Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“Tell them to save it for later.”

She conferred with them a few minutes before reporting: “They say it’s really important.”

“What could be more important than my leg?”

“They’re here,” she said, and started down the ladder, recoiling. She, at any rate, could come down as slowly as she liked, as far as I was concerned. After an interval the shill appeared, his back to me. He was dragging something wrapped in a heavy blue plastic sheet of the sort used on construction sites. It was about the size of a human body rolled up in a ball, and it appeared to be fairly heavy. Oh, no, I thought. Was this the body, after all?

Next to appear was the one pushing the bundle: not the insect dealer, as I’d expected, but Sengoku, his shoulders rising and falling as he panted from the exertion. Dressed in the unlikely combination of a well-ironed open-collared white shirt and khaki work pants torn at the knee, he first bowed deeply to the girl, then caught sight of me. Seemingly unable to make sense of what he saw, he just kept staring.

The shill then turned around, stood on tiptoe, and let go of the plastic-wrapped bundle in apparent incredulity. Surprised myself by all this, I could not immediately think of anything to say. The girl spoke up on my behalf.

“He fell in and got stuck. Got any ideas?”

There was a long, preternatural silence. The first to break it would be the loser.

“Sorry, but I’ve got to take a leak,” announced the shill in a flat, rapid voice, and retreated back down the tunnel.

“You can’t get out of there? But why.?” Sengoku spoke anxiously, his voice husky.

“I’m stuck. Where’s Komono?” My voice too was hoarse. But it seemed wiser not to take in any liquid for the time being.

“In conference with the Broom Brigade. A lot’s been happening.”

“What’s in that thing?” I asked. “Not sweet potatoes, I hope.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You know very well it’s a body.” He controlled his irritation, and added more quietly, “That was the deal all along, wasn’t it?”

“But I thought if there was a body it was going to be yours.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“How awful. ” The girl retrieved her crossbow and came back toward me, measuring the distance between us as she did so, and halting about thirty feet away.

“Whose body is it?” I demanded.

“Whose do you think?” answered Sengoku.

“Somebody I know?”

“I think you’ll be surprised.”

“Well, if it’s not you, then. you’re kidding me. It’s not Komono, is it?”

“It couldn’t be,” the girl broke in. “There was talk about a body even before he left here.”

“Then who the hell is it?” Pain in my leg kept me from being able to organize my thoughts. Who else was there whose death might surprise me? When my own mother died, I’d felt less emotion than if I’d dropped a camera and damaged the lens. Of course, at the time I’d been living with Inototsu (I hadn’t had any choice), and the death notice had come two weeks after the fact.

“This is a rather, uh, difficult body. It’s going to be a bit ticklish to handle, I’m afraid.” Sengoku’s gaze swept rapidly back and forth from one end of the hold to the other, his eyes greedy with curiosity. This was his first look at the place where waste materials were illegally disposed of, and where that unknown quantity the manhole manager — his associate — lived. “Say, Mole,” he started, and then corrected himself. “That john where you’re soaking your foot — is that the famous manhole?”

The girl objected sharply. “He’s not ‘soaking his foot.’ Does it look like he’s enjoying himself? Haven’t you got eyes?” Her no-nonsense manner made her seem older; she was in fact no child, I reflected. This might well be her real self.

“Now remember, I wasn’t hiding it from you, or anything,” I blabbered nervously, acutely self-conscious. “I was going to let you in on it when the time came. In my mind, you’ve been one of us all along. I knew I could make a go of it with you. I really mean it. I’ve got your ticket all laid aside. Now’s the perfect chance, so—”

He interrupted me. “Are you sure you aren’t talking that way for spite?”

“Certainly not. What makes you say that?”

“You sure you aren’t putting on some kind of act just to keep us from getting rid of the body?”

“Of course not. I’ve been waiting for help. Come on over and give me a hand, will you?”

“An act, you say?” The shill came back through the tunnel, hunched forward, still zipping his trousers. When he saw me he froze, hand on his zipper, like a clumsy paper cutout. “What the devil are you waiting for? Aren’t you out of there yet?”

“We tried everything,” said the girl, and shook her head firmly, having at last regained her buoyancy. The presence of her old partner apparently bolstered her spirits. “The pressure is unbelievable. It’s a vacuum inside, and he can’t move his leg at all, either by pulling it or twisting it. I gave him some aspirin before and that may have helped, but until just before you came back it was awful. He was screaming his head off.”

“Looking for sympathy, if you ask me.” The shill closed the steel door and shot the bolt.

“Fall in yourself, and you’ll see,” I said caustically. “It’s like having someone do a job on the sole of your foot with a wire brush.”

“A vacuum, huh?” said Sengoku. “How much pressure is being exerted? That’s what we’ve got to find out.” He spoke with a cool detachment. “When the decompression ratio passes a certain limit, first blood oozes out, then the skin ruptures and the muscles split apart. Judging from the fact that the pipe and his leg are in contact, without losing equilibrium, the pressure may not be so high after all.”

“Never mind the fancy explanation. Just get me out of here.”

“First we’ll haul the body over.” The shill signaled to Sengoku, and together they started to drag the plastic-wrapped bundle. The shill headed for the ladder, while Sengoku, unaware of the danger, headed unsuspecting for the stairs. The rope slipped off and a corner of the vinyl sheet came askew. Under it there appeared no blood or flesh but only a glimpse of shiny black — a trash bag, it looked like — which in its own way intensified my impression of the corpse’s physical reality.

“Careful, don’t go that way!” the girl called out to Sengoku, her voice as bright and animated as an ocean breeze after a calm. Did she use that tone instinctively with strange men? “There’s a trap on the stairs. It’s not safe.”

“This place is booby-trapped from one end to the other. You know that much, don’t you?” Without seeming to expect an answer, the shill looked down from the landing and added, “Why don’t we just throw it down from here? It weighs a ton.”

“We can’t do that,” protested Sengoku. “This is a human being. Was, I mean.”

“That’s the whole point: it’s dead, not alive. If it gets a little knocked up now, so much the easier to flush it away later.”

The girl made some kind of motion, but as she had her back to me, I couldn’t interpret it very well. Smiling sourly, the shill turned to the plastic sheet and brought his hands together in a gesture of respect. Sengoku put one foot awkwardly on the bundle and started to tuck the stray corner back under the rope.

“I really wish you’d leave that, and come give me a hand now.” I tried to stay calm, but my voice was growing strangely shrill — first from the acute discomfort I was in (by now it felt as if my heart had slipped down inside my trapped knee) and second at my growing fear that no way of escape might ever be found. “Without this toilet, how do you plan on getting rid of that body, anyway?”