by Kōbō Abe
By the fountain in the park the electric-guitar band was still listlessly at practice, halfway through a rock number that sounded more like something for a Bon festival dance. A goldfish-scooping stand and a booth selling small pastry figurines were the only places open for business. Seated on a bench were a nurse (for some reason she had on her uniform cap) dressed in short shorts that revealed a shocking amount of thigh, and beside her a young one-legged boy with a black dog suffering from a skin disease. Their eyes were fastened on the spray of water in the fountain, watching as it twisted and breathed.
Drops splashed at my feet. A pink moth the size of a little bird flew into a puddle formed by windblown spray.
“It’s cold.”
The girl’s shoulders were shaking. When I wrapped the scarlet quilt around her shoulders she looked like a stone statue of Jizo out on a country road, with a bib tied around its neck. My collar was sweaty.
We came back out onto the street through the main gate.
All at once, as though bursting from a paper festival ball, a great crowd of people began pouring out of nowhere. Halfway up a long slope was the entrance to a vast underground shopping district, which looked as though the steep hillside had been completely hollowed out. Printed in huge letters across an arch rimmed with neon lights was a sign that read: CONGRATULATIONS - HOSPITAL FOUNDING DAY - PLEASANTVIEW GINZA STREET.
The girl fluttered her hands and cried out excitedly.
Hundreds of abandoned bicycles lay scattered everywhere, and all kinds of people were milling around expectantly: office workers, young people in blue jeans, doctors and nurses in uniform, even patients still in pajamas, who looked as if they had escaped from their rooms only moments before. It didn’t look like any ordinary street.
Was this the site of the anniversary eve party, then?
“Pleasantview—what a name for an underground plaza!”
“It’s the real name of this place. Supposedly when you climb up on top you can see Mount Fuji.”
“Isn’t this dangerous? If they dug in just a little farther they’d undermine the old hospital foundations.”
“What do you mean? Foundations are the lowest part, by definition.”
“This underground plaza must go lower than that, though, doesn’t it?”
“You still don’t have the picture, do you? That place where you were hiding out was on the third floor of the old building.”
“No, you’re kidding.”
“The old director had all the hospital buildings built underground. He had a thing about bomb raids or something.”
Drop by drop, big, heavy raindrops began to pelt the earth. The girl opened her mouth to taste them, and spoke in an affected singsong—it may actually have been part of the lyrics of some song: “No matter how bad the weather, in my memory it’s always a beautiful day….”
Pushed by the crowd, which was beginning to move underground to escape the rain, we too passed beneath the neon arch. The underground mall was at first like any normal street, lined on either side with decorative streetlights. This also appeared to be part of the hospital grounds: florists, fruit stores, bedding stores, and handicraft shops were everywhere, with shoe stores, optical goods stores, bookshops, toyshops, drugstores, bakeries, stationery stores, noodle shops, and cigarette stands sandwiched in between. Gradually the way grew narrower, branching off irregularly again and again, leading us on in farther and farther. Along the way we encountered stairs that gave us some trouble, but we pushed heedlessly ahead. The girl was excited and in high spirits, showing no particular signs of discomfort; even the secretary had for once adjusted her step to mine.
The stores slowly changed in character as we walked along.
An automobile accessories store, a jeans specialty shop, a wholesale dealer in Chinese medicinal herbs, a record store, and an electrical appliances discount store; a pinball parlor offering all the Coke you could drink, out of which blared a rousing military song; a barbecued chicken stand, around which empty beer bottles littered the street; a camera store where photos were developed and printed; a lending library; a curried rice and salad restaurant; a store that specialized in bugging equipment; an ice cream stand….
I bought three chocolate cones at the stand. The girl, still clinging to the quilt in one hand, stuck her tongue into the ice cream with a dreamy look. It tasted sad, as though time itself were starting to freeze over.
Beyond the next narrow cross street was a public lavatory, past which the area changed complexion entirely: neon lights danced on provocative signs as game corners, cabarets, and strip joints jostled for space. It was not a very fitting place to stroll pushing a little girl in a wheelchair, accompanied by a female secretary. I felt some hesitation. Something up ahead, though, aroused my sense of smell. If I was ever to encounter my wife again, this might be my only chance. Though I had nothing much to base it on, a presentiment very like confidence was ringing an alarm bell, telling me I was near my goal.
If only I could leave the wheelchair with the secretary and go on alone, that would be perfect.
“Do you suppose it’s safe to trust you with something?”
“Why, sure; if you trust me, I’ll act like I’m being trusted.”
“If you keep your promise, then what shall I do for you?”
“Better think of something yourself.”
I could see her pupils contract, seared by a flash of anger that seemed to run between her temples like electricity through a tube. However much I decided to trust her, it could only be for the length of time it took them to finish their ice cream cones, at most. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the girl in her keeping any longer than that.
All of a sudden the girl cried out.
“It’s the doctor—look, over there____”
The tip of her ice cream cone was pointed diagonally across the street at a building that looked like a real estate office. A sign the width of the window frame announced in gold cutout letters: all internal organs bought and sold. Underneath it, the glass was crowded with a variety of other signs, each with a price list: blood collection center, sperm bank, cornea insurance, and the like. On the door an inconspicuous wooden sign was marked: recreation information bureau.
Peering through the narrow spaces between price lists, I could barely make out parts of the store inside. When I brought my eyes down to the level of the girl’s, the spaces seemed larger; by squinting alternately through my right and left eyes, I found the parts became a decipherable mosaic. By the window was a circular table where seven or eight white-coated doctors sat drinking beer. One was rocking back and forth, stroking the stubble on his chin; another was laughing like a hyena, showing an unseemly amount of teeth, while another scraped the bowl of his pipe with a matchstick. Each seemed absorbed in his own pursuits, in an atmosphere of comfortable relaxation. Some of them might have been women, but I could not tell for certain. In the rear of the store was a counter where another man in white stood conversing with a woman, his spine held unnaturally straight. The woman behind the counter had a broad forehead and wore rimless glasses; her low-cut blouse emphasized her buxomness. She looked exactly like Kei Mano from the Mano Agency in front of the hospital. Then would that fellow with the ramrod back be the assistant director?
The cone in my hand fell apart like wet bread. I tossed the rest of it under the wheelchair and licked the ice cream off my fingers. Glancing over at the secretary, I saw that she too was squatting down and peering intently into the store.
“Is that the assistant director?”
“Yes. The others are staff doctors from the artificial organs department, I think.”
“What do you think would happen if they saw us here?”
Nibbling on the edge of her cone, the girl said in a low voice, “I bet he’d give me a real scolding.”
“Well, he hasn’t got the right. Who gave him the right to do a thing like that?”
The secretary said nothing. She continued to watch, as though busily calcula
ting how best to deal with the situation. Undoubtedly she knew exactly what was going on: what they were doing there, and what they would be up to next. Even I had a vague inkling, so there was no reason the assistant director’s private secretary wouldn’t know all about it. She was only keeping still while she weighed the pros and cons of letting me in on the secret.
“Let’s go back.” As though our tension had communicated itself, the girl spoke up in a frightened voice.
“Back where?”
“Anywhere.”
Stroking her cheek, I rubbed the sleep from her eyes. My fingers had a lingering sensation of being covered with soft, dry starch.
The secretary stood up hurriedly and looked around.
“As long as they don’t catch sight of us, nothing in particular should come of it.”
So at last she had decided to become my ally. Inside the store, the men were starting to get up from their chairs. I hid us in the shadow of a pillar, wheelchair and all, and ordered again; this time everybody had orange sherbet.
There were seven doctors including the assistant director. Sent off by the cheery farewells of the woman resembling Kei Mano, they hurried across the street and disappeared together inside the public lavatory.
Even after some time had passed, none of them reappeared. My sherbet was half gone. This long a stay could mean one thing only: they were taking a crap. But for seven men to have to crap together all at the same time was a little too coincidental. Besides, the assistant director, with his rubber corset, wasn’t supposed to be able to use an ordinary john. Maybe something unusual had come up. I decided to wait another two minutes—no, one: then if they still hadn’t come out, I would barge my way in.
Leaving the secretary and the girl behind, I looked inside. Beneath an out-of-order sign hung a board on which was faintly visible the word men. Not a soul was in sight. In all the too-bright fluorescent light and foul ammonia stench I could see no shadows that might have concealed seven men. Six discolored urinals were lined up along the left wall. The first was filled with a yellow liquid in which a bug was swimming around and around, clinging to a bubble. On the opposite wall were three stalls done in brand-new paneling, perhaps set up especially for that night. I could hardly suppose two or three men were herded inside each stall, but just to make certain I knocked on each one in turn, opening the doors and checking inside. All were empty.
The last one, however, was different. Instead of a toilet bowl it had a square opening with stairs that led down to a dim underground room. In the ceiling was another opening with a steel ladder, like a hatch leading up to the deck of a cargo ship. That explained how they had disappeared; they must have gone either up or down. But I could not detect a single clue. It would have taken considerable time for all seven men to pass through; I regretted again not having come in sooner. Nobody needs an excuse to enter a public john.
As I was leaving I stumbled into someone who immediately began yelling at me.
“What’s the matter, can’t you read? The sign says out of order.”
It was the woman from the information bureau. She studied me appraisingly; undaunted, I gave her an appraising look of my own. Out of order, my ass. With my own eyes I had seen her waving them off. There was no point in getting into an argument, though. I needed to find out from her which way they had gone.
“Aren’t you Miss Mano from the agency?”
Far from warming to me, she only deepened the wrinkles in her forehead in greater suspicion and said, “I’ve seen you someplace. Was it at the store in front of the hospital?”
The secretary, who had followed with the wheelchair, now spoke up on my behalf.
“This is the new chief of security.”
The woman’s reaction was swift; I remembered then having been told that all the agencies across from the hospital were under the direct supervision of the chief of security. She smiled awkwardly with her upper lip, rising to the occasion.
“Tickets have been selling very well, I’m glad to say, even though the odds aren’t too favorable. We’re completely sold out. So you’re the new chief, are you? Well, that’s nice. Just a minute or two ago the assistant director and six other young doctors bought up all the rest of the tickets and …’’
“Where’d they go?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Just answer the question, please.”
“Certainly.”
“Upstairs or down?”
“There’s nothing downstairs but a machine room. Surely…’’
“Thanks.”
The secretary hung back, claiming that she couldn’t bring herself to set foot inside a men’s toilet. She wouldn’t listen to the argument that it was out of order anyway, but finally I managed to persuade her by taking the steel pipe and scraping off the remnants of the word men from the sign.
The secretary climbed up the ladder first, and I passed the girl up to her. Then I followed with the wheelchair on my shoulders. It didn’t weigh too much, but it was too big to go through the opening that way. I had to rest one set of wheels on the edge and keep it balanced while I pushed it up with my head.
In the midst of all this, the girl started to cry. It was a stifled sobbing, as though she were in pain. The secretary sought confusedly to comfort her. Busy struggling with the wheelchair, I was unable to tell which of them was antagonizing which. I decided not to make matters worse. The best solution would be to make sure that they were not left alone together again.
The corridor was cool, and smelled of earth. The rooms on either side were boarded up; there was no sign of life. Roughly every ten meters or so hung a naked twenty-watt bulb, and that was all. Ever}’ corner, however, was marked with an arrow made of red vinyl tape, and it seemed likely that by following those we would eventually arrive somewhere. Besides, after four days in the hideout I had a fairly good idea of the overall building plan by then.
The floor sucked up the noise of our footsteps like dry clay. It was as if we had rubber plugs in our ears. When we spoke, our voices echoed as if we were in the bottom of a well, so we ended up speaking in whispers.
“You know what this is all about don’t you?”
“Yes, more or less.”
“What’s going on?” Even the girl had lowered her voice.
“What difference does it make?” The secretary cut her off nervously. “Our business will be over soon enough.”
We walked on, turned a corner at an odd angle, and seemed to enter a different wing. All of a sudden the murmur of voices grew louder and the hallway brightened; the area was thronged with people. Each wing in the building consisted of nine smaller divisions, each surrounding a courtyard, that contained six rooms apiece. This division was filled with a good-sized crowd of spectators who were circling around meekly clockwise, as at an exhibition. Since we hadn’t seen anyone else along the way, that must have been a special route for authorized personnel only.
An announcement was being made in a tone so monotonous that it reminded me of a science news reporter.
Of the six contestants who passed the preliminary match, the two in the top group are still … has already completed twenty-nine steps … just now six times, maintaining an average of nine or above, and a total of one hundred and fourteen seconds . . . not showing . . . inserting a chilled rod, three
minutes . . . installed with a warranty from the medical society of … comparing these data with a computer forecast graph, the difference is again ., .
Mingling in with the crowd, we decided to go around once. There were ? few female spectators, though not many; hardly surprisingly, we saw no one with children.
In each room hung a bulletin board displaying a photograph of a nude woman; those would be photographs of the contestants. Various numbers were posted magnetically next to the photos. In some places the postings were being changed. I couldn’t figure out what they meant. Over the doors were bizarre names like doll pavilion, tidal wave woman, magma, and swan lake, all written in big,
brightly colored letters. Probably they were contestants’ code names. Most of the spectators held a folded tabloid-style newspaper in one hand, in which they made notes as they compared its listings with the posted code names and numbers. The atmosphere was exactly like that at a bicycle-racing stadium.
Around the corner from Tidal Wave Woman and directly across from Magma was a lounge selling food and drinks, crowded full of people. At a table in the middle sat six white-coated doctors, munching on potato chips and sipping on what appeared to be Scotch and water. No other clusters of men in white were to be seen, so they had to be the assistant director’s companions. The assistant director himself would not be able to sit down because of his corset; probably he had mixed in with the crowd at the counter.
Taking advantage of the throng, we hastily slipped on by.
At the next corner was Masked Woman. As the name suggested, her face had been painted in a white mask. The color was no ordinary white, however, but a soft, pearly luster of such exquisite quality that it seemed to liquidate all facial expression. Apparently she was especially popular; the crowd there was quite dense.
“Isn’t that your wife?”
The possibility had suggested itself to me, but I could not be sure. Or rather, if I could move on past without admitting that possibility, then that was what I wanted to do. There was one more room. Quickly rounding the corner, we came to Fire-eating Bird. The photograph on the bulletin board was of someone entirely different. Then had Masked Woman been my wife after all? I was attacked by a horrid sensation, as if myriad baby spiders were crawling out of pores all over my body. I had thought that I was prepared, but no amount of mental resolve is equal to the shock of reality.
I decided to go around once more.
Doll Pavilion … Tidal Wave Woman … Magma … Swan Lake … none of those could have been my wife. Then for the second time, Masked Woman … again I thought to myself what a beautifully well-proportioned body she had. She did look a great deal like my wife. But if it was really she, then just a glimpse from behind ought to be sufficient to be sure. What could be the reason for this vague uncertainty?