Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“What does that make people?”

“Parasitic worms, maybe.”

“Or maybe cancer.”

“Yes, that could be. Lately the air just hasn’t seemed itself. ”

“So what’s your magic spell?”

“ ‘Hello, air — you’re alive, aren’t you?’ ”

“Sorry, but when the bomb falls, the air will be done for too. The earth is going to be put on ice for months and months on end, wrapped in a heavy layer of dust and debris.”

“But I have to see the sky.”

I had to stop her from going. Somehow, anyhow, I had to free myself. As long as you could take even one step, life here really wasn’t so bad, I thought. The humiliation and anger of that time years ago when Inototsu had chained me to this very spot came bursting out from my tear glands like air out of a punctured tire. I ached to be free by the time the insect dealer and the shill returned. There was no need to invite them to take seats in the gallery for a hilarious sideshow.

“I wonder if you could do it,” I said. “I mean break the concrete around the pipe.”

“How?”

“With a drill. There’s one in with the hammer in my toolbox under the table. There are five or six inches from the pipe mouth to the floor, and my foot is stuck about twelve inches in. The difference is six or seven inches. So if you dug down eight inches in the floor and opened a hole in the pipe, you could let air in without risk of hurting my leg. The same principle as opening the valve below.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the toilet would then be useless.”

“There’s some waterproof putty in the toolkit.”

“Putty’s no good. It couldn’t stand up to the pressure. We’ve got to dispose of a dead body down here, you know.”

“Well, we can’t, unless my leg comes out first.”

“If it came to a choice between your leg and the toilet, it would be better to amputate your leg.”

“Are you mad? I’m the captain here. This toilet belongs to me.”

She stretched her lips out in a line, and balanced a smile on them like a dot. She’d meant it as a joke.

“But while we sit around waiting for your leg to come out naturally, the body will start to smell. I won’t be able to bear it. I have a very sensitive nose.”

“Well, as soon as they get back, there will be all sorts of alternatives. Like setting up a scaffold for a pulley, and pulling me out with a winch.”

“How do you know the leg won’t just tear apart at the knee?”

Would the insect dealer and the shill also object to opening a hole in the pipe? I wondered. If putty was out, there was always welding. No, that wouldn’t work, either, on second thought. Once the plug of my leg was removed and the water in the pipe fell, it would refill all the way to the top, on the principle of the siphon. Water would pour out from the hole nonstop. There was a special technique for welding underwater, but I didn’t have the equipment. There had to be some other, more practical idea.

My water-bloated nerves seemed to burst through the skin and touch the pipe directly, with a savage pain like that caused by biting on an ice cube with a decayed tooth. My entire body was riddled with holes, releasing fumes of pain.

“It’s no good. My foot feels awful. I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve got to yell.”

“Is it asleep?”

“No. Would you mind holding my hand? I have a chill. Just let me touch you somewhere, anywhere. Your tits, your ass. I don’t care.”

She sat motionless on the bottom step, her look frozen. Screams squeezed up through my body like toothpaste through a tube, and came pouring out my throat. I beat my thighs with both hands like a bird beating its wings, and went on screeching like a monkey. She covered her ears. While I howled, a thought crossed my mind: Of all the stupid things — I still haven’t found out her name!

20

THE BODY WAS WRAPPED

IN A BLUE PLASTIC SHEET

“Be quiet!” the girl screamed, stomping on the floor. It being stone, this effort was wasted, but I was tired of howling anyway, and ready to call it quits.

“Listen,” she commanded. “Isn’t that a car horn? Maybe it’s them.”

I had to admit she could be right. “Go check it out, will you?” I said. My throat burned. The reverberations of my howls lingered deep in my ears, so that my ordinary speaking voice sounded no louder than a murmur.

Crossbow in hand, the girl circled around the toilet, keeping her distance, and headed for the hatch. The vertical ladder was impossible to negotiate holding the crossbow. She stood the weapon upright at the foot of the ladder and started climbing insecurely. With every step her red artificial leather skirt peeled higher, exposing bare flesh. Her every movement injected high-pressure gas into my veins. That I could still react this way, even though my trapped foot felt now as if it weighed more than all the rest of me, seemed nothing short of incredible. Fresh anger flooded me at my clumsiness in failing to capitalize on our time alone.

She unbarred the steel door and opened it. The sound of the horn was now unmistakable. The dogs were barking for all they were worth. Their sensitive ears had probably picked up my howls through the wall, which would make them all the more excited. Signaling reassurance, she disappeared into the tunnel. Only a few minutes now and the two men would be here to rescue me. Some loss of dignity was inevitable. But now there was a good chance I could be freed at last, by whatever means. Perhaps because I had relaxed, my leg became several dozen times itchier than before. The itch was more maddening than the pain.

She came back and poked her head in the doorway. “What shall I do? They want you to get rid of the dogs for them.”

“I can’t. I can’t get out of here.”

“But they’re going crazy, those dogs. ”

“Hmm. Well. maybe I could try using a hand mike.” As she came down the ladder, I grew impatient at her excessive caution even as I savored the sight of her skirt rolling up.

“Look over on the side of the table by the bookcase,” I said. “You’ll find one in with the electrical parts, the soldering iron, and so on. Red, shaped like a trumpet. The microphone and speaker are detachable.”

I got her to hand me the mike and carry the speaker down to the far end of the tunnel. When she gave me the mike, I deliberately saw to it that our fingertips touched; she did not seem to mind. Was it because the shill was back — or was it all my imagination?

“What do I do?” she asked. “Just turn it on?”

“Pull the antenna all the way out and turn the volume all the way up.” I turned on the mike and pulled out its antenna. “Testing, testing, one, two, three. ”

I whispered the words, but they came booming back at me in a voice as loud and bold as a foghorn. I quieted my breathing, positioned the back of my tongue up against my soft palate, and took a deep breath. There was a noise in the toilet like the sound of wet noodles hitting the floor. I felt myself slide in a fraction of an inch deeper. Or had I imagined it?

With all the emotion I could muster, using every skill at my disposal, I burst into a long, sorrowful threnody. The sheer volume of my voice surprised even me. It must have throbbed into the night sky over town with such force that even now, I thought, some well-meaning soul must be phoning the police. The girl reappeared and signaled “Okay” with her fingers. I worried that perhaps now the dogs would no longer be satisfied with my old way of howling.

The dogs were quiet, but there was still no sign of my two emissaries. I turned down the mike and tried calling them:

“Hey — what’s the holdup?”

“They say they’ve got something with them,” the girl called back.