Authors: Kōbō Abe
Instead of answering, she looked up and waved. The shill and the insect dealer were standing side by side, elbows on the bridge parapet, munching on
kamaboko
and looking down at us.
“You want your coffee up there?” she asked.
“Nah, we’ll come on down.” The insect dealer placed his hands on the small of his back and stretched. “Less trouble that way, and easier to clean up.”
“No, let’s have it up here.” Waving both hands, the shill disappeared in the recesses of the bridge, then rounded the pillar and came down the stairs. “But first I’ve got to use the john.”
“You can’t—me first!” the girl exclaimed, thrusting at him a tray piled with four clean cups, no two alike. “I’ll bring the coffee up as soon as the water boils.”
What could we say? Wordlessly the shill took the tray and withdrew, and I followed. Together we laid the cups out near one corner of the table. The insect dealer called down to her over the parapet:
“Got anything to eat down there?”
Her voice came echoing back, colored by the reverberation. “Hey! No peeking.” I detected a note of playfulness that I found distasteful. A half-smile lingering on the corner of his mouth, the insect dealer turned away with visible regret.
“Let’s eat, Captain,” he said. “I can’t talk on an empty stomach.”
I was hungry too. The problem as I saw it was to decide what
kind
of meal we should have; it might well have a profound impact on our future relationships. Broadly speaking, there were three possibilities: the four of us could share a simple meal of instant noodles; we could sit down to a slightly more substantial meal, in a spirit of welcome to the new crew (in that case, we would need more booze); or I could take them all to the food storehouse, where they could each pick out what they wanted, at their own expense. In that case, everybody would be on their own. Personally, I favored the last option, but seeing that living quarters had not yet been formally assigned, it might set some unfortunate precedents. An enjoyable welcome party might serve as an effective social lubricant for all the various relationships among us. If there was some guarantee I could talk to the girl without worrying constantly about the shill, I certainly had no objection to opening a bottle or two of sake. Right now, in order to settle my mind, I needed time for another cup of coffee.
“Is this where you sleep, Captain?” asked the shill, tapping an armrest of the chaise longue.
“Yes—why?”
“What about us? Where do we sack out?”
“For now, anyplace. I have sleeping bags for everybody.”
“Well, in that case, you’ll have to excuse me for a while. Sorry,” said the shill.
With people switching back and forth all the time this way, how could I formulate any plan? I decided to stop worrying about the dinner menu.
“Nothing to be sorry about. Do as you please,” I said.
“I can’t help it,” the shill said, explaining, “I can’t get to sleep without my own pillow. Always carry it with me on trips.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it isn’t.” The insect dealer was stuck to the edge of the chaise longue like a half-dried squid. “It doesn’t have to be a particularly soft one, or anything. But there
are
people with attachments to a certain pillow. It must be the smell of their own hair oils, absorbed into the pillow.”
“Pillows pick up smells, all right, that’s for sure,” agreed the shill. “Ever stay in a cheap hotel somewhere in the sticks? It’s enough to make you gag.”
“Of all the senses, they say the sense of smell is the most primitive,” said the insect dealer.
“Other people’s smells may be unbearable, but your own never are,” said the shill. “Everyone has a certain affection for their own body odors.”
“That’s true,” said the insect dealer. “Ever see somebody scratch his dandruff, and then sniff the dirt under his nails?”
“Please, would you both just be quiet?” I was fed up. I certainly had never expected life with a crew to be so bothersome. “I went a long time without hearing any human voices here,” I went on. “Now it’s a strain on my nerves.”
Would the old quiet never return? This arrangement was scarcely worth the trouble. Did any of them have the slightest idea of the enormous price I was paying?
We heard a sudden gush of water. The girl had begun to urinate. I hadn’t expected the noise to carry so well. It took little effort to imagine the precise amount and pressure of liquid released. It sounded as close as a cricket would have sounded, chirping under the chaise longue. Too late, I regretted having asked them to be silent. All three of us pulled at our ears, sucked air through our molars, and pretended not to hear. The sound continued unendingly, until I could no longer endure it.
“Anytime people begin living together, there have got to be some rules.” My words serving as a substitute for ear-plugs, I jabbered on at a speed even I found offensive to the ear. “And rules aren’t rules unless they’re kept. And in order for them to be kept, they must be based on the premise of a shared set of fundamental values. What I mean to say is that only people who fully appreciate the utility value of this old quarry can comprehend its true worth. I’m not being overly fussy, I can assure you.”
The insect dealer followed up my words swiftly in a gravelly voice. “That’s right. Just having this much space at your disposal is worth an incredible sum. After all, Japan is a tiny country suffering from absolute space deficiency.”
Was that big skull of his stuffed with bean curd instead of brains, or did he talk like an asshole on purpose?
“Don’t get me wrong,” said the shill. “It’s not only the pillow I’m worried about.” There must have been something catching about the insect dealer’s rapid-fire, hoarse way of talking, for now the shill rattled on in the same way. “There are some pills I’ve been taking, and a book I’m halfway through—after all, we’ve got to get our things and move in, don’t we? But I won’t come back empty-handed, Captain. Will you let me sell some of those passkeys for you? I’ll bring you back some absolutely first-rate people. The kind that think fast and are flexible. This cave has all sorts of possibilities, after all. Right off the top of my head I can think of farm-produce storage, lacquerware factories (they need plenty of moisture), mushroom cultivation, the brewing industry … you name it.”
“Haven’t you got the message yet?” I said. “I don’t
want
people finding out about this place.”
“I know. What you’re really after is a way to work without paying taxes, am I right? Leave it to me, I’m an expert. For instance, you could form a film studio to make porn videos. They say that
really
rakes it in. Or you might consider running an underground hotel as a hideout for escaped criminals. You wouldn’t have to spend much on facilities, and you could charge as much as you liked. Even better would be intensive-care rooms for mental hospitals. A mental hospital is really a kind of prison for lifers, so what with local citizens’ protests and one thing and another, finding somewhere to build can be a problem. But once you have that, you’ve got the goose that lays the golden egg. Patients in lifetime isolation wards.”
The man was totally uncomprehending. But how could I explain the need for an ark to a cancer victim with only six months to live? Even if he had no inkling of his condition, persuading him would be a vain effort, one I could not bring myself to make. Yet I couldn’t very well let him do as he pleased, either. I was saddled with one heck of a nuisance.
Finally the trickle of water stopped, and the roar of the flushing toilet echoed in the air.
“No need to make a special trip,” I said. “The weather’s bad … . Go ahead and let me know if there’s anything you need, and I’ll do my best to get it or approximate it.”
“Right, you can always make do for a pillow.” As if to say he had everything figured out, the insect dealer began drumming his fingers on the edge of the cup he had chosen, a look of sangfroid on his face. “Even if it’s borrowed, if you wrap it in a dirty undershirt of your own it comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
Perhaps because of having had to wait to go to the toilet, the shill descended the stairs in a sort of fox-trot, his knees pressed together.
“I’m hungry,” murmured the insect dealer, eyes turned vaguely on the spot just vacated by the shill. “By the way, Captain,” he went on, “how do you manage to support yourself here?”
I could well understand the motive of his question. His was an entirely natural curiosity: the world over, a man’s source of income is the measure of his worth. Even so, I had no obligation to reply, and no intention of doing so, either. As a matter of fact, the electricity was all stolen, as were most of the fittings, which came from the city hall. There was no law that said I had to let him know my weakest points. I pretended not to hear.
Light footsteps approached, as those of the shill faded away; there remained less than ten seconds, I calculated, before she set foot on the top stair.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have forced him to stay.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re the captain. Just follow your instincts.”
“I heard he’s got cancer.”
“No!”
“She told me. Keep it quiet—he doesn’t know.”
“Kind of ironic—the guy’s so much like a cancer himself.”
We laughed loudly and freely in a burst of mutual understanding. Then the girl appeared, coffeepot in hand. I was unable to look her square in the face. The echo of that gush, still fresh in my ears, made me picture not her face but the outlet for urine.
She joined easily in our laughter, then announced gaily, “Guess what I found out! The refrigerator’s stuffed full of canned beer!”
“For shame,” scolded the insect dealer, pulling on the armrests of the chaise longue to bring his body forward. “You’re forgetting yourself, miss. You can’t let yourself come
that
far under the president’s influence.”
Intuitively I sensed he was referring to the shill.
“President?” I queried. “Of what? Who?”
“You needn’t sound so impressed,” said the insect dealer. “These days everybody and his brother is a company president. The neighborhood junkman walks around with a namecard that says ‘President of Eastern Reclamation, Inc.’”
“Still, what kind of a company is it?”
The girl smiled, lips open and teeth closed. “It’s called Saisai.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s written with the characters for ‘hold’—as in a function or event—and ‘festival.’ ”
“Peculiar sort of name.”
“He represents festival stall owners.” The insect dealer waved his right hand as if flicking away imaginary dust, and adjusted his glasses with his left. To the woman he said, “Anyway, don’t forget that without the captain’s permission you’re not entitled to a glass of water, let alone a can of beer. First you go and put on some phony act about a fractured ankle, now this. Try to show a little more sense.”
His preachy tone of voice was far phonier than her act had been. She nodded, and for no reason I found myself feeling abashed.
“Don’t exaggerate,” I said. “All I’ve been saying is there’s a need for caution about boarding procedures. The beer doesn’t worry me.”
A fat lot it didn’t. I like to drink my beer all alone. I’m a beer hog—a beeraholic, in fact, who breaks into a sweat at just the sound of the word. What’s more, I like my beer with a little chocolate on the side. Every day, once a day, I sip a leisurely can of beer and munch on chocolates. It is a time of supreme piggish delight, a time I could share with no one.
“You don’t mind, really?” Behind their thick concave lenses, the insect dealer’s questioning eyes widened in happy excitement. “Coffee before a meal is bad for the stomach, anyway. Shall we presume on the captain’s generosity this once? Let’s celebrate our embarkation—that’s as good an excuse as any.”
It was a sensation I’d often experienced in dreams—losing my footing on a hill of garbage. In trying to recover lost ground, I made yet another concession.
“Very well, let’s drink to that,” I said. “But maybe beer alone isn’t enough.” I could hardly suggest chocolate as an accompaniment—although when you try it with an open mind, the hops and cacao blend together in a bitter harmony that I find irresistible. “How about some canned sardines?”
“Excellent,” said the insect dealer. “They’re very good for you. Sardines have lots of a nutrient called prostaglandin, which makes them effective against all kinds of diseases. Hardening of the arteries, even cancer.”
The idiot. What did he have to go and say that for? But then, I was the one who had spilled the beans to him, so what could I say? Luckily, her expression didn’t flicker. Turning toward the hold, she called down:
“When you’re finished down there, we’re having beer and sardines up here.”
Not to be outdone, I too called down. “The sardines are in a basket on top of the refrigerator.”
No answer. I felt an unpleasant presentiment.
She set the coffeepot on the table and smiled. “So the coffee turned out to be a waste.”
“No—I’ll have some,” I said. “Westerners drink coffee and alcohol together and think nothing of it, I’ve heard. Somehow it protects the liver.”
She poured out a cupful. Still not a sound from the hold. It was time we heard something; since the point of emission is higher in the male than the female, the noise ought to be correspondingly louder.
“Where’s the sugar?”
“Let me think.” I take both tea and coffee without sugar, so I couldn’t recall immediately where I did keep it. I had a feeling it might be in a jar in the back of the refrigerator, where ants wouldn’t get into it. It would probably be better to have the shill look for it while I gave instructions. I went around the table, into the interstice where the bookcase and the parapet came together at a sharp angle, and looked down into the hold. The shill was nowhere to be seen.