Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

I had never expected any of this to be put to use. I had thought of it lightly as a sort of protective seal on the ship until the crew officially came on board. What got me started was a small Austrian utility machine that I bought to make duplicate keys. One day I used it to make a tiny screw to fasten on the sidepiece of my glasses. Next I repaired a fountain pen, and then added some parts to a used camera. Gradually it became a consuming passion, and I went around fixing, adding to, and remodeling everything I could lay hands on.

My masterpiece was an automatic air gun. It was no ordinary air gun; apart from a slight thickness of the shaft, it looked exactly like an umbrella. Unfortunately, there was no way to attach a sight, so I was forced to omit that feature. As a result, it could be used only at extremely close range, and never did achieve as much as I hoped in my war on rats — the original purpose for which I’d designed it. As an umbrella, however, it functions admirably. If I ever put it up for sale in that department store rooftop bazaar, it would certainly do better than the water cannon, anyway.

But what if I did inflict injury on a trespasser, I now wondered — would I be legally responsible?

After an interval that might have been two seconds, or twenty, the steel door clanged shut of its own accord, the reverberations conveying a vague sense of immense weight. The insect dealer switched his penlight on, but the shaft of light illuminated nothing; it only tapered off and disappeared, emphasizing the depth of the darkness (the room was 225’ X 100’ X 60’). He cast his voice into the blackness.

“Anybody here?”

“Yes.” The response came bundled in reverberations, and the beam of a flashlight bounced back. “You kept us waiting long enough. Hurry and turn on the lights, please.”

It was the shill, no doubt about it. His voice was cheerily off key, but it had a defiant, cutting edge. Next came the voice of the girl.

“Ooh! It hurts,” she said, but as she was not moaning, I assumed her injuries were minor. It was a relief to know they hadn’t been killed.

Drawn by their voices, the insect dealer took several steps forward, lost his balance and landed heavily on his rear. The beam from his penlight, which had been aimed at the floor, was swallowed up in the darkness.

“Why haven’t you got a banister here, for crying out loud? A person could get killed.” His voice was shrill. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said in a different key, “So it is you two. How’d you sneak in here?”

“Hey, it’s Komono!” The girl’s voice was bright. The shill must have said something to her, for she immediately started complaining again about the pain.

“You two are worse than a pair of cockroaches,” said the insect dealer. “How’d you get past the dogs?”

From the swaying shadows beyond the flashlight, the shill shot back, “That’s a fine hello. Let me ask you, then — who invited you to come poking your ugly face in here?”

Plainly the three of them were well acquainted. The insect dealer hadn’t leveled with me.

“You’re a fine one to talk,” countered the insect dealer. “I happen to know how you got your ticket — swiped it, didn’t you?”

“Now, now — don’t talk that way. One thing just led to another. We looked all over for you, you know.”

“Oh, you did, huh? Came all the way here to look for me, did you? That was big of you. Come off it.”

“As long as we pay the admission fee it’s okay, isn’t it?”

“There are certain qualifications.”

“Who’s asking you, Komono? Butt out.”

“Sorry, but I’ve been officially hired on by the captain here.”

I was pleased to hear myself introduced as the captain right from the start. Was the insect dealer genuinely taking my part?

“Captain?” said the shill. “Oh, right. He’s selling boat tickets, so he’s a captain.”

“Correct. I am the captain.” Better take a firm stand here. “And since this is a rather special ship, crew members do need some rather special qualifications.”

“What are Komono’s qualifications, may I ask?” The girl’s voice was tinged with sarcasm. “Ooh, it hurts. ”

“He’s sort of a combined adviser and bodyguard, you could say. Are you in a lot of pain?”

“My ankle is killing me.”

The shill’s high-pitched, high-speed voice cut in: “Well, imagine that. With Komono your bodyguard, we’ll all have to stay on our toes, won’t we? But you know, Captain, if it’s a bodyguard you want, then you ought to take a look at my qualifications too. Whatever I may lack in strength I can make up for in combat experience, I assure you.”

The girl spoke again. “Save the fighting till after the lights are on, please. What’s the matter with you, leaving me to suffer in the dark like this?”

“The young lady does have a point; it would be nice to get the lights on,” the shill conceded. “And she does seem to have sprained her ankle.”

The young lady, he had called her. A curious yet altogether old-fashioned and charming sort of appellation. It could have been simply a nickname, yet it bore a certain air of formality that rekindled my flickering hopes. Although for all I knew, that might be exactly how he intended for me to react. Perhaps this was more of his “fishing” gambit — a mere professional habit.

“There’s no feeling at all in the toes,” she said. “I think I may have broken the bone.”

“That stairway has a couple of rotten boards in it,” said the shill. “I wrenched my back too. You two had better watch out. Fall the wrong way and you’ll be lucky to get off with a fracture.”

Very well. There was no turning back now, anyway; I might as well accede to their request and switch on the lights. The switch was on an infrared remote-control device hanging from my belt. I traced along the vertical row of five buttons with my finger, tapped the top one lightly, and slid it to the right. Instantly the lights came on — fifty-six fluorescent lights, all blinking into action at once. However often I witness it, the drama of that moment never fails. Darkness itself has no spatial dimensions: the black expanse of a starless sky and the confinement of covers pulled over one’s head are equally dark. Perhaps that explains why images we conjure in the dark seem constricted and miniature: people become dwarfs; landscapes, potted plants. All the more reason why seeing the full aspect of the quarry interior come springing into view is as great a shock as if a mighty range of mountains had jumped full-blown out of an egg. In some ways it’s like gazing at a three-dimensional aerial photograph, but the scale is far greater.

Towering blue space. Massive stone walls intersecting sharply, as if sliced with a knife. Numberless horizontal lines, like marks left by the teeth of a comb — the signature of the power stonecutter blade. The walls do not appear to be even parallelograms but seem rather to undergo a certain curvature, as if falling in toward the center, probably an effect of the uneven light cast by the wall light fixtures.

When you focus on particulars, things shrink and miniaturize again: the thirty-two storage drums to my right in the corner of the hold were like scales on a carp; the shill, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling, was no bigger than my thumb. Beside him, sitting at his feet with her arms around her knees, was the girl, the size of my pinkie. She too was sweeping her eyes across the ceiling, from end to end. They were both dressed exactly as I had last seen them on the store rooftop — only the girl’s hair was again short. Her own hair became her far better than the wig.

“Incredible.” The insect dealer was backed up flat against the wall, barely able to speak. He seemed afraid of heights. “I had no idea it was so huge,” he said. “This place is like a sports stadium. You could fit five tennis courts in here.”