Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“Hold out your leg straight, and relax,” I said, and brought my two palms up to the calf of her leg. She let out an exaggerated scream.

“Stop it! That tickles!”

“Don’t scare me like that. I’m just trying to examine you.”

The shill glanced our way. “Examine, huh. That’s a good one.” Slowly he stood up in front of the dust collector and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. Setting both hands on the end of the desk-table that took up half the available space, he leaned forward slightly in a pose of unmistakable menace. “If you’re going to give first aid, just keep it cold. Make a cold compress out of a wet towel, and wrap a bandage around it. That’s all.”

“Wrong.” Rubbing the cover of a large book he had taken from the bookcase, the insect dealer shook his big head. “Not cold. You’ve got to use a hot compress.”

“Are you crazy? Everybody knows you pack a sprain in ice.” The shill was adamant.

“No, it’s heat you want. Hot compresses are the best.” The insect dealer was not about to give ground, either.

Let them fight it out. In the meantime I had a clear field. It was a golden chance — one I had no intention of wasting. Without the least hesitation, I slid my hands confidently along the curve of her calf, and this time she made no sound. I had to act as if I knew what I was doing; a gingerly approach would only backfire.

“Leave it to me,” I said, hands now firmly in place, as I savored the sensation of her flesh against mine. “I learned all about it when I was a firefighter. You chill a fracture, but you apply heat to a sprain.”

The girl’s finger touched the back of my hand. I thought she was going to push me away, but that didn’t seem to be her aim. Never leaving my hand, her finger began to crawl along it like a wingless insect. Now it was my turn to feel ticklish. But it was a ticklishness I could happily endure.

“Why do they take X-rays at a hospital?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s because otherwise they can’t be sure if the bone’s broken or not, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Then isn’t this just a waste of time?”

The question was a heavy blow. The shill laughed, spraying saliva from between his teeth like an atomizer. The insect dealer shut his book with a bang.

“Tell me,” he said, “what made you become a firefighter, of all things?”

“Nothing special. You know, when you’re a kid you dream about what you want to be when you grow up. I wanted to be a fireman, that’s all.”

All three of them burst out laughing. “All right, what were you doing in the Self-Defense Forces, of all things?” I countered.

Instead of answering, he took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirttail. “My glasses are fogged up all the time. It must really be humid in here.”

I stayed serene. The reason was that casually, secretly, the girl’s fingers were rubbing the back of my hand in rhythmic circles.

“It’s humid, but it feels comfortable, doesn’t it?” she said. “As if a cooler were on.”

Fortunately, her hands were shadowed by my body, so that neither the shill nor the insect dealer seemed aware of what she was doing. I hadn’t known that secret pleasures could be so exciting. Warm air blew into my ear, and emerged from my nostril. My blood pressure must be zooming. What I could not comprehend was the meaning of the signal coming through her fingers. Was she uncommonly sympathetic, or had the shill merely conditioned her to flirt with whoever was at hand?

“Now that you mention it, it is cool. I’m dry as a bone.” The shill put a hand under his shirt and rapped his chest several times.

“But if it’s humid all year round, the air gets full of air mites. Terrible for your respiratory organs.” The insect dealer threw in a cavil in his know-it-all tone of voice.

“Air mites? That’s a good one. Typical,” said the shill.

“I’m not making it up. Don’t you read the paper?” He held out a book horizontally, making it swim like a fish. “They’re one-hundredth of an inch across, like microscopic jellyfish; look in any encyclopedia. They float in the air and feed on dust particles. They’ll reproduce in your lungs and bring on a nasty inflammation.”

Paying no attention to this exchange, the shill skirted the table and peered down into the hold over the parapet opposite the chaise longue.

“What’s inside those storage drums down there?” he asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask ever since I got here.”

“Five are full of drinking water.” My voice was thick, as if spread with glue. The girl’s continued massaging of the back of my hand had swollen the mucous membranes of my throat. “In an emergency, there’s got to be plenty of water, right?”

“This place is swimming in water. Look at this book — you could practically wring it out.” The insect dealer held the spine of the book at either end and twisted it; the cover came off and the contents fell to the floor. “Oops, sorry. Looks like an interesting book — A Manual for Self-Sufficiency, it’s called. Whoever wrote it must be a real nut, to worry about self-sufficiency in this day and age. Say, this is a library book, isn’t it? Aren’t you going to take it back?”

I had no obligation to answer. I was on the verge of remembering something far more important. Uses for bundles of printed paper, old newspapers, old magazines. That was it — a cast. Until a plaster cast was available, you could use them as temporary substitutes, to immobilize an injured joint.

“You know, I like it here,” announced the shill, leaning slightly forward to seat himself on the parapet. He continued in a loud and enthusiastic voice. “To be honest, at first I just wanted a look at the place, out of sheer curiosity. But this is great! Absolutely fascinating. Who cares about a little humidity? High humidity is typical of underground space; all you have to do is think of some way to put it to use. Having the winters warm and the summers cool, with a fixed temperature year round, could be extremely useful, it seems to me. Just to take an obvious example, it’s perfect for storing vegetables or grain. Or maybe unhulled rice and seeds would be better. The price is high, and there’s a stable demand. ”

Too pedestrian. It was like seeing a diamond in a king’s crown and associating it with mere glass-cutting. This sort of man could become a great nuisance. It struck me now that the noncommittal insect dealer was the safer of the two.

“Nobody tells me what to do.” Numbness in my leg blunted my tone. I raised my eyebrows, tightened my grip on the girl’s calf, and said, “For now, anyway, let’s make a cast. Whether it’s a fracture or a sprain, the most important thing is to keep the injured area immobile.”

“That’s all right for now, but what happens after that?” he said.

The girl’s calf twitched slightly. Without hesitation, the insect dealer came butting in.

“It’s all settled, isn’t it? I’ll climb down with her on my back.” He put a cigarette in his mouth, then returned it to the pack unlit. “You two came down here from the highway, but the real way in is along the shore. There’s a jeep waiting outside, so relax and let me take care of things. I’ll just have a cup of coffee before we go.”

“Takes you a while to catch on, doesn’t it? You’re a bit slow — like an old fluorescent light.” The shill dragged out his words for greater effect. “This place is so top-secret we can’t even call an ambulance, right? If I were the captain, I can tell you I wouldn’t want to grant any shore leaves, either, not unless it was to a trusty who had really proved himself.”