Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“And you failed anyway?” The girl’s voice was hushed.

“Hell, no. I made clean off with it.”

“But wasn’t that why they threw you out?”

“Oh, my luck ran out. I had all the parts sewn up in my pillow, nice and cozy, and then those bastards go and conduct a metal-detector test right in the barracks, of all places. There was no way out. Hiding loot is always harder than lifting it.”

“That may be a tail,” said the shill, “but if you ask me, it’s like a lizard’s tail that’s already broken off — not worth a damn.” He sprawled back against the armrest of the chaise longue, and slurped the rest of his beer. “Once you were discharged, the charges were dropped, weren’t they?”

“The hell they were. I’ll have you know I’m on the wanted list right now; I skipped out before they could make me stand trial. All right, now it’s your turn. Let’s have it straight, please.”

The shill looked wordlessly from me to the insect dealer and back again. He sniffed, and looked at the girl. Then, as if resigned, he took a sheaf of cards out of his hip pocket and said, “Take a look. Why the dickens they do it I don’t know, but they all issue these cards, like bank cash cards. Twenty-six of them I’ve got, and all from different loan companies.”

“It’s so they can exchange data among themselves, using computers.”

“Counting the ones without cards, it comes to over thirty companies. I’ve borrowed a grand total of seventy million yen. I used to be a collector for loan sharks myself, so I know all the angles. I’m notorious. Almost every one of their offices has my picture on the wall, marked ‘Wanted.’ ”

“So that’s why you were in disguise.” I felt relieved, as one of my unspoken questions about him was answered.

“I understand there are hit men out looking for me full time. I’ll bet the reward is pretty high, too.” He paused. “That’s all. You can turn off the tape recorder.”

“Hmm,” said the insect dealer. “Not bad, not bad. Yes, I’d say that qualifies you to come on board.” He pushed the pause button and said, “Captain, you’d better confiscate those cards as material evidence.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” That familiar sleight of hand. The cards were gone before my outstretched hand could reach them. “The tape’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Well, all right, if that’s the way you want it. Then shall we proceed?” The insect dealer made a circle with the fingers of one hand, and peered through it at the girl.

“No, I can’t.” Her face stiffened, as if coated with starch.

“Why not?”

“It’s too embarrassing.”

“Of course it’s embarrassing. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth anything, would it? Come on now, don’t hold back.”

Suddenly the effects of all the beer I had drunk began to tell on me. Filled with a mixture of revulsion and anticipation, I could not look squarely at her. My pulse was pumping like a treadle under my ears.

“I don’t mean that,” she said. “I mean it’s embarrassing because I haven’t got anything to tell.”

“Look, why don’t you let her off the hook?” It was the shill, coming to her support for once. Was there some secret between them he didn’t want her to divulge? “There’s no way she could get out of here on her own, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because one of the loan collectors who’s after me wants her as security. Let’s get back to where we were. We’ve all shown our tails now, and we’re all on an equal footing. You can be honest with me, Captain, so tell me, what’s going on? Who is that character I was chasing before?”

The insect dealer resettled himself on the parapet and began to rock backward and forward; apparently the beer had dulled his fear of heights. The girl, still sitting cross-legged, stretched out her arms, her clasped hands turned palm out. Her too-short skirt was like a rope around my neck. The gazes of all three of them seemed to grab me by the lapels and shake me without mercy.

“I truly do not know. Until I heard you tell about him, I had no idea — the whole idea was frightening. But the more I think about it, the more it explains. You see, I was blaming it all on rats. Would you mind telling me in detail what you saw?”

“You first. I’m not going to have you changing your story to fit mine.”

“Relax, will you?” The insect dealer changed his forward-and-back motion to a right-and-left sway. “Here’s our chance to prove to the captain that he wasn’t wrong to let us on board.”

“Watch out, don’t fall!” the girl cautioned. Abruptly he ceased moving, as if caught in a freeze-frame.

“My story is simple. Somebody poked his face in from a back tunnel, so I followed him. That’s all.”

“Are you sure it was a person?”

“What else could it have been? There sure as hell aren’t any rats that big.”

“To tell the truth, for some time now I’ve sensed the presence of an intruder. But it’s too quick for a human. I’ll see something move out of the corner of my eye, and by the time I look that way, it’s gone. The center of your field of vision registers shapes, but the periphery is sensitive only to movement, you know. So a rat and a person could look the same.”

“Does a rat wear sneakers and a jacket? I’ll grant you he was fast. Seemed right at home in there, too. He followed a complicated course, and kept running ahead without ever slowing down or showing the least hesitation. Just when I’d think I had him cornered, he’d find a way out. He knew his way around, all right.”

“How far did you go?”

“How do I know? I doubt if I could find my way back again, either. We went down a couple of flights of stairs, but it was uphill most of the way. Twice we came on running water, and once it was wide enough and deep enough to call it a sort of river.”

“You went all the way there?”

“That’s where I lost him. Just when I thought I had him, he vanished into the air. How on earth he got over that river I can’t figure out. Aren’t there any other ways in and out of this place? There must be.”

“I don’t know too much about that end.”

“Well, I sure hope it doesn’t turn out that somebody you didn’t know about’s been living over there, watching every damn thing you do.”

“Did you notice a peculiar smell?” asked the girl.

“Yeah, maybe I did,” he said.

“Just before the river there was a narrow bottleneck, wasn’t there?” I asked. “That’s the far boundary of the quarry. I’ve had it in mind to close that off — but still, it’s unbelievable! It’s a good four miles that far and back, as the crow flies, and you’ve got cliffs, valleys, and all kinds of hurdles in the way. I never thought those people would go so far as to cross over that boundary.”

“‘Those people’? Then you do know something you’re not letting on.”

“Oh, they’re nothing to worry about. The Broom Brigade, they’re called — an old people’s club.”

“The broom what?” The insect dealer, who’d been sitting stiffly, stuck out his paw. His glasses slipped askew. His right eye was watering.

“The Broom Brigade. They do volunteer work, sweeping and cleaning, as a public service. Their average age is seventy-five.”

“And they live somewhere in this quarry?”

“No, they probably just use it for their garbage dump. In any case, they’re over two miles from here. You remember, don’t you, Komono?” I said, using his name for the first time. With some trepidation at this change in our relationship, I went on, “On the shortcut, that slight outcropping of rock—”

“That’s it! It was the smell of garbage,” interrupted the girl, her mind still on the same track.