The Ark Sakura by Kōbō Abe
With all the emotion I could muster, using every skill at my disposal, I burst into a long, sorrowful threnody. The sheer volume of my voice surprised even me. It must have throbbed into the night sky over town with such force that even now, I thought, some well-meaning soul must be phoning the police. The girl reappeared and signaled “Okay” with her fingers. I worried that perhaps now the dogs would no longer be satisfied with my old way of howling.
The dogs were quiet, but there was still no sign of my two emissaries. I turned down the mike and tried calling them:
“Hey—what’s the holdup?”
“They say they’ve got something with them,” the girl called back.
“Tell them to save it for later.”
She conferred with them a few minutes before reporting: “They say it’s really important.”
“What could be more important than my leg?”
“They’re here,” she said, and started down the ladder, recoiling. She, at any rate, could come down as slowly as she liked, as far as I was concerned. After an interval the shill appeared, his back to me. He was dragging something wrapped in a heavy blue plastic sheet of the sort used on construction sites. It was about the size of a human body rolled up in a ball, and it appeared to be fairly heavy. Oh, no, I thought. Was this the body, after all?
Next to appear was the one pushing the bundle: not the insect dealer, as I’d expected, but Sengoku, his shoulders rising and falling as he panted from the exertion. Dressed in the unlikely combination of a well-ironed open-collared white shirt and khaki work pants torn at the knee, he first bowed deeply to the girl, then caught sight of me. Seemingly unable to make sense of what he saw, he just kept staring.
The shill then turned around, stood on tiptoe, and let go of the plastic-wrapped bundle in apparent incredulity. Surprised myself by all this, I could not immediately think of anything to say. The girl spoke up on my behalf.
“He fell in and got stuck. Got any ideas?”
There was a long, preternatural silence. The first to break it would be the loser.
“Sorry, but I’ve got to take a leak,” announced the shill in a flat, rapid voice, and retreated back down the tunnel.
“You can’t get out of there? But why … ?” Sengoku spoke anxiously, his voice husky.
“I’m stuck. Where’s Komono?” My voice too was hoarse. But it seemed wiser not to take in any liquid for the time being.
“In conference with the Broom Brigade. A lot’s been happening.”
“What’s in that thing?” I asked. “Not sweet potatoes, I hope.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know very well it’s a body.” He controlled his irritation, and added more quietly, “That was the deal all along, wasn’t it?”
“But I thought if there was a body it was going to be yours.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“How awful …” The girl retrieved her crossbow and came back toward me, measuring the distance between us as she did so, and halting about thirty feet away.
“Whose body is it?” I demanded.
“Whose do you think?” answered Sengoku.
“Somebody I know?”
“I think you’ll be surprised.”
“Well, if it’s not you, then … you’re kidding me. It’s not Komono, is it?”
“It couldn’t be,” the girl broke in. “There was talk about a body even before he left here.”
“Then who the hell is it?” Pain in my leg kept me from being able to organize my thoughts. Who else was there whose death might surprise me? When my own mother died, I’d felt less emotion than if I’d dropped a camera and damaged the lens. Of course, at the time I’d been living with Inototsu (I hadn’t had any choice), and the death notice had come two weeks after the fact.
“This is a rather, uh, difficult body. It’s going to be a bit ticklish to handle, I’m afraid.” Sengoku’s gaze swept rapidly back and forth from one end of the hold to the other, his eyes greedy with curiosity. This was his first look at the place where waste materials were illegally disposed of, and where that unknown quantity the manhole manager—his associate—lived. “Say, Mole,” he started, and then corrected himself. “That john where you’re soaking your foot—is that the famous manhole?”
The girl objected sharply. “He’s not ‘soaking his foot.’ Does it look like he’s enjoying himself? Haven’t you got eyes?” Her no-nonsense manner made her seem older; she was in fact no child, I reflected. This might well be her real self.
“Now remember, I wasn’t hiding it from you, or anything,” I blabbered nervously, acutely self-conscious. “I was going to let you in on it when the time came. In my mind, you’ve been one of us all along. I knew I could make a go of it with you. I really mean it. I’ve got your ticket all laid aside. Now’s the perfect chance, so—”
He interrupted me. “Are you sure you aren’t talking that way for spite?”
“Certainly not. What makes you say that?”
“You sure you aren’t putting on some kind of act just to keep us from getting rid of the body?”
“Of course not. I’ve been waiting for help. Come on over and give me a hand, will you?”
“An act, you say?” The shill came back through the tunnel, hunched forward, still zipping his trousers. When he saw me he froze, hand on his zipper, like a clumsy paper cutout. “What the devil are you waiting for? Aren’t you out of there yet?”
“We tried everything,” said the girl, and shook her head firmly, having at last regained her buoyancy. The presence of her old partner apparently bolstered her spirits. “The pressure is unbelievable. It’s a vacuum inside, and he can’t move his leg at all, either by pulling it or twisting it. I gave him some aspirin before and that may have helped, but until just before you came back it was awful. He was screaming his head off.”
“Looking for sympathy, if you ask me.” The shill closed the steel door and shot the bolt.
“Fall in yourself, and you’ll see,” I said caustically. “It’s like having someone do a job on the sole of your foot with a wire brush.”
“A vacuum, huh?” said Sengoku. “How much pressure is being exerted? That’s what we’ve got to find out.” He spoke with a cool detachment. “When the decompression ratio passes a certain limit, first blood oozes out, then the skin ruptures and the muscles split apart. Judging from the fact that the pipe and his leg are in contact, without losing equilibrium, the pressure may not be so high after all.”
“Never mind the fancy explanation. Just get me out of here.”
“First we’ll haul the body over.” The shill signaled to Sengoku, and together they started to drag the plastic-wrapped bundle. The shill headed for the ladder, while Sengoku, unaware of the danger, headed unsuspecting for the stairs. The rope slipped off and a corner of the vinyl sheet came askew. Under it there appeared no blood or flesh but only a glimpse of shiny black—a trash bag, it looked like—which in its own way intensified my impression of the corpse’s physical reality.
“Careful, don’t go that way!” the girl called out to Sengoku, her voice as bright and animated as an ocean breeze after a calm. Did she use that tone instinctively with strange men? “There’s a trap on the stairs. It’s not safe.”
“This place is booby-trapped from one end to the other. You know that much, don’t you?” Without seeming to expect an answer, the shill looked down from the landing and added, “Why don’t we just throw it down from here? It weighs a ton.”
“We can’t do that,” protested Sengoku. “This is a human being. Was, I mean.”
“That’s the whole point: it’s dead, not alive. If it gets a little knocked up now, so much the easier to flush it away later.”
The girl made some kind of motion, but as she had her back to me, I couldn’t interpret it very well. Smiling sourly, the shill turned to the plastic sheet and brought his hands together in a gesture of respect. Sengoku put one foot awkwardly on the bundle and started to tuck the stray corner back under the rope.
“Look, don’t be in such a hurry, will you?” said the shill. He signaled to Sengoku and together the two men started to push the bundle off the landing.
“If you knew whose body this was, Captain, you wouldn’t be so coldhearted,” he added.
“Who’s coldhearted?” I said. “You’re the one who’s dropping it on the floor.”
As the girl let out a scream, the blue plastic bundle did a one-and-a-half twist in midair, then hit the floor with the unmistakable squish of flesh and blood. (Clay, of course, would make approximately the same noise.)
“Who is it?” I demanded again.
“We ought to pay our respects before we flush him away, said the shill as he came down the ladder, followed by Sengoku. The girl was staring at the bundle, her crossbow pressed against her chest.
“Who is it?” I insisted, refusing to be put off.
“Well, properly speaking, Captain,” said the shill, “this is you.” He wiped his mouth and turned around. His nostrils looked pinched, and the whites of his eyes had a bluish tinge. Evidently he was not as collected as he had seemed. No matter how he wiped the corners of his mouth, pale flecks of saliva kept reappearing.
“Come again?”
“Well, uh … actually, it’s, uh …” Sengoku fumbled for words, his voice dry and scratchy.
“What in God’s name are you talking about? I’m in no mood for practical jokes, let me tell you.”
“In other words … it’s you,” said the shill, rubbing his mouth, and then wiping that hand on the tail of his shirt. “Your substitute, anyway. He was killed in your place. The killer, who made the first move, apparently mistook him for you. So if it hadn’t been for this guy, you’d be wrapped up in this sheet right now.”
“Who’s the killer?” I asked. Simultaneously the girl asked, “Who’s the substitute?”
“Try asking the guy who was supposed to get bumped off; he must know,” said Sengoku with a false air of toughness.
“I haven’t any idea,” I said. “Someone who looked like me?”
“Not really.” Sengoku tilted his head in seeming discomfort, and looked to the shill for help.
“It must be Komono.” Teeth clenched, the girl retreated yet farther from the plastic-wrapped bundle.
“What about him?” I asked her.
“He died in your place,” she said.
“Then who did him in—Inototsu?” I asked, the pain in my leg forgotten.
“No.” The shill indicated the motionless bundle with a jerk of his head, and added with apparent effort, “If you really want to know, it was the other way around.”
“Komono killed Inototsu, you say?” My voice shook with tension, as if needles were jabbing my eardrums. “Then the thing under that plastic sheet is …”
“Well, let’s get the ceremony over with, shall we?” said the shill.
“You stay out of this,” I snapped.
My eyes remained glued to the blue plastic sheet. Could this really be Inototsu? That animal who wore a green hunting cap and went around smelling like fermented beans wrapped in a dirty old rag? That monster who trampled his own wife to death, raped my mother, chained me to the toilet, and bulldozed concrete buildings on behalf of the waterstone interests? That friendless bastard who sold a thriving fishermen’s inn and two twenty-five-ton fishing vessels to run for city council over and over—but never to win—and who first pinned a badge on his chest only when he became leader of the Broom Brigade? I felt liberated. I must have feared him more than I realized—more than I hated him, even. There was no other emotion. Perhaps getting my leg caught in the jaws of the toilet had numbed my feelings. Had I witnessed the actual killing, no doubt it would have been different. I could not help being amazed at his enormous bulk, even folded up as he was. Had they merely bent him over, or had they dismembered him and rearranged the parts? I recalled having heard once that no evidence is so hard to dispose of as the human body; the full meaning of that statement hit me now with fresh force.
“It doesn’t figure,” muttered the girl, her jaw set. “Why would Komono mistake him for the captain? How could he?”
“He didn’t. It’s more complicated than that. I can’t sum it up as well as Komono could, but basically it’s not a simple case of right and wrong. Originally there was another suspect, who was after the captain, and that’s who Inototsu mistook Komono for.”
“That’s right,” echoed Sengoku, waving both his fists as he sought to explain. “The ‘body’ Inototsu was talking about referred to that suspect. Whether he actually intended to do him in or was just bluffing, I couldn’t say. Right now Komono is gathering facts from the Broom Brigade, so we ought to know more soon… . Also, in my opinion, Komono was overly suspicious of Inototsu. He got too much of an indoctrination from the captain here.”
The shill looked at the bundle and rubbed his hands on his pants. “It does seem as if he didn’t give him enough of a chance. That revolver he had was bad. Mind you, I’m not finding fault; it was legitimate self-defense. The only problem is that he left bullets in the body. If an autopsy is done, a bullet could be found, and traced, which would make things rough for the captain. Komono told me to tell you, though, that he’d see to it that everybody in the Broom Brigade kept his mouth shut, so not to worry.”
“That man is meant for better things than liaison work,” said Sengoku, nodding seriously. “He’s a born leader. Why, he’s already taken over the leadership of the Broom Brigade. Inototsu hadn’t been dead ten minutes before he’d reorganized the brigade on new lines, and was issuing commands right and left… .”
The ants nesting in my foot now changed to flies, whose maggots attacked my nerves voraciously. I hadn’t meant to scream, yet here I was screaming. Wishing desperately that the scrapbook in my hands were a hammer, in rage I kicked blindly with my free leg. What bore the brunt of this frenzied attack was not the toilet but the knee of my entrapped leg.
21
“ATTENTION SAUSAGE STUFFERS:
DEAD HOGS DELIVERED FREE OF CHARGE”
If the shill and Sengoku had not supported me on either side as I thrashed around, I might easily have broken my leg. The pain served to clear my head. In the interim I had wet my pants slightly, but that didn’t matter. The benefit of it all was that now, taken aback by my outburst, the two men began to think seriously about my rescue.
First I had them get me two more aspirin and a triple-strength antihistamine. Then I had them wrap a chilled compress around the thigh of the entrapped leg. Finally I had them each hold up one end of a section of steel pipe left over from the plumbing installation, which I clung to, while the girl massaged my knee with both hands. I mustered all my strength; the insect dealer and the shill cheered me on, straining their voices to the limit. The steel pipe bent, Sengoku’s shoulder made a popping noise as if on the point of dislocating—and again I wet my pants. More this time—about a full cup’s worth. There was no sign whatever that the leg had moved.
Mindful of the liquid trickling from my pants down the inside of my leg toward the knee, I decided that holding back any longer could lead only to uremia. I had somebody bring me the steamer from the galley. The bottom was scorched black, so I had no scruples about using it. They all turned their backs while I relieved myself into it.
“Whoever heard of using a potty from inside a toilet? Nobody’d believe it,” said the shill. Plainly he was trying to joke away his confusion and dismay. The seriousness of the situation had begun to impress itself on him.
“Well, once I saw a butterfly flying around inside an airplane, but it didn’t seem particularly strange.” The g
Once the sound broke off and Sengoku, mistakenly assuming I was through, turned around. “Oops, sorry,” he said. “Thought you’d finished. Say, you’ve got a whopper there, don’t you?”
At this the shill turned around too. “It’s just because he’d been holding his water so long,” he opined. “Anybody would get that big.”
The girl, of course, kept her eyes ahead of her. As I put the lid on the steamer and tried to ease it to the floor, a stabbing pain shot through my knee, erasing the retort I had prepared. Sengoku took the steamer from me. Perhaps he wasn’t such a bad sort after all. Slowly the pain in my belly eased. Evidently the tension in my bladder had been aggravating the pain in my leg. Then my eyes fell on the badge on the collar of Sengoku’s open-necked shirt, and though I knew I should thank him, instead I blurted out a sarcastic remark.
“Well, well—gold brooms, is it? Very fancy. And how long have we been wearing this?”
“It’s just gold-plated.” Sengoku rubbed his Broom Brigade badge with the ball of his thumb and added, “Ordinary members are silver. If you joined, Captain, of course yours would be gold-plated, probably with horizontal stripes to boot. Upper echelons have those.”
The shill stepped back and gazed fixedly at me up and down, taking in my exact relationship to the toilet. “I get it,” he said. “You’re in the same trouble as a bottle of wine with a cork stopper, after it’s stayed too long in the fridge. What’s the procedure in a case like that?”