Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“Maybe. I’ve never actually checked it out, but I imagine it’s built to take advantage of the different levels of underground water. So the actual valve creating this suction is the water itself, and beyond that, somewhere, there must be something geared to a lever that cuts off the flow of water. Something on the order of a hydraulic turbine.”

“I’ll go take a look,” she volunteered, bounding up like a spring. Anybody can move that way when they’re light of weight. “Tell me the way.”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. As far as I can tell, there is no way to get there.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Somebody must have gone in to do the installation work. There’s got to be a way in.”

“I used to think so too, but I’ve gone over the area pretty thoroughly.”

“Maybe it’s blocked off.”

“There’s no sign of it. This is a guess, but I have an idea some other outfit tunneled underneath without permission. The competition was fierce, and the various explorations were like spiders’ webs. One cave-in after another. You want to take a look at the maps? When I lost my balance I knocked down a scrap album along with those photos — over there. Mind getting it and bringing it here?”

Reluctantly she came down the stairs. “It is funny,” she said. “It doesn’t figure. After all, the plumbing was installed below so that it could be used up here. Don’t tell me it just happened to connect up.”

Gingerly she handed me the scrapbook, as if determined to come only so close and no closer, then she hurriedly withdrew her hand. I must have been a sorry sight. She was right; a stupid bungle like this deserved not sympathy but scorn.

“Look,” I said, “here’s a map of the work hold.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not a map person. You don’t look very good. Shall I get you some medicine?”

“I guess a couple of aspirin wouldn’t hurt. You don’t mind? Remember that medicine box before — under the chaise longue? The aspirin are in a green holder.”

While she was off getting the aspirin, I flipped through the scrapbook, scanning the areas that had not yet been closely surveyed. Mine shafts lacking either ladders or lifts, and waterways very far underground, were still virtually unexplored. There was danger in exploring them, and anyway they lay on the other side of the line that would be formed when my dynamite blasts cut us off from the rest of the world. But if I ever made up my mind to go back and investigate, it was just possible that I might come on a passage leading in under the toilet. My powers of concentration were dimming. My knee began to buzz, and suddenly a spectrum of pain exploded through me, branching all the way to my armpit.

“Is one enough?” she asked.

“Make it three. People usually fix the dosage by age, but it ought to be by weight.”

“Want me to take your picture?”

“What for?”

“You look just like a human potted plant. It’s so unusual — and then you’d have something to remember it all by. If the slate really does get wiped clean, and I get a chance to start over, I’m going to give up being a woman for a living, and take up photography.”

“By then it’ll be too late. This is the age of advertising — you can make a go of it as a photographer as long as you have a knack for business; that’s all the talent you really need.”

“Don’t be mean. Say, how long do you think you can last that way?”

“Damn it, my knee is killing me. And the calf feels like it’s about to pull right off. If lack of circulation brings on gangrene, it’ll have to be amputated — same as frostbite. Even supposing I could tide along with sedatives and antibiotics, I suppose I’m good for only four or five days at the most.”

“You’ve got to be able to relieve yourself. ”

“A worse problem is sleep. I don’t know how long I can stay sane.”

“It must be torture.”

“Even though I have nothing to confess. It’s not fair.”

“Freedom to walk around really is important, isn’t it?” she reflected.

“Of course it is. People aren’t plants.”

“And yet you’re happy taking trips on paper.”

“That’s different. You talk about walking around, but you can’t fly, can you? Well, on my aerial-photograph trips, I can. So could you.”

“Looking at you is depressing,” she sighed. “With survival like this, you might as well be dead.”

“Oh, no. There’s a world of difference between being able to take a few steps and not being able to walk at all. Not being able to go to the bathroom on your own might be sad, but who cares if he can’t make it to the South Pole?”

“You can’t even take one step.”

“I’ll be okay. Nothing this idiotic can go on forever.”

“Maybe you’re right. Even a balloon starts to shrink in time. ”

“Freedom is something you have to discover for yourself. There’s freedom even here.”

“Are you a college graduate?”

“No. High school dropout.”

“Sometimes you talk like somebody with a real education. And you’ve got all those books. ”

“I like to read. I take them out of the public library. But I’m really better at working with my hands. I can fix a handbag clasp in no time.”

“If there’s anything you want to read, I could go get it for you,” she said, a half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth as if blown there by a passing breeze. She was teasing me.

“Even cancer patients who know they’re dying go on trying to live, right up to the end. All of life is just that, in fact — carrying on until you die.”

“Pardon me for saying this,” she said, “but you don’t really seem all that happy. This ark seems seaworthy enough, but even so. ”

“Staying alive comes first, doesn’t it?”

“You’re peculiar. It’s as if you couldn’t wait for the bomb to fall.”

“Have you ever heard about mass suicide among whales?”

“A little. Not much.”

“Well, as you may know, whales are very intelligent creatures. But all of a sudden they’ll go berserk, swim straight for the nearest shore, and beach themselves. The entire herd. They won’t go back in the water no matter how you coax them. They drown in the air.”

“Could something be after them?”

“The only thing that could scare a whale is a killer whale or a shark. But this phenomenon occurs even in waters where there are no sharks — and the killer whales commit mass suicide too. So the scientists racked their brains and came up with a very interesting theory: they say the whales try to get out of the water for fear of drowning.”

“How could that be? They’re aquatic animals.”

“But they’re not fish. They evolved from land mammals breathing air with lungs.”

“Then they’re throwbacks?”

“That’s funny — my foot’s starting to prickle. Feels like ants are nesting in it. Anyway, it’s true that if whales are unable to surface, they’ll suffocate. There could be some sort of communicable disease that would drive them to suicide by making them fear the water, like hydrophobia.”

“That may be scary for whales. ” She spoke in a low voice, rubbing the back of her neck. “If you want to know the truth, I’m more afraid of cancer. That’s a lot scarier to me than some bomb you don’t know when to expect either.”

“You’re coming down with whale disease,” I retorted — but I felt as insecure as an earthworm burrowing in the dirt. Without her support, I doubted my ability to cheer when the ark set sail.

“I have to see the sky,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got a magic spell I say. One time, I forget when it was, as I was looking up at the sky, the air looked like some great living thing. Tree branches look just like veins and arteries, don’t they? Not only their shape; the way they change carbon dioxide into oxygen and absorb nitrogen. Always changing, metabolizing. Changes in wind and air pressure are the flexing of the air’s muscles, and grass and tree roots are its arms and legs and fingers and toes. Animals living in them are the corpuscles and viruses and intestinal bacteria. ”