Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

The last three were apparently offered in light jest, to show off the accuracy of his information. I was distracted, however, by the deliberate pauses before and after “butchers.”

The shill spoke up defensively. “I happen to be a past master of legerdemain.”

“We’ll need you, then,” said the adjutant, quietly closing the telephone book. “Because not only utility goods are necessary for survival. Any struggle requires a dream. Spiritual self-sufficiency is the greatest recompense of all; that’s what the trial is all about.”

“I used to sell dreams,” said the insect dealer, gazing at me as if searching his way through darkness. “The rest of the eupcaccias are still out in the jeep, aren’t they?”

“Dreams aren’t enough, either,” said the shill. “We need knives and guns. and toilets.” Suddenly he sprang up, shaking with tension. Then he took a deep breath and sat back down. “In here it’s as if there wasn’t any need to sweat over money. I suppose even outside, after the apocalypse — the New Beginning — debtors and creditors will cease to exist. But right now, step one foot outside and they’re crawling everywhere, playing hide-and-seek with each other. How can it ever be any different? How can there ever be a New Beginning?”

“We need air too,” repeated the girl vacantly.

“That’s why we carried out the hunt for junior high school girls,” said the adjutant. “The younger the better — don’t you agree, Commander? Like wet paper, in a way: the time you spend slowly warming them up, before they catch fire, is the most enjoyable. Say, that fellow’s taking an awfully long time getting back, isn’t he? Where’s that medicine? Let’s have the scouts check up on him, and on the progress of the search too. Commander, will you give the orders?”

Nodding, the insect dealer stood up. Lightly rubbing his gold badge with the ball of his thumb, he stared intently at the youth, whose face was still buried on the storage drum, and drew a deep asthmatic-sounding breath, filling his chest with air, about to speak.

Just then the steel hatch creaked open and a scream echoed. All the air the insect dealer had inhaled rushed out of him, before he could say a word.

“Help, help, they’ll kill him!” It was Red Jacket, whose ear the girl had struck before. The bleeding had apparently not stopped; the earlobe was red, and swollen to twice its previous size. He tumbled in and fell to his hands and knees on the landing. “The other guy’s being eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs! Help!”

“So that’s where you were.” The adjutant sprang up with remarkable agility, then crouched down again and moistened his forehead with spit. Probably a charm to get rid of pins and needles in the legs; I could remember my grandmother doing the same thing long ago. “Come on down; it’s all right.”

“Help him, for God’s sake — the dogs are all over him!”

“Scout A, what was the meaning of that slipshod report you filed?” barked the insect dealer suddenly, straightening himself up. “You said there were no suspicious characters around here. Isn’t he suspicious? What have you to say?”

“Excuse me, sir,” said Scout A, grinding his teeth. “No one told me he was there.”

“You didn’t ask,” shot back Sengoku.

“I’m partly to blame,” said the adjutant. “I should have warned you that these people might not cooperate.” He walked ten paces toward the storage drums, eyes on the floor. “Look — bloodstains. I was careless to have missed them. Which one of you wounded him?”

“I did.” The girl waved her crossbow aloft for him to see.

“I see. Then everyone here failed to cooperate, and the scout failed in his duty. I’ll leave the question of discipline up to you, Commander.”

“Please, you’ve gotta do something,” begged Red Jacket. “He’s being eaten alive! If he dies it’ll be murder, don’t you see? Please, hurry. ”

“Shut up!” The insect dealer’s neck swelled until it was a match for his great round head. “At this point, do you think a dead body or two more is going to scare any of us? Scout, drag that young punk down here and make him tell you where he hid the girls.”

“He doesn’t know where they are.” The scout’s voice had reverted to a childish squeak. “Nobody knows but the ones who ran off with them.”

Red Jacket chimed in. “If I had any idea where they were, I’d have gone along. Then this never would have happened.”

“Commander, I advise against retracting an order once it’s given,” said the adjutant. He frowned, dropping his head on his chest as if he’d just realized he’d lost his wallet. He retraced his steps back over toward the toilet.

“I know,” said the insect dealer, drawing a converted toy pistol from under his belt. He cocked it, aimed it, and planted both legs firmly. “Now you drag him down here, fast, and you make him talk.”

Broom in hand, the young scout moved toward the landing with a resigned look. Red Jacket rose to his knees, unfastened the chain at his belt, and gave it a shake. Steel bit into the floorboards with a graphic sound that was somehow intensely physical: I flinched, imagining a butcher’s knife carving into bone.

“Stay away,” said Red Jacket.

“You get down here,” said the scout. “Do me a favor.”

“No, you do me a favor.”

“I’m following orders.”

“Lousy traitor.”

“You don’t understand.”

A sharp report rang out, its echoes bouncing around the room like Ping-Pong balls. The insect dealer had fired at the ceiling. There was a smell of gunpowder, like scorched bitter herbs. Red Jacket, wounded once already, promptly collapsed in terror.

“Drag him down here. Make him confess if you have to stick your broom handle up his ass. If he doesn’t, the captain will be in trouble. It doesn’t matter if you kill him. Don’t worry about disposing of the body.”

“The captain will be in trouble. ” What did that mean? The insect dealer’s own words — that firearms change people — came to me; he had fulfilled his own prophecy.

“You’d better get down here,” said the scout. “Or you’ll get killed.”

“I don’t know anything — and you know I don’t know!”

As if his body were drained of strength, Red Jacket came sliding down the ladder, collapsing on top of the blue-sheeted bundle. “There’s a body in there,” warned the scout, at which Red Jacket leaped up, moved several feet off, and collapsed again.

“Get to work,” said the adjutant in a businesslike way. “Just do as you’ve been taught.” The young scout twisted the broom handle in Red Jacket’s gut. There was a wail of pain.

“You’re hurting me!”

“Confess, then.”

“How can I confess what I don’t know! Aagh!”

“That’s enough,” said the girl frostily, glaring at the adjutant with open hostility. A show of indifference would have been better, I thought; the more you let others know how you really feel, the worse off you are.

“I’m afraid an order, once given, can’t be retracted that easily,” said the adjutant. “Bad for discipline. As long as the men are following orders, they’re forbidden to pass any sort of judgment on those orders. Where an order is concerned, there can be no second thoughts, period.”

Red Jacket was weeping. Covered with sweat, the young scout kept on grinding the broom handle into the victim’s belly.

“If he really doesn’t know, then no amount of torture is going to get anything out of him.” The shill had covered his face in dazed disbelief, and was peeking through his fingers at the scene.

“This could take time,” admitted the adjutant, his peregrination around the toilet coming to a sudden stop; he studied the insect dealer’s expression. The insect dealer gave the barest of nods, his face an expressionless mask. “In the meantime I’ll go up to room three — ah, excuse me, I did it again. What should I call that room up over the lift?”