The Box Man

by Kōbō Abe

  But at this point such a state of affairs was without importance. Apparently with the money we earned we had bought a real horse, but that had nothing to do with me. Actually, since the breakup of the marriage I had never seen my father once leave the box, and so I was in fact suspicious whether he was my real father or not. My dejection came from the fact that although the girl in my pictures was always the same, the real girl had grown older with the passage of time, and I should never be able to get her back. Every time I thought about it, the pain of our parting was vividly revived, and from my slackened tear ducts tears began to overflow for no reason at all. Instantly, my father stretched his hand from the box, shook out a new silk handkerchief, and applied it to my eyes. Anyway since the picture I was drawing was small, it would smudge at once with a single teardrop and be useless.

  Since I have been painting these pictures there is no person who does not know my name now. You won’t see an encyclopedia that doesn’t have an article on Chopin as the producer as well as the inventor of the first stamp in the world. But mail operations have progressed, and along with their gradual nationalization my name has become known as that of a counterfeiter of stamps. This is apparently the most convincing reason why my portrait cannot be exhibited in any post office. Only the red of the red box that my father regularly used at the end of his life is even now, in part, used on postboxes.

  Five Minutes

  to Curtain Time

  —A sultry wind is blowing between you and me now. A sensual, burning wind is blowing around us. I do not know precisely when it began. In the force of the wind and in the heat I seem to have lost my sense of time.

  But in any case I realize too that the direction of the wind will probably change. Suddenly it will turn into a cool westerly wind. And then this hot wind will be stripped away from my skin like a mirage, and I shall not even be able to recollect it. Yes, the hot wind is too violent. Within itself is concealed the premonition of its end.

  Why, I wonder? If I search for the explanation it will not be impossible to find. Yet the important thing is whether or not you intend to listen to it. Anyway I realize that I’m putting on a one-man show, but I don’t want to bore you. What about it … shall I go on, or …?

  —Yes, yes, if you make it short.…

  —Short? About five minutes …?

  —Five minutes will be just about right, I think.

  —Of course, we’re in love, you know. It’s a different love from one that gradually grows, turning into a soaring tower of mist, solidifying, and reaching completion. It’s a paradoxical love, beginning at the end … a love that commences from the realization that it is lost. A poet said it well. It is beautiful to love, but ugly to be loved. In love that begins with lost love, therefore, there are no shadows at all. I do not know whether it is beautiful or not, but in any case there is no grief in the pain of this kind of love.

  —Why is that?

  —Why is what?

  —What’s the purpose of going on talking about what’s over and done?

  —It’s not over. Our affair begins with love lost. Actually the fiery wind is blowing harder.

  —It’s because it’s summer that it’s hot.

  —Apparently you’re incapable of understanding. This is a tale, of course. This story is in the act of taking place. Since you hear it you have the obligation of being one of the cast of characters. Now you’re told someone’s in love with you. What a quandary I’ll be in if you don’t play the part you’re assigned, no matter how uncomfortable or ridiculous.

  —Why, I wonder?

  —The important thing is not the end. The thing to consider is the reality of your feeling the fiery wind on your skin. The denouement is not the problem. Now the fiery wind itself is important. In this fiery wind words and sensations that have been asleep give out a blue light as if they possess high-voltage electricity. This is a rare time when a man can see with his eyes the soul as substance.

  —Amazing. If you woo one like that you’ll manage never to be hurt. But your intentions are too obvious.

  —I suppose … about half is true. But if you can’t accept the other half at all, we might as well stop.

  —You do want to go on don’t you?

  —Of course.

  —You have the right to two minutes more.

  —You’re forcing yourself.

  —You had better not waste any time.

  —All right, I’ll be careful of the time. I don’t expect to get time back. Compared to the you in my heart, the I in yours is insignificant. But when I try to escape from that pain time melts slowly away. If I seriously command the techniques of wooing, then there is hope of coming into possession of a little peace and happiness. So I want to cherish that fiery wind that is so difficult to come by, that begins with love lost. Marvelous forests of words and seas of desire … time stops just by touching your skin lightly with my fingers, and eternity draws near. In the pain of this fiery wind a physical transformation that will not disappear until I die is effected on me.

  Whereupon the Play

  Came to an End

  Without Even the Bell

  Ringing for the Curtain

  Now I can speak out clearly with confidence. I was not wrong. Perhaps I failed, but I was not wrong. My failure is no cause for regret. Because I have not particularly gone on living for the conclusion.

  I hear the sound of the front door shutting.

  She has gone. At this point I am neither angry nor bitter. The sound of the door closing was filled with deep sympathy and compassion. There was no enmity or strife between us. I imagine that even she, if it were possible, would have wished to disappear without using the front door. Thus she was hesitant about slamming it. After waiting ten minutes I shall nail up the door. I don’t really expect her back. I shall simply wait until she gets far enough away so that she will not hear the sound of hammering.

  When I finish with the entrance, there only remains the lock on the door of the emergency stairs on the second floor. As the windows and vents are securely blocked with plywood or cardboard, there is no place for the sunlight to enter during the day. This is all the more true now on this overcast evening. The whole building is entirely cut off from the outside world, and there are neither entrances nor exits. After seeing to this, I leave. It is an escape of which only a box man is capable. As for where I escape to and by what means, I intend to write about that last of all in these notes.

  A ten-minute lapse.

  Now I have just nailed up the entrance. My aim was off, and I grazed the base of the nail of my left thumb. A little blood seeped out, but the pain went away at once.

  When I think about it, we did not after all exchange a single word from the time I returned from outside to when she left. I had some regret. But I imagined that the regret would not vanish just by having talked with her. The stage where words were useful had already passed. By just exchanging glances we already understood each other. This too-complete communication was a phenomenon that appeared in the process of our disintegrating love.

  Her expression was a little tense. Or perhaps it just looked that way because of the light makeup. Anyway the change of expression was of little importance to me, being merely a small part of the change in her. The important thing was that she was dressed. What the clothing was was scarcely the question at this juncture. For close to two months she had been living naked. I, too, in my box, was naked. At home we were naked together. And except for us there was nobody there. We had taken off the name plate and the sign from the door and turned out the red lamp at the gate, and even callers who stopped in by mistake completely ceased coming. There was no need even to put out the sign canceling examinations.

  Once a day I would put on the box and go out into the town. Wandering about the streets like a transparent person, I would go around collecting miscellaneous items for daily use, principally foodstuffs. If I did not go into a given store more than once a month, I had no worry about being challenged. We could not
live high on the hog, but we also didn’t lack any comforts. I was confident that if there were just the two of us, we could go on living like this for any number of years.

  When I would come up the back emergency stairs and take off my boots and box in the corridor on the second floor, she would be waiting for me and come running up from below. This was the most exciting moment in the whole day. I would always get an erection, though for a short while. Swaying, we would hug each other so closely there was not a sliver of space between us. However, our vocabulary was comically poor. Her head came just to my nose, and when I would murmur how fragrant her hair smelled, she would follow up with how smooth and round my buttocks were, giving them a succession of little pats. But I hardly think that’s the point. The efficacy of words extends up to a line eight feet away, at which point one can distinguish the other person clearly as different. Nor could I imagine that the morgue by the stairway would cast its shadow between the two of us. We had decided to ignore it completely, and when we did the room was in fact nonexistent.

  After some minutes, at about the time my erection was going down, we at length broke our embrace and turned toward the kitchen at the end of the corridor. Even though we had separated, we always kept our bodies in contact. For example, while she was peeling potatoes or chopping leeks at the sink, I would sit at her feet and slowly keep passing my hand over her legs. Mold was growing faintly on the kitchen floor. The real kitchen was downstairs, and this one was neglected, almost unused; it had been set up previously for the inpatients of the hospital. That was the only reason why we began using this one. There was an empty room across the corridor where it was convenient to pile up the kitchen wastes. Old vegetables, fish heads, and similar things were temporarily kept in plastic bags, but the mice broke into them for food, and the contents lay scattered everywhere on the floor. After a half day they began to rot, and a clinging stench spilled out every time the door was opened and closed. We took no notice of that. For one thing, when you’re touching skin with someone else it seems that your sense of smell undergoes a transformation. And then too perhaps we sensed without realizing it that it provided a good opportunity to forget the existence of the morgue. We talked only about our optimistic estimate that it would take at least half a year to fill up the room with garbage.

  But was it in fact optimistic? I think we had simply abandoned hope from the beginning. Passion is the urge to burn oneself out. Perhaps we were only too much in a hurry to burn ourselves out. We were afraid of our love stopping before burning out, but we were not sure we wanted to go on the way people usually do. We could not imagine things as far as a half year in the future, when the room would be full of garbage. We continued touching one part or another of each other’s bodies the whole day long. We rarely went out of a circle eight feet in diameter. At that distance the other person could almost not be seen, but we didn’t consider that particularly inconvenient. If in our imaginations we connected the various parts of ourselves together, we had the feeling of actually seeing each other, and more than that our sense of liberation at not being seen by the other one was great. I dissolved into parts in front of her. Other than her comments on the feel of my buttocks, she gave absolutely no voice to any opinion touching my whole personality … whether she liked it or whether she abhorred it. That didn’t particularly bother me. Words themselves had already begun to lose their meaning. Time had stopped. Three days, three weeks, were all the same. No matter how long our love goes on burning, when it is burnt out it is over in an instant.

  Thus when I noticed that instead of a naked girl running up, the one today was dressed and looking up at me in silence, I was not particularly nonplused and was able to manage merely experiencing a little disappointment, as if returning to the starting point. But my own nakedness seemed terribly piteous. As if sent away, I returned to my box, and there was nothing to do but to wait motionlessly for her to leave. She frowned and looked around, but pretended not to take notice of me. She seemed only to be trying to identify the source of the stench. She slowly looked over her shoulder and then withdrew to her own room. Muffling my steps, I too returned to the former examination room. If this was the starting point, would we be successful commencing all over again from the beginning? Of course, it should be possible to start over again any number of times. Straining my ears, I listened for her out in the corridor. There was no sign of her moving. Could she be waiting for me to suggest starting over again? But no matter how many times we began again, the same time, the same place would simply repeat.

  The dial of the clock wears out unevenly;

  Most worn

  Is the area round eight.

  As it is stared at with abrasive glances

  unfailingly twice a day,

  It is weathered away.

  On the other side

  The area at two

  Is only half as worn,

  For closed eyes at night

  Pass without stopping.

  If there is one who possesses a flat watch evenly worn,

  It is he who, failing at the start, is running one lap behind.

  Thus the world is always

  A lap fast—

  The world he thinks he sees

  Has not yet begun.

  Illusory time,

  When the hands stand vertically on the dial;

  Without the bell announcing the raising of the curtain,

  The play has come to an end.

  • • •

  And now my last confession. I actually heard the noise of the door to her room. I could not have heard the front door. That has been nailed up from the first. It had been the most trouble and was firmly closed off. She cannot get out that way. The emergency stairs are locked; she has to be confined within the building now. Only that confounded blouse and skirt are separating her from me. But if I cut off the electricity the effect of her clothes too will end. If she cannot be seen, that will be the same as her being naked. I can’t stand being seen by her when she is wearing clothes. In the darkness it’s the same as being with a blind man. She will again become gentle. I am completely liberated from the need to wrack my brains for some uninviting plan to gouge out her eyes or anything like that.

  Instead of leaving the box, I shall enclose the world within it. Now the world must have closed its eyes. Things will definitely go the way I wish. In the building articles such as matches, candles, lighters, to say nothing of my flashlight, anything that creates shadows or form has been disposed of.

  After a time, I cut the power. I looked in at her room, not purposely making myself conspicuous, but not especially stealthily either. Of course, I have taken off the box and am naked. I expected only faint signs of her in the depths of the darkness and was astounded at the unexpected change in the room. There was much too much discrepancy with what I had expected. I was more greatly perplexed than surprised. The space that was supposed to be a room had changed into an alleyway, like one behind shops, adjoining some station. Across the alley from the shops stood a building with a real estate office combined with a privately run baggage room. It was a narrow alley barely large enough to let a person by, and even without any special knowledge of the place one could at once assume from the topography and the direction that it was a dead-end alley cut off by the precincts of some station. Except to urinate, no one would be entering.

  The passage was blocked by bundles of rubber hose, an incinerator made from a metal drum, cardboard boxes piled up, and a line of about five bowls of bonsai that had begun to dry out, mixed in with old bicycles. For what purpose, I wondered, had she lost herself in such a place? Even supposing her objective was to find cardboard, did she intend to steal out of here and go somewhere?

  When I went ahead, treading my way through the trash, I came to a narrow little stairway in concrete just where it seemed to be a dead end. It was not very steep and was about five steps high. When I reached the bottom, it was hard to believe, but a sturdy concrete balcony jutted out. One could at once infer that the
plans for an overpass had altered during the course of construction and that it had been abandoned in its present state.

  I went down to the balcony. Suddenly the wind strengthened, and the sounds of night construction on the railroad sighed in the distance. The sky was tinged a reddish purple, doubtless the reflection against the clouds of the neon lights in the streets. I took another step, and suddenly right before me there was nothing, and I could see the roadbed twenty or twenty-five feet below. I had the feeling of being in a construction elevator suspended in the skeleton of an unfinished building and between two concrete walls that were shedding tears like bird droppings.

  I must find her. But there is no place further to advance from here. This is a part of closed space after all. Nevertheless, where could she have vanished to? Gingerly I looked down, but it was dark and I could see nothing. If I tried taking another step further, what would happen? I was curious. But I supposed I would be no closer to finding her. Anyway the whole thing was simply taking place in the same building.

  Oh, yes, before I forget, one more important addition. In processing the box the most important thing in all events is to ensure leaving plenty of blank space for scribbling. No, there’ll always be plenty of blank space. No matter how assiduous one is in scribbling, one can never cover all the blank space. It always surprises me, but scribbling of a certain type is blank itself. At least there’ll always remain enough space to write one’s name in. But if you don’t wish to believe even that, it doesn’t make the slightest difference.

  Actually a box, in appearance, is purely and simply a right-angled parallelepiped, but when you look at it from within it’s a labyrinth of a hundred interconnecting puzzle rings. The more you struggle the more the box, like an extra outer skin growing from the body, creates new twists for the labyrinth, making the inner disposition increasingly more complex.