by Kōbō Abe
If you wish, I shall leave something like a little posthumous memorandum for you. I think there’s no absolute necessity for it, but just by chance it may make you feel better. Yet it’s ridiculous to be accused of the crime of helping a suicide. As with a knitted jacket, everything comes undone from a truly trifling rent. It may be well to cut out the following few lines (seal them up in a vinyl bag so they will not get wet) and fasten them to the fingers of the body. Just a minute. No, not to the fingers but somewhere where it would be easy for the corpse to tie them on himself. Oh yes, what about placing them around the neck in a ring? No, since we want it to appear to be an accidental death, until the investigating authorities, who are suspicious, get here, I should perhaps hide them somewhere in this room. In a pipe coupling of the bed, which will be discovered at once with a little effort, but which at first glance is not obvious. The rest of the notes cut out are, of course, to be incinerated.
I personally chose death. If the findings suggest murder, it will all be the fault of my clumsiness.…
No, to make this too apologetic is not wise. Indeed, I may sow the seeds of suspicion if I do. It is better to be more straightforward.
I have resolved to die. Let’s stop the hypocrisy of hope at this point. Toffee feels pretty hard until you put it in your mouth and suck on it. But you want to crunch it to pieces at once. A piece of candy once broken will never again return to its original form.
Do I look as if I still have some lingering attachment to life? In spite of myself, my real feelings come out. But worry is useless; no matter how attached I am, attachment is merely that. My reason understands very well that I should not go on living any longer. It’s amazing that I should still have my reason. But this reason is as fragile as a castle of sand by the seaside that the rising tide begins to wash over. Another two or three large waves and it will disappear without a trace. At once I change my mind, and greedily I feel like beginning to resist death. First I shall woo the girl boldly, and if I am refused (and refused I shall be), I shall kill her and over a period of days I shall enjoy eating her corpse. This is not a figure of speech; I shall literally put her in my mouth, chew on her, relish her with my tongue. I have already dreamed time and time again of eating her. I won’t cook her too much; underdone is fine. She is submissive, and even when she turns into meat, her smile will be unquenchable and she will have a taste somewhere between veal and wild fowl and will be utterly delectable. Apparently my sentiments toward her have been boiled down and now converge into appetite. If my appetite has increased to the point of devouring her, like it or not, I cannot avoid clinging to life. And so, while my reason remains, somehow I wish to wind things up. Of course, suicide is an honorable act, and as long as it is an act, it will not become reality by reason or aspiration alone. A little attachment, a little appetite, become pretexts for hesitation. While my reason is awake, I can manage not to pretend to brush aside at least your helping hand. So I beg of you, won’t you please lend me a helping hand while I’m asking for it? It’s both for your own good and for mine.
What’s wrong? What are you so slow for? I promised that I would pretend I was asleep, didn’t I? If you don’t hurry it up, I’ll turn into a piece of wood or a stone. I suppose you’ve gone off while I wasn’t aware of it. (Probably not. You couldn’t be more stealthy than when you came.)
“Are you there? If you are, answer me. What about just coming in?” I tried calling through the door, straining my swollen vocal cords to the utmost.
There was no answer. There was not even any sign of movement. Only the still of night became a pain that was like the striking of an iron plaque, rebounding against my eardrums. Had I been wrong? I wondered. The sound of the rattling skylight over the stairs and the creaking of the corridor as if a wet mop were wandering along were conceivably due to the suddenly dry wind that came blowing down from the mountains after three days of continuous rain. Furthermore, the circumstances were such that I could simply not avoid coming to a hasty conclusion. After all, tonight you did not send her to me. Her naked body should have been an absolute bargaining point for extending my life, for as long as I see her I will not commit suicide. It will soon be ten days since you began preparing the box (my coffin), and since she has not shown her face, there is nothing to do but accept the fact that the preparations are at last completed and the sentence of death has been handed down. Even though the signs beyond the door led me to a hasty conclusion, your coming was a matter of time.
After a while the door opens quietly but surely. At once I pretend to be asleep. Since there is no one other than you who can open a door so quietly, there is no need to take the trouble of checking. I go on feigning sleep. To get used to the stench here, you hold your breath a moment. Before beginning to breathe in, you swallow your saliva. A lump of ice as big as a thumb caught in your breast shifts an inch or two lower. You set a plastic water container on the floor and, as you take off the box, look around the long, narrow, windowless room and are again struck by how much it resembles a coffin. For light there is only a single fluorescent thirty-watt tube concealed in the ceiling. A sticky ribbon for catching flies, camouflaged as an artificial rose, is suspended at one extremity of it. In the very middle of the room, immediately below the artificial flower, like a core, is the iron hospital bed. Looking as if I am about to fall out of it, I am asleep like so much gelatine. With each breath the aftershock makes me quiver like a melted ice pack. My body is like a slice of unsold skate on a fishmonger’s counter. The front of the night kimono with vertical stripes is open, and on my stomach, the color of boiled asparagus, is a towel with a flower design faded from too much washing. The two legs that protrude from under the towel show sparse hairs and are moist like freshly skinned squid. Although I try to expel the air I inhale through my nose from my closed mouth, my lips tremble like thick rubber valves. Methane or ammonia crystals cling to the rubber valves and glitter like a dancer’s tights. Every time I sleep, my internal organs fall into decay little by little. In speed of decomposition, I would not lose out to any dead body. You hold your nose. Tears come because decomposed substances of oxidized sweat burn your eyes. You can’t endure it any longer. Haven’t I been saying all along that there’s no need to endure? Just think of a murderer as someone who checks the progress of decomposition—and it’s true.
You try giving my shoulder a little poke. I continue pretending to be asleep. You wrap a piece of rubber about my upper left arm. With a scalpel you lightly cut the inner side at the elbow and probe for a vein. Since the skin has formed a thick scab, you cannot very well insert a needle directly. The flesh is white and only a little blood comes out. Grasping the vein with absorbent cotton, you thrust in the needle. Darkish blood flows back and is heavy on the inside of the syringe. The plunger is pulled fully out as far as the twentieth notch, but inside there are only three cc’s of morphine hydrochloride. You undo the rubber around the upper arm and inject the three cc’s. Even if I were to awaken during the process (I cannot awaken since I have been feigning sleep from the beginning), you can think up any number of excuses for vindicating yourself by saying that I am getting morphine only because my breathing is so difficult or some such pretext. Instantly my breathing quickens, my relaxed expression becomes even more relaxed, and around my mouth the signs of death appear. You push the plunger down further. Only air comes out. The exposed part of my vein dilates like a fish bladder. You pull out the needle, paint the wound with a binding agent, and press down hard on it with the flat of your finger. As there is no need to be concerned about cure or worry about festering, I shall ignore the rather rough handling. Besides, perhaps I am already deep in a dream. Having a couple of fingers chopped off would feel just about like munching on a very peppery Vienna sausage, I should think. Suddenly my breathing changes drastically again. It becomes rough and quick, rumbling in my throat like a cat snarling, and then it cuts off once and for all. In a dream I am standing at the entrance to a city with no shadows; here there are constructed num
berless arches that radiate light. When I rush through them laughing madly, my body floats gently in the air. My shadow vanishes and with it my weight. While the I who is in bed at the time grinds his teeth, the lower half of my body springs up high (like a fish yanked out of water). It makes the bed grind its teeth along with me. A thousand springs, each with a different tone, split open like dry wood in a bonfire. The grinding merges into the dream, echoes from one to another among the forest of arches, and begins to play a funeral dirge for me. As I fly round and round with my arms clasping my knees, I am terribly cheerful and a little sentimental. I see a close-up of her sobbing for me. The smell of winter becomes her, as it does a young larch. When I stretch out my fingers, a hole opens in the air and becomes an anus. I am suffocating. When I open my mouth my tongue flips far out because of the extreme negative pressure on the outside and will not return to its original position. Just as I am on the point of inserting my erect tongue into the anus of air, the dream darkens, comes to a standstill. And I die.
• • •
You come creeping up over the dead me. In your arms you hold the water container. You sit with your buttocks on my chest and your weight causes me to expel my breath. And the end of my breath changes into a sound like the cracking of fish eggs … phut … phut … After constricting my lungs, you put a large funnel to my mouth and pour in the contents of the tank. At the same time you raise your hips and decrease your weight on me. The tank contains sea water. Little whirlpools dance on the surface of the water in the funnel. The hole gets clogged with scraps of seaweed. When you clear away the refuse, there is a sound like sucking on a decayed tooth, and perhaps the sea water overflows from my mouth. In such a case, it is well to raise your hips more rapidly. When you have fully raised them, the two-quart container is about half empty. With this, preparations for making the body look as if it has met death by drowning are complete.
(Of course, you can’t very well deceive the official autopsy. In order to hand down a finding of death by drowning, at the least, sea plankton must be detected in other organs besides the lungs. Sea water contained in the lungs alone would be a very strange trick and would doubtless engender suspicion. And once there was suspicion, in due order my corpse would be a nest of misgivings. There are certain physical signs that cannot be overlooked, no matter how bloated the body is by water or how much the fish have nibbled away at it: the irregular clusters of scars over which corneous tissue has formed stretch along the arm down to the wrist and along the legs to the back of the knees. To anyone it is clear at a glance that this is a drug addict, and what’s more one who has been making daily use of drugs for a very long time. If there were a steady underground channel, that would be different, but in a small provincial town like this not many are able to go on procuring supplies of drugs to the point of having so many scars. It might be a terrorist who plays on the weakness of some doctor. Or if not that, the doctor himself. In point of fact, statistically, according to occupation, those who have some relation with medical treatment show the highest rate of becoming addicts. Of course, you are in a bad position, for you have been investigated concerning the amount of drugs used. I think I understand your desire to begin practicing writing an affidavit. But anyway it’s too late now. What you can do now is to see to it that the rest goes without a hitch. Come, come, it’s all right, everything’s sure to be fine. I have just thrown a wet blanket over you, but there’s no possibility of a hitch developing now. You must have already reported the existence of vagrants with boxes over their heads to any number of policemen, and the wasteful use of national budgetary funds for legal inquiries concerning dead vagrants, no matter how they die, is prohibited.)
Now the last stage. It is considerable work to carry me down to the bottom of the emergency stairs. I imagine it is really a heavy task for you who are so slight. And then when you lift me to your shoulders, perhaps I puke up some of the sea water from my compressed lungs and get your collar wet. It would be best to take the towel I wear at work and put it around your neck. Then you go back to fetch the box. While you are doing it, don’t forget to dispose of the sea water left in the container. A trifling oversight can cause unexpected and fatal results. Then you put the box over my dead body and attach it to my waist with the rope to secure it. This bit of work had best be left until after you load the corpse into the bicycle-drawn trailer. It will also be better to put on the trousers and boots before putting the box on. With that, preparations are all completed. The only thing left to do is to leave. To be on the safe side, don’t you think you’d better drape a towel over the top? No, a white towel would only be conspicuous. Furthermore, there’s really no danger of running into anyone on the way. Of course, even if you do, you can just get off the road and let them go by. It’s downhill all the way, the trailer’s axle is well greased, and you should be able to move easily and quietly. But watch out for dogs. You’re in trouble if that spoiled mutt follows you. Make sure you chain him up before you set out.
Now as for the place to throw the body, I should like to suggest behind the soy-sauce factory that the two of us decided on before. I can’t say that the ground’s convenient for hauling a trailer over, but the cliff falls perpendicularly right down to the water, and the fact that anything would most certainly be swept away by the currents makes it an ideal place for throwing a body. While you are doing this, it is already after half past one. At the latest the business will be cleaned up by three. If you don’t finish by then, the outgoing tide will have passed its peak, the current in the canal will come to a stop, and you won’t be able to finish things tonight. If you put off unpleasant things until tomorrow …
(a sudden, unexplained interruption)
Another Insertion …
the Last
Well, now, the time seems to have come to clarify the real situation. I intend to take off the box, reveal my face, and let you and only you know just who the real author of these notes is and just what his real objective has been.
Perhaps you will not be able to believe me, but there is absolutely no falsehood in what I have written. Products of imagination perhaps, but no falsehoods. A falsehood deceives and makes one stray from the truth, but imagination can be a short cut leading one rather to the truth. We have already got to within a pace of it. Everything will suddenly become clear with a last little correction.
Of course, I am under no obligation to confess the truth. In the same way you are under no obligation to believe it either. This is not a matter of obligation but clearly one of actual advantage or disadvantage. There is no advantage in deception. I don’t want to talk about some detective story that can have a variety of solutions.
Of course, I feel that lately the signs of the times are more and more going in a direction unsuitable to detective stories. As I write this, the way in which the installment-plan system is expanding, for example, occurs to me. Just as there are almost no more people who are afraid of shots, contrary to times past, now there are few who shrink from installment buying. But with installment buying one mortgages everything, one exposes oneself, one’s work, one’s house to securing the money borrowed. Almost everyone has a good name and a reliable profession to be able to obtain clearance, and quite naturally roles for criminals and detectives are very few. These days only a guerrilla or a box man would want to cover up his identity to the extent of refusing the convenience of installment buying. But I am that box man. A representative of anti-installment-ism. Even if I am against the times, I should like to end with a clear solution: the denouement of these notes.
Now I wonder just what you think about euthanasia. For your information I shall cite the official precedent handed down by the Nagoya Superior Court in February, 1955.
EUTHANASIA IS PRACTICABLE UNDER THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
1 When a sick person has contracted an incurable disease and is threatened by imminent death;
2 When the pain experienced is obviously unbearable;
3 When the object is the elimination of
the sick man’s pain;
4 When the person in question is fully lucid, gives his consent, and specifically requests euthanasia.
5 If there is ample reason for approving such a step, any medical intervention is to be performed by a physician.
6 The means of causing death should be morally appropriate.
In my own opinion the text of this legal precedent clings somewhat too much to physical dimensions. From the standpoint of human interpretation, I think it is too timid, too conventional. Sometimes there are cases where sickness of the mind and the suffering of the body are equally appalling. But at this point such matters are unimportant. What I wanted to say is just that if one has to do with people who live where the law does not apply, then all murders there are euthanasia. The murder of a box man cannot be a crime any more than killing on a battlefield or punishment meted out by an executioner. For the sake of experimentation, try applying to a box man the clause about the sick man in the above legal precedent. I’m sure you understand that like the enemy soldier or the condemned criminal the box man too leads an existence in which, legally, from the beginning, his very survival is not recognized.