by Kōbō Abe
His hunger was still bearable, but the strain on his bladder had slowly reached the breaking point. He started to piss beside a straw-mat store that was still closed. Even now there was little foot traffic, this being within hospital territory. All at once, around the alley corner came a pair of young men in sweat pants. With their close-cropped hair and identical mustaches, they looked rather like members of a student karate club. Evidently they had been running fairly hard; their bodies were wrapped in a membrane of perspiration. As they went by, one of them jabbed the man sharply in the side. His flow of urine stopped. Hurriedly he zipped up his fly. A dribble of urine formed a stain on his trousers, enough to show. Much to his relief, the pair ran on past. Had he not been taking a leak just then, he would hardly have let the incident pass in silence. That was a close call; he came damn near making a scene and ruining everything.
He lit a cigarette. Around his sharply pricked ears time flew past like a gust of wind, but in his abdomen it lay accumulating in a leaden, unmoving mass. Before he knew it, four cigarette butts lay scattered at his feet, crushed and split open, and the fifth was between his lips. He had used up half his day’s allotment. He would have to be extra careful with the rest.
When he had smoked the fifth cigarette down about two centimeters, the doctor emerged from the restaurant, showing no sign of either irritability or disappointment. Then it had not been an assignation after all. The man’s conviction began to waver; if he stopped tailing him now, though, that meant the one ray of hope he had clung to would be cut off. The doctor had removed his white coat; that would account for the bulge in his briefcase. Or could it be leftover spaghetti that he was taking to the man’s wife?
The doctor went back to the three-way intersection and turned left, coming to a subway station. Since there was a thin trickle of people going in and out, the man followed behind without hesitation. The doctor walked straight past the ticket gate, through the underpass, and out the other side. The scenery there was completely different; it was a narrow, deserted road overlooking a cliff, with ragweed as tall as a man’s head growing at the roadside. From an overhead tunnel parallel with the road, a set of tracks cut into the hillside. Perhaps it was not a subway after all, then. He wanted to check and make sure, but there were no station signs on that side.
The road was straight. Bad luck if the doctor should happen to glance around, but fortunately he appeared oblivious to his surroundings. He seemed full of confidence, or perhaps he was just busy thinking. Through the ragweed leaves, a gray sea spread out before their eyes. Along the quay, yellow-ocher buildings made a line of stripes that swayed, burning, in the August sun. If those should happen to be warehouses of a certain rubber company, then the man thought he might have some idea where he was.
As they went down a flight of steep hewn-stone stairs, a shop-lined street came into view about halfway down the hill. The cliff ledge protruded out like a canopy, making it invisible from above. One in every five stores was a flower or fruit shop, giving the area a festive look even though business seemed slow. The bulk of trade here, too, must be with the hospital. Midway down the street was a tunnel leading back up to high ground. At the entrance stood a stone statue of Jizo, guardian of children, with a plastic orchid stuck in either ear; water pouring from a drain made a bubbling pool at his feet. The far end of the tunnel was provided with stairs. Climbing up to the top, they came out into an open residential section.
Poorly kept lawns and sparsely planted trees covered the hill, with identical houses scattered here and there. The hill’s convex shape made visibility poor, but as nearly as he could judge, there were a good twenty or thirty of the structures. All were two-storied, with a central entrance shared by two households, right and left; some were further divided between upstairs and down, making space for four households altogether. The building style was old-fashioned, with the exterior covered in rough mortar, and small windows enclosed in sturdy wooden frames. Housing for doctors and other hospital employees, probably, but awfully dreary. Piles of junk, including twisted old bicycles and the crushed remains of a pen as small as a birdcage, once the home of some tiny animal, robbed the area of any sense of life. These houses looked more like special research laboratories of some sort, or even sickrooms. Or had the former residents all been evacuated to make room for some redevelopment project?
Finally the doctor stopped in front of one of the buildings. The path between structures was as crooked as a child’s scrawl, and in addition the view was impeded by shrubbery, making conditions ideal for shadowing. By the same token, it was also extremely hard to judge relative positions. And this house had no particular distinguishing characteristics, except for a sign reading “E4” and a slightly greener tinge in its mortar. The man knew he could not have described how to get there from the tunnel, except to say it was a good ways back.
After watching the doctor check the mailbox and go upstairs, he ran through the garden, ducking under shrubbery, and peered inside. There were four mailboxes, but judging from the layers of dirt and rust, only one was now in use. The doctor’s shadow was crouched over on the landing, facing away from a dirty transom window. He seemed to be having trouble with his key. It was the left-hand door on top, as you faced the building. The air was thick and amber-colored, and there was the smell of a dead animal. The man’s body shook with an unpleasant foreboding. Suddenly his thoughts shrank like a piece of fat meat plunged into boiling water, then grew paper thin. This was not just some secret rendezvous; he sensed that his wife’s very life was in danger. If this was still part of the hospital, they might even be conducting experiments on living creatures. Obscene experiments, so horrible that not even the nurses were allowed in.
Staying close to the wall, he went all around the house once. The back faced north-northeast. The window there was much smaller, probably for a kitchen or bathroom. When he came around front again after circling the house, over on the south side, which seemed to be divided into two rooms, all of a sudden a window toward the center slid open. Pressing flat against the wall, he listened with his whole body: a steamship’s whistle, like a deep groaning wheeze; rumblings of the town, permeating every smallest corner; sounds of a helicopter flying somewhere. Nothing that resembled a human voice. Were the two of them on such intimate terms that they had no need to speak out loud, then, only whispering softly back and forth under their breath? Or was she gagged and bound, unable to converse at all? Perhaps the reason the doctor had appeared so calm at the spaghetti house was that she had already been made impervious to the effects of time.
He measured the distance to the window with his eyes, and groped around carefully for any protuberance that might serve as a foothold, any hollow that might provide a handgrip. Mentally he prepared to face a scene that he would far rather have avoided. The main thing now was revenge. He was already too deeply wounded to fear greater injury. Along the doorframe of the main entrance was a downspout. The location was not bad, but it was far too corroded to support his weight. At the same time, the window was too high to reach with his jump shoes. There had to be something he could do. On the building next door, directly above stairs leading to the flat roof, was a wedge shaped structure that looked as though one side had been sliced off diagonally. That seemed to be the roof entrance. This building ought to have one, too, then. If an attack from below wouldn’t work, he would try an attack from above.
He made his way softly up the stairs. There, just as he had expected, was another flight, continuing on up from the landing. The door at the top was padlocked, but the lock was so old and rusty that it fell apart with one twist, clasp and all. The hinges squeaked: a short, sharp sound like the squawk of a long-tailed rooster. He waited briefly, but there was no response. Luckily, no one seemed to have noticed. The sunlight was not too strong, but even so, its reflection off the rooftop hurt his eyes. A thick layer of baked dust crunched underfoot like crackers.
Getting down on his knees by a low, knee-high railing, he leaned out as far as
he dared. The window awning was in the way, and all he could make out were the two ends of the frame on the open window. The metal awning was only fifteen centimeters wide at most; if he did make it down, it would be all he could do to gain a footing.
Suddenly from the room below came a moan. It was the voice of a woman. The sound was so depersonalized, however, that he was unable to say whether or not it was his wife. Then there was a short, muffled conversation, and again sporadic, low, stifled moans.
Taken by surprise, the man cowered, trembling, like a worm doused with boiling water. In his head was one thought only: to see inside that room. He hooked his shoetops around the base of the railing, held onto the downspout, and swung himself around. Hanging head down with his stomach against the wall, he realized glumly that it was now impossible to get back up. Luckily the downspout there was not as corroded as below. Anyway, he would try to lower himself down as far as he could. Then if the metal fixtures would just hold fast, he might be able to work his way around and burst in through the window. If his luck gave out and the downspout did break or collapse, he would give a good hard kick against the wall, do a backward somersault in the air, and then trust to the cushioning action of the jump shoes.
Short screams began to mix with the woman’s moaning. He could make out a bed in one corner of the room. The doctor lay there naked, face up, on a white sheet. The blanket had fallen down on the floor, exposing the top of the bed to full view, but for some reason the woman was nowhere to be seen. Yet the voice went on as before. The source of the sound seemed to be a large speaker set up near the pillow. The entire wall was plastered with nude photographs, large and small. The voice from the speaker increased in sinuosity, filling the room with its intricate convolutions. Through it all the doctor lay applying some sort of instrument to the end of his erect penis, rotating his knees and vibrating his wrists at the rate of five times per second.
Their eyes met. The doctor sprang up, grabbing a towel near the pillow and wrapping it around his waist as he charged toward the window. Instinctively the man tightened his hold on the downspout. The doctor reached out an arm and grabbed the belt of his trousers. Trying to break free, the man jerked his hips, whereupon the downspout silently gave way. He hung momentarily in midair. The doctor tried to free himself, but unable to pull out his hand from under the belt, he fell headlong, dragged by the man’s weight. Perhaps in trying to shield his erect penis, he had not braced himself as well as he should have.
The two men fell to the ground, still joined. On the way down they made a half-turn, so that when they landed the doctor was on the bottom. The man escaped with only a scrape or two, but the doctor had apparently hit his head; he lay there unconscious. His huge, white, hairy body lying face up on the ground stark naked, eyes wide open, was an eerie sight. He was still breathing, though, and his pulse was rapid but steady. Also, for better or for worse, his penis remained firmly erect.
The man was more perturbed by the doctor’s erect penis than by his loss of consciousness. He covered the organ with the towel. It was still noticeable, but that was some improvement. His next impulse was to shut off that woman’s voice, crying out in greater and greater agitation from above. At the same time he would be able to phone somewhere for help. A search would probably turn up a notebook with frequently dialed numbers in it. Anyway, he decided to go back up to the room. The door was locked from the inside. This time there was no need to worry about being seen, so he let himself down with both hands from the roof straight to the metal awning, swung around down, and jumped inside. He shut off the switch. The woman’s last gasp stuck in the depths of his ears.
Before he could find the telephone, it began to ring of its own accord. There was no use hesitating. He let it ring three times and then picked up the receiver.
Immediately, a man’s soothing voice came into his ear.
“It’s all right, we understand the situation. Please just wait there a minute.”
“Were you watching?”
“How is the injured person?”
“I think he’s unconscious.”
“Don’t move him. If you can, cool his head with a damp cloth. And if there’s an umbrella or something around, try to shield his face with it. We’ll be right there.”
It wasn’t entirely the fault of that doddering old guard. Part of the responsibility was his for thinking that the guard’s explanation had made sense, and falling for it hook, line, and sinker. He had got himself into a fine mess. Not only had it been a wild-goose chase as far as tracing his wife was concerned, but now he was in real hot water. For all he knew, he might even have to face the police. The voice over the phone had said it was all right, but what was all right? They understood the situation, he had said, but what situation? He didn’t care for the implications. Maybe now was the time to make a getaway.
He decided to go back up to the roof to retrieve his briefcase and jacket. On his way out he had an idea; going back, he removed the tape of the woman’s voice from the tape deck and stuck it in his back pocket. He left the door unlocked. A wind had come up. He walked around on the rooftop. The view there was more open than below on the ground, but less so than he had expected. Down in the south garden the doctor was still lying face up, penis erect as ever. Far off at sea, waves glittered like gold under torn, fleecy clouds. The tunnel leading to the little shopping street under the cliff would be in that direction. To the west, the housing area stretched as far as he could see. Instinctively he felt that the hospital buildings should be to the east, beyond the urban area, but a dense grove of maples cut off his view. Across to the north, the hills were joined directly to the sky; a single building in front was thrusting up its head. Only slightly lower than the red and white smokestacks of the incinerator plant on the left, it appeared to be fairly tall.
The sound of an engine began to come closer. Suddenly a white van was visible over the hills. Its motor seemed to be racing as it zoomed along among the dwellings, heading straight this way. Now was the time to escape. A few seconds’ hesitation, however, and it was too late. Before he was all the way downstairs, the sound of squealing brakes blocked the front entrance. Now, rather than act suspiciously nervous, he would try to greet them calmly, and with good grace. He went back to the room.
Three men in white coats got out of the van, each wearing a slightly different type of uniform. No, two were men and one was a woman, her hair cut short in a boyish style. One of the men was thin and short, and the other was of medium height, with a barrel chest. All three looked up together at the room where he was. As though acting on behalf of the others, the fellow in the smallest white coat held up one finger, evidently a sign that they meant him no harm.
The small man bent over the prostrate doctor, peering at his pupils and testing his reflexes with a quick, professional touch, while the other two looked on intently from a short distance. Gently he removed the towel and measured the length of the injured man’s penis. He pinched and poked it, making notes. The woman averted her eyes and stood there awkwardly, scuffling her feet.
The stocky man brought out a stretcher from the back of the van. At that signal the woman started heading toward the house. The man was seized with panic. He felt as embarrassed as though his room were being invaded. Of course, she was tough enough to stand and watch a man’s erect penis being measured, so perhaps she was no ordinary young woman.
‘‘Hurry, come here.”
She was in her late twenties, dark-skinned, with a hard, wiry build, and evidently strong-minded. Still, she was not as mannish as he had judged from her hair style, looking down from above.
He went out into the corridor to meet her, and began a lame explanation.
“It wasn’t my fault. Everything—it’s hard to explain, but.. .”
The woman nodded sympathetically, slipped past him, and entered the room. With a wry smile she surveyed the nude photographs on the wall, and headed straight for the bed. Gathering up several dozen sheets of tissue paper from the bedside,
she lifted up the strange instrument with which the doctor had been masturbating.
“You know what this is?”
According to her, it was a receptacle for gathering sperm. The sperm bank had a purchasing system whereby price was computed on the basis of a donor’s age, health status, physical strength, IQ, genetic factors, and so on, also taking into account aesthetic considerations. This particular doctor had been assessed at 1,280 yen per gram. The problem was that he had an ejaculation nearly every day. Even though not very many people were interested in artificial insemination, he kept making contributions, taking advantage of the purchasing system, until the bank’s store of semen was so out of balance that if they weren’t careful, a whole batch of babies looking like him might well be born. He seemed to have no particular zeal for progeny, however; he was only after the money. But even supposing he brought in a specimen every day for 365 days, after a year it would still come to less than 500,000 yen, so you could see what an old miser he was. That building, too, was going to be torn down before the year was out to make room for a bigger cemetery, and the water had already been shut off; he was only hanging on because the rent was free.
A voice from below called that it was time to leave.
The woman waved her arm from the window in response. “That short little man is the hospital’s assistant director. He’s in charge of cartilage surgery, too. I’m his secretary.” As she identified herself, she searched in the emergency doctor’s pants pockets and came up with a bunch of keys. Next she went to remove the tape from the cassette deck; finding it already gone, she turned and gave the man an arch look. He shifted his eyes, pretending not to see.