Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“Come on out, will you!” shouted the girl, the echo extending her voice. “You’ve made enough trouble. Just when we were going to eat, too.”

“Remember, he polished off eight of those kamaboko sticks all by himself.” The insect dealer lifted his undershirt and began rubbing dirt off the skin on his side.

“Anyway, let’s have a look.” I led the way down the tunnel. Their footsteps behind me rang out with appalling loudness.

“What’s this jiggledy-joggledy thing?” asked the girl, regarding a seesaw-style pump fastened to the wall along the way.

“It’s a pump hooked up to the ventilation system. It’s set up so that two people working it by hand for four hours a day can purify the air of three holds.”

“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?” The insect dealer wiped his finger on his trousers, and laid a hand on the seat of the upper arm of the seesaw. The pump functioned smoothly, operating on the resistance of air inside six-inch-diameter stainless-steel pipes. “Not bad,” he said admiringly. “Pretty darned clever, in fact.”

“Why doesn’t it run on electricity?” the girl cut in with a dissatisfied air.

“When the time comes to use the system, there’ll be no electricity,” I told her.

“Don’t waste your time explaining,” said the insect dealer. “You can’t talk logic to a woman.” He raised his right arm, bent at the elbow, and hauled back, aiming for the girl’s rear end. She dodged nimbly aside. Kicking the pedal of one of three wheelless bicycles lined up beside the pump, she said boastfully:

“I know what these are. They look like exercise machines, but really they’re generators. Right?”

“Yes. They’re hooked up to car generators. Of course they function as exercise equipment too; lack of exercise is a perennial problem. ”

“One of these would supply about enough electricity for one twelve-watt bulb, and that’s it,” said the insect dealer, and launched a second attack on her backside. There was the sound of a wet towel falling on the floor. He’d scored a direct hit, in the area of the crease in her buttocks. She emitted a scream that was half wail.

“Eventually I intend to convert all those old bikes in that pile over there. With twenty-eight bikes operating at the same time, charging up the car batteries, there would be enough energy to supply an average day’s needs.”

Pretending I was going to activate one to show them, I drew closer to the woman and laid a hand on her myself, not to be outdone. It was not so much a slap as a caress: that prolonged the contact by a good five times. Using her hand on the handlebars as a fulcrum, she swung herself around to the other side, bent forward, and giggled. On the other side, the insect dealer was waiting, palm outstretched. It was a game of handball, her bottom the ball.

“In that case, you have to have a fairly large crew.” He served.

“Not all men, I sincerely hope,” she said, reentering my court.

“Of course not; there’ll be lots and lots of women too. ” Bold now, I took my turn, giving her bottom a good pinch into the bargain.

“That’s enough.” She squatted down, hands covering her posterior. “If the captain and I got on the same seesaw, it would stop moving, wouldn’t it? Please don’t get me wrong. ”

I couldn’t completely fathom what she meant. And yet suddenly my excitement ebbed. She had referred to what bothered me most — the difference in our weights. The insect dealer too seemed to return to himself. Licking the palm of his serving hand with his long tongue, he sighed and glanced up at the ceiling.

“Say,” he said, “isn’t this a terrible waste, all this electricity?”

How like him — a totally practical view. This hold alone had ninety-six fluorescent lights, plus five halogen lights of five hundred watts each. Not only were the ceilings high, but the blue stone walls were dulled by nicks and scratches from the electric saws, reflecting the available light so poorly that in order for the hold to function as a center of operations, extra intensities of illumination were necessary. If an electric bill came, I could never hope to pay it. But it was too soon to show my hand.

There was a sound of water dripping. The girl started up and exclaimed, “What was that?”

Allowing for some variation according to the weather and the time of day, at intervals of once every thirty minutes to three hours a barrage of water drops fell from the ceiling in the first hold onto the row of storage drums. They made a dry, unwatery noise that sounded as if a chair had overturned, or the bottom had burst in a bag of beans. Since it’s impossible to tell what direction the sound is coming from, the imagination swells limitlessly. Without explaining, I turned and headed straight down the second tunnel entrance.

The lights of the operation hold illuminated the rusty rails for another twenty-five feet or so. The lights all shone straight down, so the sheer walls at either side vanished halfway up into darkness, as if stretching all the way to heaven.

“Got some kind of a trap in here too?” asked the insect dealer in an undertone.

“Of course.”

“I’m telling you, he really is very agile.” She too spoke in an undertone.

“This next one is different.” Holding my arms out at shoulder level, I took three steps forward into the dark, guided by the rails, and then slowly I lowered my arms. An alarm bell rang out. The shadow of the insect dealer, which had been following close behind me, suddenly disappeared; he’d tripped on a tie and fallen, crashing into the girl, who let out a scream.

“Quick, turn that damn thing off — it’s bad for my heart.” Seated where he had fallen, the insect dealer covered both ears with his hands.

The left side of the seventh tie from the front. I groped for the switch under the rail, found it, and gave it a flip. The ringing stopped, leaving only a buzz in the ears.

“See what I mean? This one is foolproof.”

“Says who? That’s the same kind of thing they install in banks, right? A burglar alarm using infrared lights. If you look carefully, you can see a red beam in the air, and all you have to do is duck under it.”

“Wouldn’t work. There are three different beams, which get lower as you go. The lowest one is only a foot off the ground. How the hell could anyone duck under that?”

“Where does this lead to?” The girl was crouched down, with a hand cupped behind one ear. “I hear something.”

“It’s a dead end. It used to connect over to the western side of the mountain, just under where the city hall is now, but there was a cave-in, and it became a blind alley. But there are lots of little rooms along the way. It might make a good place to live.”

“There’s a town on top of this mountain, isn’t there?”

“Yes, a big residential district.”

“I hear noises. ”

“It’s not what you think. Inaudible sounds become audible here, amplified as they bounce off the ceilings and walls: winds of different velocities passing by each other, bugs crawling around, drops of water falling, stone cracking. ”

“I don’t care, I’m not going up there.” The insect dealer looked up at the tunnel at the ceiling edge, brushing stone powder off the seat of his pants. “Granted the guy’s reckless and athletic — but doesn’t it seem funny that these lights came on just twenty or thirty seconds before we came in here? In fact, all we did was check out the trap, so maybe it wasn’t even that long. That contraption would be hard to climb, and it must be a good twenty-five feet high.”

“Forty-two, to be exact.”

“No way.”

“Then where do you think he is? There’s nowhere to hide.” The girl thrust out her chin, tilted her head back like radar, and turned around in a full circle. “What’s that smell? It’s stronger than it was before. And it’s definitely not fried squid.”