by Kōbō Abe
When I held the urinal for her, she put her arms up around my neck. Her hair smelled like freshly boiled green peas. We ate a banana apiece, and drank some hot water from the thermos. My watch reads 2:46. That siren just now could have been the signal for three o’clock, though. The band had stopped for a while, but now they have struck up again. Sounds are reflected so diffusely in this underground passage that I can hardly make out what they are playing.)
Let me see, how far had I gotten? Oh yes, the horse had just put the last piece of raw fish and rice in his mouth.
“Yes, sir, she had her eye on you. Do you know what she told me? She said that you’re the first man she ever met that she could imagine masturbating, without feeling sick.”
“That’s her problem, not mine.”
The horse washed down the last bite with the rest of his beer, and slapped his abdomen with a loud noise like the crack of a wet cloth.
“Stimulating the abdominal muscles clears the head.”
Next he took a waiting cassette down off the top of the cabinet, and inserted it in the deck of his large, very expensive-looking stereo set.
“Oh, cut it out. I’m not in the mood.”
For an instant the horse looked puzzled; then he covered his mouth and emitted a long belch.
“Don’t be silly. This is just a copy of the first part of that first tape. This is where that pill thief and your wife get together .. . assuming, of course, that that’s what happened. I mean… . What do you say, why don’t w^e play it back and try to figure everything out based on what we hear?”
He turned the switch on. We heard some kind of repeated noise in the background … footsteps, possibly rubber-soled sandals, coming closer … suddenly they became distinct, the background noise faded away….
“What about this change in sound quality here? What’s your opinion? When an automatic level control mechanism is operating, then if sounds close to the mike stop, distant sounds come in more dearly, don’t they?”
“That’s what it sounds like, all right.”
“The mike picking up these sounds is in the pharmacy; not only that, it’s in back of the very shelf where those pills were kept.”
“What do you suppose was going on?”
“Probably he was substituting medicines. Anyway, he was in such close range of that super-sensitive mike that it only comes through as noise.”
“You think he heard footsteps, and stopped moving?”
“Right. That’s why they keep coming closer.”
The sound of footsteps, alone now, kept coming closer … they came to a halt . , . then, abruptly, a sharp, metallic click–-
“Is that the door?”
“From the pharmacy side it opens without a key, you know.”
A short dry, crashing sound … then a dull, heavy thud,…
“I wonder if she was attacked by the criminal?”
The horse stopped the tape and stroked his chin, stubbly with five o’clock shadow’; the ends of his whiskers seemed to glisten.
“I hate to say it but that does seem the likeliest possibility”
“But she would have screamed or something.”
“Right. That bothered me, too. That’s why I couldn’t help thinking that they must have known each other after all.”
“Then what about the sound right after that, like someone falling down; what do you make of that?”
“You could get a very similar sound by pushing over a bag of sodium bicarbonate or starch.”
“I have another explanation just as good: My wife was running around then, looking for someone to lend her ten yen. When she realized there was someone in the pharmacy she felt relieved, and so when the criminal coolly opened the door and invited her inside, she…”
“Yes, hmm. Sensing no danger, she walks in as innocent as a lamb, and bingo, he takes her by surprise….”
The horse swung his hand down hard and slammed his fingers against the table’s edge, frowning. A cup fell on the floor but did not break, saved evidently by the fine, thick carpet.
“Are there any leads on the pill thief?”
“What are you asking me for? You’re the chief of security now.”
“Stop playing games. You must know a thing or two more that you haven’t told me yet.”
“I have my own speculations. But speculations and facts aren’t the same. About the only clear facts we have are on this tape right here.”
“I’ll bet the old chief of security was on to some other kind of information.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you think that’s why he was killed—to keep him from spilling whatever it was he knew?”
“That figures. For her it would be killing two birds with one stone. It’s not impossible.”
“There must be an executive committee or something in charge of the anniversary eve party, isn’t there?”
“I don’t know the slightest thing about that.”
“But it was brought up at the council meeting….”
“Somebody heard about it somewhere. Oh, sure, the day of the festival itself, I’ll handle the greetings as usual. That’s why I became a horse. But I don’t know a thing about plans for the party the night before… . The council has a general policy of noninterference.”
“But isn’t it an authorized event? Somebody must have charge over the whole thing.”
“Well, if anyone does, it must be you.”
“Let me talk to the hospital director.”
“Don’t be unreasonable.” The rain was coming down harder. The horse turned to face the dark window and stretched his back muscles, fingers linked behind his back. Framed by rain flickering like tongues of flame against the window pane, the expression on his reflected image began flickering, too.
‘‘Who could ever understand the entire hospital? Of course, if it were possible I’d like to. Sometimes I want to know so much I start going crazy. But it takes courage even to say a thing like that. Much less to ask for the director … it’s been years since anybody said that to me, or since I said it myself. Sometimes late at night, when I’m all alone, I get to thinking. I imagine the director somewhere inside the hospital worrying, imagining me not knowing where he is or what his name is or his specialty, or even whether or not he exists….”
“I’ll pay more attention and see if any news about the anniversary eve party comes in over the tapes.”
“Good idea.” He relaxed and turned around.
“Actually, you’re not in a position to go snooping around too much, though. You’re the head of security. You’re supposed to know all about everything. Even if you don’t, you’ve got to act as if you do and make people think so.”
“That will work only so far. Whoever has my wife in custody, or captivity—I mean, whoever has hold of her—will surely see right through a pose like that.”
“They may assume you’ve given silent consent.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
The horse went and took a bottle of whiskey and two small glasses from a corner of the cupboard. He poured out two equal portions, lifted up his glass as if proposing a toast, and emptied its contents into his mouth as if he were swallowing a pill two centimeters around.
“Help yourself. You don’t mind using your beer glass there for water, do you? Well, then, shall I have a look at that notebook?”
I figured there was no use haggling with him any more.
The horse had indeed supplied me with the promised information. As a result, at least It was plain that no particular mystery surrounded my wife’s disappearance from the waiting room. My excitement at finding a clue, however, was surprisingly weak; instead, uneasiness filled me slowly but surely, like water seeping through a hole into a boat. Her encounter with the pill thief had to be a coincidence, and did nothing to answer the basic question of why an ambulance nobody had sent for had come in the first place. It was as though the question of my wife’s whereabouts had slipped through a tiny crack of coincidence and dropped
into the black depths of an unsuspected cavern.
“After two nights, this is as far as you’ve gotten… .” Skimming the final section of the notebook, the horse spoke sardonically. “You haven’t even made it as far as the room yet. There must be something coming up that you’re particularly anxious not to write about.”
I returned the shot.
“There must be something coming up that you’re particularly anxious to find out about.”
The horse gave an unconcerned smile and poured himself another whiskey.
“Of course, you’re going to work some more on this tonight, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do it as a favor to me. Tomorrow’s the party, and everything will be too hectic then.”
“It’s not true, is it?”
“What’s not?”
“About giving the notebook to my wife …”
“Why?”
“It’s all so unconvincing, every damn thing.”
“There never would have been any problem if you’d only cooperated more from the start.” Suddenly his voice had tautened. His jaw moved slowly, as if he were chewing a whole pack of chewing gum at once, and the end of his nose turned white. That sort of excitement is catching. I felt that particles of electricity had been sprinkled across my chest and arms.
“Are you kidding? I’ve cooperated a hell of a lot more than I wish I had!”
“Come on, please? If it’s too much trouble to write it all down, you can just tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“You know what it is I want to know, don’t you?”
“No; what? How big around my cock is?”
Suddenly the horse grabbed the whiskey bottle by its neck and slammed it down on the table. He must have hurt his fingers before, and decided to use the bottle this time. For some reason the bottle didn’t break, but a U-shaped crack appeared in the marble tabletop. I pressed it together, and it disappeared.
“These days you can get pretty strong porcelain adhesive, even at gas stations.”
“You can’t pretend you don’t know.” Heaving his shoulders slightly as he breathed, the horse ground his teeth. “I’m talking about the patient in room eight. It was the day your predecessor’s lower half safely recovered its functioning and its nerves were successfully connected to mine. I had a meeting and dinner with some fellows from the artificial-organs and neural-engineering departments, who had done everything they could to be of help; it dragged on so late that by the time I got to room eight on my rounds it was after nine o’clock. The bed was empty. The very day that I was reborn as a horse, mind you. She’d been waiting for it, too. Somebody must have taken her out.”
“Are you saying that I’m the one?”
“Of course, the prime suspect is your predecessor. He was her father, and unlike a good patient, he wasn’t happy about our relationship. But you can’t suspect someone who’s been reduced to just his lower half. Besides, he has an alibi. He spent most of that day tied to the ends of my motor nerves with silicon-covered platinum wires.”
“What do you mean, your ‘relationship’? She’s only thirteen years old. That little girl…”
“There’s something fishy about the way you talk about her.”
“Well, if you suspected me, why didn’t you come out and say so from the start? It’s ridiculous. Making me waste all this time churning out a report on myself….”
“Because I couldn’t quite believe it.”
“I’m afraid I’d better be going.”
“No, you don’t. There isn’t the slightest room for doubt any more that you are the guilty one.”
“Have you got proof?”
“You bet I do.” The horse flung the notebook down on the table, but not as hard as he might have. “Take a look. It’s all right in there.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“In both notebooks you always went out of your way to mention just where you were doing the writing. A cheap trick, I must say. Today when I phoned to say I was coming for you, you happened to be in your room, so you had to stay put. But yesterday and the day before you were hardly ever in. Even at night, you were always out somewhere. My secretary and I chased around after you, so don’t try to make up any excuses.”
“Couldn’t you keep up with me?”
“I never saw anybody run so fast.”
“Shall I order you a pair of jump shoes, too?”
“Look, I give up. Come on, she has to have medical attention. It’s been three days already.”
“No, it hasn’t. Just two full days.”
“She has a disease called osteolysis. It’s a nasty thing; the bones dissolve and turn to liquid. And if treatment isn’t kept up, the effect of gravity sets off axial shrinkage. If she starts turning into horrible shapes, it will be all your fault. Please, for crying out loud. This way, I went to all the trouble of becoming a horse for nothing.”
“What a sob story; it’s not like you.”
“In this morning’s test my extra penis performed beautifully. I wish you could have seen it. It’s seven centimeters around and nineteen long, you know. The nurses were all breathless with admiration.”
“Well, you won’t have any lack of partners, will you, what with your wife, your secretary, and now the nurses.”
“Don’t talk dirty. You don’t understand. You don’t know how precious that girl is to me. .. .”
“But all you did was watch while she masturbated, isn’t that so?”
“Listen, I’m not talking about cocks and cunts. If it was just masturbation, I could see that at any strip show. This is a problem of philosophy. ‘A good doctor makes a good patient.’ Don’t you see?”
“It seemed to me the only problem was the cock.”
“Every doctor eventually goes through a kind of philosophical stricture.” He began talking faster, like a spider spinning out its web; I couldn’t help thinking, however, that there was a discrepancy between what he said and what he was thinking. “When a person is hurt the important thing isn’t sympathy for the pain, but somebody to stop the bleeding, disinfect the wound, and sew it up. You have to treat the injured person not like a human being with a wound, but like a human wound. For a doctor who’s used to such relationships, nothing is more maddening than a patient who acts like a goddam human being. To keep from arousing his doctor’s anger, the patient tries to stop being human. The doctor becomes more and more alone, his nerves go on edge, and he drifts farther and farther from humanity. I guess you could even say a prejudice against patients is one requirement for a great doctor.
“Paradoxically, though, the loneliness of doctors is itself the most human thing there is. Only man has turned away from the law of survival of the fittest, taken up the weak and ailing, and guaranteed their right to survival. So heroes perish, but the weak live on. One measure of a civilization, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society. There’s even a political scientist (anonymous) who claims that our modern age is an age ‘of the patient, by the patient, and for the patient.’ So people shouldn’t go around complaining that this is a sick age. In a way, the doctor’s loneliness is the patient’s right. But if the doctor wants to escape his loneliness, then all he can do is become a patient and take on dual qualifications. That’s been my attitude all along. That’s why I never worried about being impotent. It’s really true. Being impotent made me that much closer to the patients, so it was actually kind of comforting.”
“What do you mean? You yourself told me once that the longer a patient stays around, the more likely his sexual appetite is to increase.”
“I was just getting to that. As the number of buggings has gone up, it’s become an inescapable fact. There doesn’t seem to be any impotence among real patients. It doesn’t count as a sickness. But why is that? It may have something to do with the structure of patients’ society. In prisons and army barracks, telling dirty stories is the key to making friends. In behind-the-scenes business dealin
gs, it’s usually effective to provide free sex. Married couples who are tired of each other can in many cases get through the dangerous period by charging an entrance fee to the bedroom. All of these are ways of using sex to reconstruct personal relationships. Of course, the patients’ society is not the same as a prison or an army barracks. There’s no need to avoid the eyes of others, and there isn’t the crisis of a breakdown in personal relationships. But somewhere in the structure of their society must be hidden the secret of how to lighten the central burden of personal relationships.
“What is a patient? What constitutes the essence of being a patient? Suddenly it hit me. That girl, anyway, helps me to forget my impotence. She unlocks the door to my doctor’s cage, and beckons me into the patients’ territory. It could only be because she possesses the spirit of perfect patientness. A spirit so generous that she can share it with me. I want to find a way inside her mind. I want to at least try to be like her in spirit. .. .”
“Sorry, but there isn’t the slightest resemblance.”
“The ideal patient … the patient among patients … the forever incurable patient … days spent sleeping curled up with death … a parasitic vine grown larger than its host … deformity personified … a monster … and finally, a ‘horseman.’ ”
“But don’t you realize—that extra cock you have belonged to that girl’s father!”
“Ah, but intercourse isn’t something you do with your genitals, it’s something you do with your personal relations center.”
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean. A pretty self-serving argument, if you ask me.”
“Of course, the genitals do function to arouse desire. An American doctor named Brash or something like that has discovered that the sensation caused by friction on the mucous membranes of the genitals is very like the sensation of itching. Itchiness occurs in a physiological system when some type of foreign matter starts to build up in the immediate environment, in order to diffuse that foreign matter through mechanical friction (in other words, scratching). First the sense organs in the skin, under stimulus from the foreign matter, create a substance in the environment called ATC (if I’m remembering this right), thereby sending a signal to the brain, which registers the sensation of itchiness. That sensation triggers the urge to scratch. Again, in the case of sexual impulses, some substance like ATC builds up in the mucous membrane of the genitals. But in this case the sensation is not as well defined as ‘itchiness’; it’s somewhat vaguer, more like a burning or a dull ache. So conditions imposed by the brain take on great significance: as long as conditions for restraint are not removed, then neither the burning sensation nor the dull ache can be translated into the sexual act itself. In other words, as long as the personal relations center, which plays the part of lookout, doesn’t pull the starter switch, then it’s impossible to get in the proper frame of mind.”