple fluidity of the curving surfaces. The bones, tendons, and joints are completely fused in the flesh and have no effect on the surface. Certainly legs are much more suitable as covers for the sexual organs than as instruments for walking (I am not being sarcastic, there’s no need for that; it is natural that a cover be needed for such a precious vessel). Eventually you’ve got to open the cover with your hands. Thus the charm of feminine legs (and he who denies that charm is a hypocrite) can only be tactile rather than visual.
However, I don’t mean that her very visual legs are masculine. A man’s legs, thanks to having continuously carried weight against the pull of gravity, are knotty, and the deeply imbedded joints spread horizontally; they are practical mechanisms for walking. But no matter how one searches, one can find absolutely no visible traces in her legs of the effort she expends to support her weight. To make a venturesome comparison, her legs are the pliant, fully extended legs of an adolescent before he has undergone a change of voice. Things that suddenly incite longing in a man exhausted from walking: for example, the lightness of a bird … the sensation of walking free from gravity. Willful legs that do not continually go against gravity like those of a man nor give up walking like those of a woman. A hasty retreat—the same as sex—is liable to provoke pursuit. Sexual attraction is not particularly lacking in her legs (even coverless sex is provocative enough). But even if I find my way to her sex, I feel that somehow there’s something more to it. I wonder if I have discovered the ideal legs in hers or whether I am trying to fit her legs to the ideal.
White globular forms tilted diagonally. Compared with the legs, the buttocks as you might expect are tactile. Perhaps it is because the center of gravity lies in the single deep crevasse. The raised right hipbone juts out, describing a smooth curve like that of a bird’s breastbone. A faint smoke wells up from the crotch. Its tip, like a shadow, is subtly teased by the wind. But when I looked at the soft light hair on her head, and saw that it wasn’t moving in the slightest, I realized that the wind was blowing only below. I assumed the fan was poorly regulated; and the cool air flowed along the floor. The hips had a tendency to draw back, and the stomach filling out generously gave the feeling of being terribly defenseless. The shoulders were bent far back, and the neck rising perpendicularly from there supported a head bent forward as if a hinge had come loose. It was an altogether relaxed pose, but I had the impression that a slender steel core passed down the middle of her. The right arm was positioned in the vicinity of the navel, the left near the solar plexus, and her position was such that she seemed to be embracing herself. Since her chest was stretched back, her breasts seemed smaller than they actually were. Under them were red marks left by the brassière. There was a line above the hipbone too, that was apparently left by her underwear. It would seem that not much time had gone by since she had taken them off and thrown them aside. The clothes she had removed lay in lu
mps at her feet. On the nurse’s white uniform the tiny black undies stretched out like a dead spider.
She lightly bit her underlip. But spreading wide to both sides, it escaped from her teeth. Seeing her full-mouthed smile, I felt my heart cut by the blade of a faint sadness. Her raised eyes, filled with coquetry, looked up at the fake box. He apparently said something (obviously it was a random remark), and the girl raised her face and said two or three words in reply. The muscles of her back stretched like a steel measuring tape. She rose on tiptoes and began walking in the direction of the box. “You’re going wrong!” I shouted involuntarily in my heart. My diaphragm stiffened, like wet leather, my breath shortened, and my face with lines of sweat spilling down from my hairline resembled the stripes on an overripe melon. She took something from the box. It was a glass with some beer still in it. I did not at all like her drinking from the same glass as the fake box man. All my muscles were ready to break through the windowpane and jump into the room, but because of her betrayal I knew I wouldn’t do it (an example of a box man-like excuse). Some way or another she had drunk down about half of the beer with an awkward movement of the mouth as if she were sucking up spaghetti. She returned the glass to the box, and, swinging her body, she took several great steps backward. I was relieved when I realized that the fake box man had not left his box. The tension that reached from my shoulders to my hips relaxed, and I made a noise like the tearing away of something pasted. She returned to her former position and was saying something rapidly. Suddenly she shut her mouth, looked up at the ceiling, and began to pass her two hands over her hips. Again the box man took over the initiative of the conversation, which she apparently didn’t find very interesting.
Abruptly pivoting on her heels, she turned her back. Then all at once she dropped to all fours on the floor, placing her elbows and knees together and assuming a posture in which her hips jutted up higher than the rest of her. The direct light that did not pass through the shade of the lamp made her seem exaggeratedly tactile and globular. Her breasts were a lid on the inside of the inverted triangle formed by her trunk, thighs, and upper arms. My whole body began to wither away, leaving only my eyes. The fake box man, bending forward, swayed slowly back and forth.
Suddenly the ground at my feet surged up as if it had been kneaded, and, losing my balance, I sank to one knee. I still had enough wits not to make any noise. But it wasn’t the surface of the ground that was heaving; the dog, bored, had squeezed himself in between my knees. It was difficult to chase it away quietly. I couldn’t make any noise, and I couldn’t let him bark. But he continued to grow more and more excited, and with all his strength, he thrust his nose like a piece of wet soap between my legs. It evidently intended to get into the box with me. Having little choice, I punctured a small hole in a can of beef and after letting him sniff the gravy and lick it, I flung the can as far away as I could. I knew the poor thing would be wrestling with the can until tomorrow morning.
I hurried back to the window. The surface of the mirror was smudged with my fingers. I hastily wiped it with my shirttail and set it up again. The scene had changed completely. Fortunately what I had been so apprehensive about had not taken place at all. The fake box, neither torn up nor broken to bits, was still sitting in the same position on the edge of the bed. Of course, even wearing the box, he might have been able to take advantage of her. If he had bored a hole for his penis and was prepared for some unnatural positions, it would have been possible. But to do that he would need her cooperation, and that would take a good deal of time. Had it taken me that long to chase the dog away? I wondered. Perhaps it had, but anyway she was no longer naked. She was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the work desk in the corner of the room. Even the buttons of the too-long white uniform were carefully buttoned, and her legs could no longer be seen. With her legs invisible, she seemed strangely distant, another person. About a third of the cigarette was consumed. Tired, forbidding eyebrows. An enema syringe peeked out from the pocket of her white uniform. Her slender sinewy fingers were encircled by the rubber tube of the syringe, and her fingernails bore a silver polish. It was unbelievable that she had been naked a few minutes before. Or was it that everything had been merely a mirage in the mirror?
From somewhere beyond the shrubbery came the sad breathing of the dog pounding against the ground with the can gripped in his teeth. When I rubbed my neck, lumps of dirt kept coming off. And as I gathered them into patties, I was terribly depressed. I seemed to be somehow profoundly hurt by what in fact had not happened—the scene in which she was violated by the box—something I didn’t want to happen, something that absolutely couldn’t have happened. Perhaps it was because I have all too often been outwitted.
Rubbing out her cigarette, she nodded her head, scratching inside her ear with the little finger of her free hand. When the light from the lamp struck her straight on, the space between her two eyes opened up, and she appeared slightly walleyed. She laughed only with her mouth, showing her teeth suspiciously, whereupon her face turned into that of an obstinate child. When she closed her mouth, shaking her head slightly to the right and left, the lower projecting lip was unexpectedly voluptuous. Then slightly shifting the upper part of her body, she adopted the stance of kicking an invisible paper balloon. She crossed the room toward the door. When she began to walk, I saw that it was indeed her. There was a giddy lightness to her body. And I wondered if this most familiar sense of weightlessness was a sense of falling. The fake box man crawled down from the bed. Without even looking back, she pulled the door knob, and swinging around the door, disappeared on the other side. The box man who tried to chase her resembled an insect whose limbs had been torn off. Except for the fact that he was not wearing rubber boots, he was my mirror image, even to the canvas around his waist. The door closed, and the box man came to a halt. Evidently he did not want to pursue her too far. Shaking the box, he changed directions and came shuffling back as if his underclothes were wet. I could see the front of the box. The hanging vinyl was exactly the same color and arrangement as my own (other than that there was not a single little hole in the box—not even a penis hole).
Nevertheless, it was an elaborate reproduction. It was overly elaborate for ordinary purposes. What was he hatching up? Judging from the present state of affairs, no matter how determined I was to return the fifty thousand yen, it looked as if it wasn’t going to be very easy to get him to agree to it. From the instant I took the money, the right of being a real box man had shifted to the other party, and perhaps it was I who had become the fake. My shadow came and went with the tottering steps of a toy robot following the diagonal across the room. It was not very pleasant to see my image in the mirror, ignoring my will, moving around as it wished. Stupid man! Why didn’t he take the box off right away? Perhaps he was drunk. If he continued like that, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the box at all. Well, if he didn’t want to leave it, that was just fine too. If he wanted, I could just as well get out of my box instead of him. I felt that leaving the box was a possible course of action. Perhaps, if I dare engage in wishful thinking, her original objective in dreaming up this deal was to confine him to the box. Then she would be free. How would it be if I used this as an opportunity to sever all connection with my box?
I decided for the time being to leave. There was no merit in simply hastening the conclusion. If I just made up my mind, I could remove the box at any point. After taking my time and getting my feelings in order, it might be just as well to come again tomorrow. Before leaving, I decided to have a peep into her room. I crossed over the gravel path that led to the entrance (being covered with dirt, it made no noise). Turning the box sideways, I pushed my way into the thicket of asters as tall as a man. A cleavage like the inside of a convoluted shell flickered in my eyes—perhaps it was due to some association of ideas that came from the intense fragrance of the grass. Perhaps it was the hollow under her armpits. But the back of the building faced northward, and all the windows were small and high. Her
windows especially were cut off by heavy curtains and I could barely distinguish any light, but I had not hoped for anything more. Not yet ready to give up, I kept waiting for something, concealed under the eaves. The wind shook the gutter, making great drops fall down, and my box resounded like a bass drum. But there was no reaction from her room.
Of course, it was nothing at all to get out of the box. And since there was nothing to it, I felt no compulsive need to leave it. Yet I wanted someone, if possible, to lend me a hand.
Three-and-a-Half-Page
Insert on Different Paper
(It’s not only the paper that’s dissimilar. For the first time a fountain pen is being used, and the writing is clearly different. If in time someone makes a clear copy in a new notebook with other notes, they should simply standardize the paper and the writing. There’s no need to worry about the difference in writing and in paper now.)
—Well then. Now what? (said the doctor).
—I’m thirsty. (she complained).
—There’s a crack in that glass.
—I don’t care.
—Well …?
—I took them off … just as I promised.
—I’m asking about the light.
—Is this all the beer there is?
—I’m interested in how dark it was as you were taking your clothes off.
—It was pitch black. It was so dark it took me a long time to unfasten my brassière.
—There’s no relationship between the light and the brassière. Anyway you can do that by touch.