by Kōbō Abe
The girl lifted her head from her pillow, and her eyes met his. He started to back out, but something in her inquiring look, as though she had been half expecting him, made him stop.
“Not yet… please …”
She pleaded with him in a pastel powdery voice. Probably his uniform had aroused some misunderstanding; a patient familiar with hospital routine might well recognize that it belonged to security. But the girl’s lips were smiling. It was an innocent, irregular smile, transparent as a tomato skin.
“I’m not going to do anything.”
The man held his hands out palms-up by his shoulders to show her he meant no harm.
“But Daddy sent you, didn’t he?”
As she spoke she shifted her gaze to the chair by the bed, as though her father sat there invisibly.
“I just looked in because the light was on. Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for the assistant director….”
The girl returned her gaze to the man. Now her smile spread to the corners of her eyes.
“Listen—really, I still get dizzy when I walk.”
“Who is your father, anyway?”
“As if you didn’t know.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“No.”
She might not be just any patient, he thought. Her room was considerably bigger than the average patient’s room, and well cared for. The bed seemed to be a special-order one, and the blanket had a nice thick nap. The curtains were not regulation white cotton but ivory-colored nylon. That smell of scalded milk seemed to come from the girl’s own body. The man felt his heart suddenly weaken. Perhaps the smell reminded him of his wife.
“I wonder who your father could be, if he’s somebody I’m supposed to know.”
The girl pointed again to the chair beside the bed, and pursed up her lips. At first he assumed she was vaguely indicating somebody or other who often came and sat there. But when he traced the line of her finger, which was pointing at an odd angle, it seemed that she was directing his attention to a specific place on the chair leg. With the noise of fingers snapping in his mind, it hit him. If his security uniform meant to her that he knew her father, then there was only one possibility: the chief of security.
He acted on reflex, lifting up the chair and turning it over. Sure enough, the bottom of one leg had been hollowed out, and a small FM transmitter inserted. He removed the batteries and dropped them into his pants pocket.
“How disgusting. Planting bugs on his own daughter.”
“I know, isn’t it?”
Her voice was animated, and an atmosphere bubbled up around her as though someone had taken the top off a carbonated drink. Precisely because she was so used to being spied on, this novel experience was evidently exciting.
“What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
Instead of answering, the girl half sat up, resting one elbow on her pillow, and smiled. As she twisted her body, one leg was exposed above the knee. She was much younger than he had first thought. She couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. The outline of her body under the blanket had fooled him into thinking she was more grown-up. With her arms and legs stretched out, she had seemed well past little-girlhood, but the look on her face, he saw now, was quite babyish. And the curve of her thigh was still immature.
“Does your father want to take you out of the hospital?’’
“As if you didn’t know.”
The girl turned over, lying on her back, and drew her feet toward her. knees up. The blanket was stretched like a tent over her slightly parted knees. Keeping a watchful eye on him, she began to move her hand rhythmically under the covers. He couldn’t exactly see it move, but from the way her shoulders shook and from the waves her elbow was making in the blanket, he could clearly imagine the rhythmic motions her wrist was making, like an insect’s feelers. He was thrown off balance. The back of his face swelled up, bloated like waterlogged sand.
“Cut it out.”
His voice was husk}’, as though there were a lid on his throat.
“But he says this is how I look the cutest.”
“Who says so?”
“The doctor.”
“You mean the assistant director?”
The girl laughed, wrinkling the wings of her small, well-shaped nose. Then she made a spit bubble between her puckered lips, and smeared it on the tip of a slender finger taken out from between the covers.
“Hey. I said cut it out.”
He snatched her hand away. The girl’s saliva smeared on his wrist. He had meant well by taking out the electronic listening device, but it had only backfired against him. Beyond all doubt, the chief of security had been listening in. If only he had left the device in place, he wouldn’t have opened himself to any suspicion, and the girl probably would have behaved herself better.
“Why?”
The girl’s transparent skin reddened. All the expression in her turned-down face ran into the left side, leaving her right eye behind, an empty, blank hole.
“You don’t have to do that. Even if he is a doctor.”
“That’s what Daddy says, too.”
“He’s right. Why should anyone make you do something you don’t want to do?”
“I want to, though.”
“Liar.”
“But that picture in the frame, that’s supposed to be the doctor and me.”
“What picture?”
“The one in the waiting room. You know, where the horses are doing you-know-what.”
She giggled. Maybe she was a little off her rocker. In a flash, while he wasn’t looking, she slipped her hand back under the covers.
“Will you stop it?”
“Really you want to look, though, don’t you?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
While she spoke, as though testing him, she began moving her hand slowly toward the space between her knees, like a slug crawling to its nest. She seemed to think she was making some kind of a deal with him. Whoever had trained a kid of thirteen to act like that ought to be shot. There was no excuse for it. He had to admit, though, that behind his distaste and anger lurked an emotion akin to jealousy. The girl did have an undeniable fragility. But what gave an impotent middle-aged man like that the right to take this sensation like freshly squeezed orange juice, and dissipate it in such a filthy way?
The girl’s hand stopped moving, as though she had seen and understood his anger.
“If I stop, will you promise not to take me away?”
He had never intended any such thing. If not for his own urgent situation, though, he felt it might not be such a bad idea at that, as long as he was under suspicion anyway. She did not seem to have much to carry with her, and all the talk about “take-outs” was an added incentive. On her bedside stand were a wash basin, a glass cup printed with strawberries, a pink-handled toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a gaudily colored comic magazine; inside would be sanitary cotton, nail clippers, cream lotion, and the like. The blanket seemed to be hers, too, so if everything were wrapped up in it, there would be only one bundle to earn’. The man stared into space from behind halfclosed lids. He thought he would try putting on a little show for her benefit. He would pretend he had finally agreed to her deal after much thinking and hesitating, and that way settle the score in his favor.
He gave a slow and reluctant nod.
The girl bit her lower lip and laughed with an alarming innocence. She jumped up like a fish. The blanket fell away, and the front of her pajamas came open. The nipples of her just-swelling breasts were sunken, as though hiding in fright at the passage of time. She stretched an arm and pointed over his shoulder at the opposite wall. Her armpit was as white as the inside of a clamshell. The smell of scalded milk filled the room.
“If you’re thirsty7, there’s some Coke in the fridge.”
A green curtain with a woven pattern hung just the width of the doorway. He had assumed it was there only to hide, say, a sink, but instead he found
himself in a small room complete with shower and gas burners. A small refrigerator was crammed with oranges, melons, and papayas in an array of color that seemed well suited to such a childish whore. Pulling out a bottle of Coke, he noticed a ladder beside the doorway. It was made of wood, attached vertically to the wall, and led straight up to an opening in the ceiling. Gazing up, he saw a weak light streaming out from overhead.
He had a fairly good notion of what that secret passageway might be for. Banging the Coke bottle against the wall as if he were having trouble opening it, he started up the ladder. The first rung creaked slightly, but after that he was able to ascend noiselessly. The opening led into a narrow space about one meter square. Boards overhead moved when his head brushed against them. It might be a trapdoor. On the side where the ladder was, that is, looking directly over the girl’s room, there was a peephole about ten centimeters long and five millimeters wide. The light was coming from there.
He did not immediately grasp the implications of what was taking place inside. (Only now, writing it down, can I even put it into words; it was all I could do then to make myself believe what I saw.)
Close at hand were the calves of a woman. He could have reached out a hand and touched them. She was bare-legged, but her skin shone like well-polished furniture. He shifted his angle of vision and saw the heel of her sandal grinding into the floor. It was the secretary. Beyond her were two beds. The peephole was too low to obtain a good view, but he could just make out two men lying on them. One was the emergency doctor who had fallen from the second-floor window in the midst of masturbating, and landed unconscious; the other was the assistant director. The emergency doctor was lying face up, naked, his penis as erect as ever. Perhaps it was only the man’s imagination, but its color seemed slightly bluish compared with that afternoon.
The assistant director was lying with his back to the doctor. He had on a white shirt, and was naked from the waist down. His penis lay limply against one thigh, looking exactly like fish entrails.
A web of dozens of narrow cords, weaving in and out among each other, bound the two men together by the hips. The ends of the cords were fastened to their skins with color-coded adhesive tape and connected to a machine set up between the beds. One nurse was staring at the machine, making notations, while another, shaking drops of oil from a bottle, was busily massaging the doctor’s penis with the rhythmic sound of a stray cat lapping milk. The assistant director had deep creases between his eyebrows; from time to time he would say “N thirteen,”
“K fourteen,” or some such thing, flexing and unflexing one finger raised in the air in sign. The nurse in charge of the machine would respond by manipulating dials or adjusting the position of the adhesive tape; the nurse in charge of the penis would slow down or speed up her motion.
How could he have expected any help from this crowd in looking for his wife? They were like a bunch of worm-eaten dolls escaped from a junkman’s truck, having an insane party.
(Later I found out that they were then in the midst of a bizarre experiment, attempting to translate the sensations in the doctor’s continuously erect penis into electrical signals, and then transmit those to the assistant director’s cerebrum, thereby enabling him to reach a complete orgasm simultaneously with the doctor’s ejaculation.) “Attention, visitor in room eight on the second floor. Attention, visitor in room eight on the second floor. Entering patients’ rooms without permission is prohibited. Please report at once to the nurses’ station. Please report at once to the nurses’ station. Attention, visitor in room eight.. .”
The voice of a middle-aged woman, shrill and distorted by a small speaker, yet bearing a certain professional menace, called from the foot of the ladder. The girl was laughing as she made some reply. The assistant director and the others beyond the peephole also reacted instantaneously. The voice over the speaker must have sounded not only in the girl’s room, then, but over all the building.
His eyes met those of the nurses. The secretary’s calves changed position. In reflex he covered the hole with his left hand.
Sharp pain …
He slid down the ladder. She had stabbed his palm with a sharp pin or something, and a drop of blood had formed. The crazy bitch. He put his mouth over the stab wound and sucked on it as he made his way back to the girl’s room.
With one arm under her pillow, the girl was beaming triumphantly. Her other arm was swaying like a narrow-stemmed flower over her head. In her hand was an imitation lily, just like the real thing, its head drooping heavily; attached behind it was an intercom speaker. Then had his entire conversation with the girl been overheard after all? What sort of things had they said? This was worse than the hidden microphone, because this way their identities were known.
Before he could recover, a noise came from the adjoining room with the ladder. It sounded like the creaking of a poorly fitted door. His hand hurt. He prepared to run away. Someone might be coming after him. On the one hand, he felt that he had done nothing to be ashamed of, yet for some reason he was prompted by a sense of conspiratorial guilt.
(A certain scenario just suggested itself to me.
After the transmitter batteries were removed and his ears thus effectively stopped, the chief of security must have been frustrated. He immediately contacted the nurses’ station and had them switch on the wired intercom.
He was able to monitor everything then until the man went into the adjoining room to get a Coke.
At that point conversation ceased, and an unnaturally long silence began. It hadn’t been very long, in fact, but the suspicion-tormented chief, unable to control himself, had gone ahead and ordered the warning broadcast.
For a man who was father to a thirteen-year-old sex maniac, it was probably the most natural step in the world.)
All at once the girl started to meow like a cat. She swung one leg farther out and stuffed the twisted-up blanket in her crotch. Her legs, like long pieces of spaghetti, may have been lacking in femininity, but they seemed so clean he wanted to lick them. Her round rump, encased in charcoal-gray pants, had the power of a magnet, urging awakening to the sense of touch in his palms.
That meowing, however, was a bit out of place. Was that something else that the assistant director had taught her? It gave him a quick pain to imagine her acting out the part of a cat in heat for that man.
“I’ll come by again real soon.”
There was a tenderness, surprising even to him, in his voice. Maybe once his wife was safely located and things had calmed down a bit, he might really be able to do that.
When he stepped out into the hall there was the noise of doors slamming shut. A few figures dressed in pajamas raced toward their rooms, too late. They must have been patients who had heard the broadcast a few minutes before and came to see what was going on. They looked like nothing so much as hermit crabs frightened off by footsteps.
The nurses’ station was as empty as before. The broadcasting room must be somewhere else. The door was ajar. It couldn’t hurt to stop off for a few minutes. At this point it would serve no purpose if he did head off the secretary and get back to the waiting room first. Besides, they had stopped him from looking in on the scene of the experiment. It was more important now to try to find some disinfectant for his wound. It was small, but puncture wounds were more prone to infection than incisions, he had heard.
Half the back wall was taken up by racks of patients’ charts, alphabetically arranged. He searched for his wife’s without finding it. He had not really expected it to be there, so he was not disappointed.
Now he was sorry that he hadn’t found out the girl’s name. Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back and ask her. He did know her room number, though; it was room eight on the second floor. Surely there were some records arranged by room number around somewhere.
He was searching the top of a big office desk, which was placed in the center of the room so that it could be used from either side, when from behind a pile of papers he heard the sound of water b
eing poured out of a narrow jug.
A giggle, then the white cap of a nurse appeared. She must have been a head nurse or the equivalent, judging from the three black stripes edging her cap. A black mole stood out by her nose. The sound of running water stopped. She remained squatted down with no sign of getting up, so he went around for a look, and found her straddling a low, round seat just off the floor. She sat facing a private, low workbench filled with miniature broadcasting equipment.
“Caught me, didn’t you?”
“I’d like to know what’s wrong with the patient in room eight.”
“I’m sorry.” The head nurse dug the tip of her ballpoint pen into a hole in the side of the bench and smiled, her lower jaw slack and heavy. “If I’d known you were from security, I never would have made that announcement.”
There was unmistakable respect in the eyes she turned on his uniform. This fresh reminder of the security room’s power only increased his uneasiness.
“Who’d you think I was?”
“They come all the time, people who’ve gone bananas after listening to those tapes, wanting her for a take-out….”
“What tapes?”
“Her tapes. I don’t see what’s so great about that voice of hers; sounds like a cat with the hiccups to me. But to each his own. Look at the assistant director—he turns to jelly when he listens to them.”
“You mean her father sells them? …”
“But I wonder how they sniff her cut. After all, it’s not as though he spelled out just who she is.”
“Is she really sick?”
“Oh, she’s sick, all right. Why, just the other day, after someone took her out, she’d shrunk eighteen centimeters by the time she came back a couple of days later.”
“She shrinks?”
“It’s a terrible disease called osteolysis. The bones dissolve. Are you hurt?”