The Box Man

by Kōbō Abe

  The fake box man’s words trailed off, and he stopped talking; I heaved a long sigh. As a condition perhaps it wasn’t so bad. I more than anyone else knew full well that a box man lived a harmless existence. The location of the hospital was inconvenient, but since establishing himself the doctor had surely put aside a little nest egg; and then the very inconvenience of the location would serve to put a distance between us and the world. In the final analysis the question hung on her attitude alone. If she would only agree then perhaps the three of us could really make a go of it. No, no, not three, two and a little more. Treating him as a wastebasket would be stretching things, but if I considered him as a monkey I could keep him in a cage in my bedroom.

  “Then it’s all right with you?”

  “With me?” She glanced quickly back at me and then just shifted her gaze toward the fake box man. As she did so, I felt a sharp jealousy at the smile that she let spread over her face. “It’s beyond me. I’m not good at answering when I’m made to take responsibility. When I try thinking about it I’m always doing something strange like dropping a pair of scissors on my foot or sitting on a glass. I wonder what time it is now.”

  “Twenty-four minutes to ten,” replied the fake box man, speaking rapidly, and I was made to feel guilty as if I were being blamed for my indecisiveness. She went right on, as if to press me.

  “How old are you … really?”

  “According to the official record twenty-nine, but actually thirty-two or -three, I guess.”

  Carried along, I answered in spite of myself, but apparently the question had not been what she really had intended to ask. Before I finished speaking, she had already turned her back to me and begun setting the instrument desk in order. Had she expressed without words that they had not yet decided on canceling examinations? Surely, arranging the instruments was a very normal thing to do. But she didn’t seem all that serious about what she was doing. She simply appeared to be pushing the instruments and the glass containers here and there with her fingertips like model cars. Should I consider this a negative agreement? I wondered. If she did disagree, she would say so in so many words. The fact that she had shown concern about the time could be an attempt to push me toward a decision. In short, I had the feeling that if I carne to a definite resolution everything would be all right. If only I were to say the word and ask her to strip, at once the scene would change: two or three seconds of frantically unbuttoning the nacre buttons of her white tunic … and there she would be, naked before me. From where I was standing barely three yards away I could smell the very odor of her body, depending on the air currents in the room. But then would I be able to play, as they expected, the important role they had assigned me?

  (An unpleasant recollection suddenly occurs to me. It concerns the student entertainment program in primary school. I was generally not popular and was thus assigned a trifling role, perhaps because no one else wanted it. It was the part of a horse by the name of Dunce, but for all of that I remember romping around in the greatest of high spirits. However, when it came time for me to go on stage, the short lines I was to deliver at only one point during the play would not come no matter how hard I tried to get them out. When I gave up and started to leave the stage, my classmate who played the role of the horse’s owner, in an excess of anger, gave me a boot in the pants. That made me no less angry, and I kicked him back, whereupon he fell, struck his head on the floor, and lost consciousness. I have no recollection at all of how the play was subsequently discontinued. But it was soon after that that I became terribly nearsighted and squeezed some glasses out of my miserly parents. Myopia developed because I deliberately used to read books and magazines with fine print in dark places. I just wanted to run away from seeing and from being seen.)

  I am quite aware of my own ugliness. I am not so shameless as to expose my nakedness nonchalantly before others. Of course, I’m not the only one who’s unsightly: ninety-nine percent of mankind is deformed. It is my contention that man did not invent clothing after losing his hair, but that his hair atrophied because, aware of the unsightliness of his naked body, he tried to hide it with clothes. (I know very well that such an explanation goes against fact; yet I do believe it.) The reason men somehow go on living, enduring the gaze of others, is that they bargain on the hallucinations and the inexactitude of human eyes. By putting on clothes that as much as possible are identical and by having similar hairdos they manage to make it difficult to distinguish between one another. If I don’t give a straight look, then the other person won’t either; and one ends up leading a life of lowered glances. Thus long ago the punishment known as the pillory used to be used, but it was said to be too cruel and was discontinued in enlightened societies. That the act of spying on someone else is generally looked upon with scorn is because, I suppose, one does not want to be on the side of being seen. When one cannot avoid being seen it is common sense to demand compensation. As a matter of fact, in the theater or in the cinema usually those who look pay money and those who are looked at receive it. Anybody would rather look than be looked at. The fact that they keep on and on selling endless instruments for “looking”—radios and televisions—is excellent proof that ninety-nine percent of men are aware of their own unsightliness. I became nearsighted of my own accord, frequented strip houses, became an apprentice photographer … and from there it was but a step, and a most natural one, to being a box man.

  (Some marginal notes again in red ink. As for the existence of exhibitionism, I certainly have no bone to pick with the claim of the author who considers visual rape to be a universal tendency in man. Time and again, exhibitionism tends to be confused with excessive sexual desire unsatisfied by the normal sexual act; but in fact there are many cases where it is overrepressed sexual expression. One patient, for example, made the following confession: His first condition for making the exhibitionistic act more effective is that the person he intends exhibiting himself to be unknown and of the other sex. Second, a fixed distance must be kept between him and the other person, and the relationship of seeing and of being seen must not be broken by approaching too close. Third, the two parties must not be able to distinguish each other’s face. As a concrete case in which the preceding three conditions might be fulfilled, the patient suggested something like the inner courtyard of a girls’ dormitory where there are numerous thickets. The tendency toward exhibitionism indicates that while the patient had a strong interest in the opposite sex generally, he had a morbid sense of shame concerning them individually, as they actually existed. According to the author’s argument, this is the patient’s realization of his ugliness. Further the patient said the following: In order to reach orgasm by the act of exhibitionism he would imagine receiving a sexual stimulus by the other party’s seeing his sexual parts. If the other party clearly manifested her disgust that put a wet blanket on him, but to have her show curiosity was also irritating. To have the other party pretend that she didn’t see him was by far the most stimulating. It was clearly a desire to have the other party participate in his exhibitionistic act as a visual rapist. Exhibitionism is merely the act of visual rape reflected in a mirror.)

  “You’re a vacillating fellow,” said the fake box man, speaking rapidly in a tight, hard voice. “I would jump at the chance … something’s wrong with you … such good conditions …”

  “I hesitate because you get in my way.”

  “Ah … I see.”

  “Since I’ve had experience myself with being a box man, I think I know somewhat more about them than you. The reason the world ignores box men is because nobody understands who’s inside the box. But your true colors are perfectly clear. I even know your way of looking at me. I don’t like being stared at. I don’t like it at all.”

  “But that’s why I paid fifty thousand yen, isn’t it?”

  “I got used to looking, but I’m not yet accustomed to being looked at.”

  The fake box man swayed. After once bending diagonally forward, he arose with surprising
agility. The back of the box rubbed against the wall and made a tawdry sound peculiar to dry cardboard. After all, something fake was something fake. It could not be compared with a genuine box long in use.

  “Let’s stop the idle talk now,” cried the fake box man unsuitably cheerfully, stretching his legs. His bare limbs were sinewy and white and conspicuously hairy. I wondered if he were wearing no trousers. “I’m not exactly hungry, but l’appetito viene mangiando, you know.” Then calling the girl’s name, he ordered, “Come on, show him what you look like naked.”

  I was confused. Over and above the fact that she had suddenly been ordered to strip, I felt perplexed that she should be called by her own name. I hesitate even writing her name here and now. I am made to realize anew just how irreplaceable she is to me. Since she was the only person of the opposite sex that I had happened to meet, although that was pure chance, and since I had no one else to compare her with, one pronoun by which to distinguish the sexes would be plenty for me.

  “Right now … right away?”

  There was no particular hint of disapproval in her voice as she questioned him in return. She didn’t even appear puzzled. Her answer gave one the feeling of caressing the curve of an egg with a palm smeared with facial cream. The way things were going now she would definitely be naked. I was nonplused, but I kept my mouth shut. My lips were paralyzed and I could not get a word out.

  “It doesn’t make any difference to you, does it?”

  “No, but …”

  A brief, businesslike exchange.

  “It seems to me there were some matches over there, weren’t there?”

  Urged on by the fake box man, she slipped diagonally in front of me and crossed the room. Her gait was that of a small precision instrument that did not make one feel any wasted energy. She took a box of matches out of the pocket of her white tunic and flipped them with her fingertips into the fake observation window. Suddenly I smelled her fragrance. It resembled the breezes flowing in from the fields of peanuts that one smelled on the seashore. The skin round my heart rippled. Was it jealousy directed against the fake box man? When she had turned adroitly aside and returned to her original position, she suddenly began unbuttoning the buttons on her white uniform. At the second button she casually looked at me. As the look was extremely light—it was as if it could float in space for a half day like that—far from averting my gaze, I managed to return her glance without blinking (this was important: if it was she looking, no matter how much she looked I had almost no feeling of being looked at). A light was lit in the lamp of her expression. The line of her eyebrows softened faintly, and her teeth were visible between moist lips. It was an open expression. Were the doors open for me? She went on … the third button. Then the fourth. If she really tries to understand me completely, if she intends to catch me with the posture she showed to the fake box man last night, then surely I need nothing like a box. Others’ unsightliness should be invisible to those who have no unsightliness of their own to hide. If a box man is a specialized voyeur, then she is a born victim of that voyeur (the only worrisome thing is why the doctor, faced with this aspect of her, was made to feel he should live in a box). Then the last button.…

  Fortunately she was not at once naked under her white uniform, and I finally regained my composure. A blouse of orange silk fitted close to her skin. There was a line of tiny buttons of the same color, like grass seeds. A short yellow-ocher skirt held at the side by three black buttons about three-fourths of an inch in diameter. I heard the sound of a match being struck in the box. I had assumed that the color of her skin was on the light side, but in contrast with the shade of her skirt it was rather swarthy. Yet her fingers, poised on the buttons of the skirt, were definitely light. As I looked I could no longer tell, actually, which was true. Her fingers once poised on the skirt, hesitated, changed their mind, and shifted to the grass seeds on her blouse. Ah ha, of course she should start from there. As for me, I wanted more time. I began to smell a cigarette. For example, she whom I had happened to meet the week before—she who unsuspecting as a child had wiped away all my debts like some high-powered, all-purpose cleaning device—if it were she alone it was possible that I might happen on her again somewhere. In any case I would apparently have the opportunity of meeting the one whom I had spied on last night, she who was so tolerant of others’ unsightliness, who was like a device for freeing me of desire that made me forget my sense of inferiority like a drug or alcohol. Although it was a fact, it was difficult to believe at a moment’s notice that the two had come together in a single personality. Of course, as far as she was concerned, I did not yet know her well enough to be able to express any opinion that smacked of criticism. What use was it, I wondered, for the right eye to know about the left? The essential thing is trust where very naturally one shares concern with another, where one can observe things without any particular consciousness. She undid the third grass-seed button. Under her blouse she was apparently naked. Although I could smell a cigarette I could not see any smoke. It was wrong to smoke like that. In the meantime smoke suddenly began to waft out from the cracks in the box and from the observation window, filling the inside so that anyone in there would not be able to keep his eyes open.

  “Are you about ready?” said the fake box man triumphantly. “Look, she doesn’t pay any attention to me at all.”

  The girl smiled slightly as she undid the fifth button. It was a faltering smile. There were still seven grass seeds left to go.

  “It’s all right if you want to take pictures.”

  I was taken by surprise. To be sure she had promised to model for me. Even though she had stripped, there was no reason for me to do the same. I had nothing against taking my clothes off, but there was no need to do so on the spot. I seemed arbitrarily to be worrying unnecessarily. In an effort to ease the awkwardness of the situation I reached into my tote bag (it was in the basket I put my clothes in when I took them off), which contained my camera, but in the end gave that idea up. If I set my camera up here and now, I would be tacitly recognizing a life in common with the box man. That might be better than stripping my clothes off, but after all it was like handing over a passkey to my private room.

  “This background is impossible.”

  As she undid the seventh button, she twisted the upper part of her body and looked at the wall behind her. The neck of her collar opened and I could see her brassière. It was a dark gray with exposed seams like those on a rugby ball. Indeed, perhaps the setting was tasteless. There were a glass case and lines of sterile instruments. A very narrow examination couch. An enamel washbasin supported by slender, curved, metal legs. And then a weird mechanical seat that resembled a dentist’s chair, but that somehow had a different feeling. That was what made it interesting. There was an eroticism in this assortment as in pictures of hell. I supposed then that if I had plenty of film and when the sun moved a little over to the south, I should ultimately not be able to resist the seduction of taking some pictures.

  “If you wish we can shift places. I’ll go over there,” said the fake box man obligingly.

  “No, no, that won’t do at all. I’ll be against the light.”

  Quiet! Quiet! If I talk here I’ll end up by confessing. Her fingers went to the ninth button; if she undoes the remaining three buttons the blouse will slip off.

  “From what I have observed about you, you would prefer more direct action than just taking pictures,” he said with false vivacity. The fake box man began to putty over the space left open by my silence with random chatter. “If I had the choice I would prefer direct action too. Let’s stop saying she doesn’t excite us. You can take pictures any time; it’s like being told to hold off at the crucial point. You don’t have to pay any attention to me. I long ago waived my rights to her. It must already be about a year now.… Our affair began with her coming to have an abortion. After the operation was over, as she had no money, she asked me unexpectedly to let her pay me back by working. With that innocent face …
I was surprised … but anyway at such times one comes to a decision amazingly fast … surprisingly so. Properly, I did not inquire into the name of the man or about her relatives. I tried to hold her by ignoring her past.”

  “If you had asked me, I would have told you.”

  “I don’t particularly mean I intentionally didn’t ask.”

  “Anyway I was glad you didn’t.”

  “The nurse who had been here up until then didn’t put a very good face on it. She called you a saucy minx.”

  “How did you think of me?”

  “At first I thought you were terribly suspicious of people. Then I thought you were perhaps overly trusting. You do everything so impulsively. Furthermore when you’re scolded you at once admit your mistake with equal simplicity. You seem to believe that just by recognizing your errors any misdeed is erased.”

  “Was I all that bother?” Her fingers were poised on the last button.

  “No. Everything’s erased. When I think back on it now my intuition not to try to question you about your past was pretty good. And knowing you, you could have taken to your heels without leaving a trace … even if you had walked on freshly fallen snow.”

  She laughed briefly with the tips of her tightly pursed lips, and when she pulled the tails of the blouse, which she had finished unbuttoning, from her skirt, she let it slip to her fingertips and flung it with two fingers onto one end of the examination couch. A number of narrow pleats gathered at the stricture of her waist as she twisted. Although she did not appear to be especially thin, the layer of subcutaneous fat seemed scanty. That set up some association of ideas, but what was it now? Oh, yes, the feel of the soft chamois skin that I wiped my lenses with.

  “But we were able to get along rather well, weren’t we?”