Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

The buzzer sounded again.

“That makes sense.” The girl nodded briskly; the vibrations conveyed themselves to my buttocks. “They are separate issues. But supposing we turned down his offer of a merger — isn’t it possible that he’d refuse to hand over the body?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Somehow we’ve got to find his weak spot.” Boldly I edged over another tiny fraction of an inch.

“Nothing could be easier,” said the insect dealer, wiping his glasses on the tail of his shirt. “Leave the bargaining to me. My tongue has gotten me through many a tight spot before. It’d be a cinch.”

Somehow it had become established that either the insect dealer or the shill, or both, would represent me in the negotiations. I did not fully trust either one of them, and yet it was a welcome development. For one thing, I doubted my ability to confront Inototsu on an equal basis; for another, if the two of them went away, I’d be alone with the girl.

“But it’s so disgusting.” Disgust rolled around on her tongue like a taffy. “The toilet won’t be fit to use anymore once we stuff a body down it, will it?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “there’s no blood.” It was a lie. Even when I had flushed away the cat’s body, let alone the aborted fetuses, it had been a while before I could bring myself to come near the toilet again. Once I forced myself to urinate there, and ended up vomiting. It was four or five days before I could begin fixing meals near there again. The only reason I was so calm now was that I still didn’t take seriously the existence of this “body.”

The buzzer went on screaming at us.

“Okay?” The insect dealer looked at each of us in turn. The shill and the girl gazed at me.

“Okay,” I said, “but I must insist you stick to the matter of the corpse. Whatever happens, I’m not letting Inototsu on board.”

The insect dealer flicked the radio back on.

— Hello. Sorry to keep you waiting. This is Komono, the liaison man. Do you read me? Over.

— Come in, come in. What took so long? Over.

— We’ve decided to consider your overture. But we can’t settle on a fee until we’ve had a look at the body in question, and hear a detailed report about its place of discovery, condition at the time, and so on. Where would you like to meet? Over.

— Wait just a minute. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m doing you a favor by not reporting to the authorities. Over.

— Call off your bluff, Inototsu. We’ve got this whole conversation on tape from the very beginning. And as the first person to come upon the dead body, you not only failed to report it to the police but plotted to dispose of it illegally. Wouldn’t that be a little tough to explain? Over.

The shill tilted his head and wet his lips. “Did you hear that? He is good, the son of a gun. I’ll be damned.”

Apparently it worked; for no reason, Inototsu began to laugh.

— All right, all right — this is no time to quibble. I’ll meet you anywhere. I’ll go there, if you want. It’s fine with me. I’ve got a pickup at my disposal right now. Over.

“No! Don’t let him near here!” I said.

“Why not?” The insect dealer covered the microphone with his hand. “Aren’t you being a little paranoid? Of course it s up to you. ”

“He’s got us outnumbered, and the Broom Brigade is a paramilitary force,” I said. “What if they should attack?”

“If being outnumbered is the problem, it’s more dangerous for us to go there,” said the shill, adding in a thin wheedle, “If they take us hostage, will you come rescue us, Captain?”

The insect dealer spoke into the microphone. — Well, that’s the picture. You heard, didn’t you? Nobody trusts you. Over.

— Great. Well, then, how about someplace more neutral? I know. Laughter Hill. Nobody’ll see us there. Ask my son, he’ll tell you. Over.

“What’s that? Laughter what?” Leaving the radio switched to reception, the insect dealer turned to ask me.

“Hill. Laughter Hill. It’s an out-of-the-way place along the coast,” I told him.

“Funny name.”

“You go south from the station until you come to the Fishermen’s Union warehouse, and then turn. There’s a sea cave nearby, and depending on which way the wind blows, sometimes it makes a peculiar noise. Doesn’t sound like laughter so much as it does a sniveling child with a bad cold. Quite unpleasant. But some people find it amusing, and laugh themselves silly when they hear it. Geriatric patients fighting off depression take bag lunches to the foot of the hill, and sit there just waiting for the wind to blow.”

“How funny! It makes me laugh just hearing about it.” The girl giggled, and twisted her body in such a way that her abdomen pressed like a softball into my buttocks. I in turn moved so as to expand our shared space (the area where her flesh melted into mine). No adverse reaction. I felt myself about to forget that I was a pig. As long as Inototsu stayed away, I didn’t give a damn where the talks were held.

“Count me out,” said the shill, flicking the radio off with a fingernail. “Once you get there you’ll find nothing in sight but a dead body, and then all of a sudden the cops — no, thanks.”

“You’ve got a point.” The insect dealer switched the radio back on.

— Sorry, no go. None of us has enough nerve. The last thing we want is to get there and find nothing in sight but a dead body, and then suddenly have cops crawling all over us. Over.

— What? Would I play a dirty trick like that? Don’t be preposterous. Remember, I’m the one who’s devoted to cleaning up this town. Not just trash and empty cans, either — my real aim is a cleansing of the spirit. Nowadays it’s essential — purifying the people themselves. I’m serious. I share your concerns from the bottom of my heart, and I want to join hands with you. What can I do to make you believe me? Over.

— Tell me this. You’ve already made a fair amount of money from advance ticket sales. Isn’t that so?

— I told you I was recruiting people, in some very influential circles, too. You’re welcome to supervise the whole operation, from members’ roster to accounts. Over.

“He’s crazy,” I said. “When it comes time for the ark to set off, all the status and assets in the world won’t be worth jack shit. And anyway, nobody accepts applications for boarding this ark but me.”

— Hello. For now we’ll limit the discussion to the question of the body. Still, you’ve got yourself a definite problem: how are you going to win our trust? Is that the best you can do? Over.

— Why am I so unpopular, anyway? I just don’t get it. Over.

“It’s because you never take a bath!” I yelled from next to the mike.

— What do you mean? For anybody engaged in sanitation work, taking baths is a duty — and plain common sense besides. The only times I don’t take a bath are when I’m stone drunk. Bad for the heart. Over.

The girl began to laugh, her body chafing against mine with a hypnotic rhythm. I’ve never undergone hypnosis, but that must be what it’s like: the flow of time disappears and “now” takes off alone, flitting capriciously here and there.

— For someone so generally disliked, you have an honest way about you. Shall I tell you what you could have said to allay our fears? There is something. Do you want to hear it? Over.

— Yes. Over.

— You should have said, “Try to think more like a real baddie. A real baddie wouldn’t go to all these ridiculous lengths. He’d just haul the body over without a second thought, and dump it down from the overpass onto that pile of trash. Then you’d have to get rid of it, like it or not.” Right? Over.