Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

In front of the elevators there was a roofed area some fifteen feet square, filled with a jostling crowd seeking escape from the rain. The overload bell was ringing, and the elevator doors were wide open. No one moved to get out. No one could have — the elevator was packed too tight. Angry shouts. crying children. women’s screams. and the bell, ringing and ringing.

“Hopeless. Damn!”

“We’ve got to hurry and find them! The man had a crew cut, and the woman had curly hair. She was wearing a T-shirt printed with some kind of scenery on the front—”

“Forget it. Take a look at that. No way.”

“Why not take the stairs?”

“We’re on the ninth floor, you know.”

“So? I don’t care.”

We circled around in back of the elevators till we came to a white steel door. On it was a wooden sign marked EMERGENCY EXIT. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

4

MY BIOLOGICAL FATHER

IS CALLED INOTOTSU

The door swung open to a noise like the buzzing of ten thousand horseflies — the hum of motors reverberating down the pit of the stairwell. It was a steep, strictly-business stairway, a world away from the gaudy bustle of the store interior. The walls were of plain concrete, adorned only with large numbers on each landing to mark off the successive floors. The air smelled of raw pelts hanging up to dry.

The railing was on the left, which made it easier for me to favor my injured left knee. On the sixth-floor landing we stopped for breath; I tried straightening my leg and putting weight on it. There was a watery sensation, but the pain remained local. The insect dealer’s glasses were starting to steam over.

“Are you sure you know where they went?” I asked.

“They have an office. A rented one, with just a phone, but an office.”

“ ‘Shills for hire,’ is that it?”

“It’s a referral agency for sidewalk vendors. They keep a percentage of the space rental fee.”

“Then they are racketeers. I knew it. He tried to gloss it over — called himself a ‘sales promoter’ or some damn thing.”

“They don’t seem to have any direct connections to organized crime, though. If they did, they could never deal with the department store here so openly. Who knows, maybe they pay their dues on the sly.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. There was something slimy about them.”

“Her too?”

The question was impossible for me to answer in an offhand way. I stopped, pretending my knee hurt. The insect dealer shifted the suitcase to his other hand and looked back at me, a faint smile on his face.

“Doesn’t she get to you?” he said. “She does to me. She’s too good for him.”

“He called her his fishing lure.”

“Did he, now.” He licked his upper lip, then his lower. The suitcase bumped down the stairs in time to his footsteps. “The man’s no fool. You have to give him credit for that.”

“Do you really think they headed straight for the office at this hour? Maybe we should phone first, to make sure.”

We passed the fifth floor, then the fourth-floor landing, brushing past a pair of uniformed security guards in an evident hurry — probably on their way up to straighten out the crowd and get the elevators going again. Rain washed against the skylight.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t even bother doing that,” said the insect dealer. “I’d make straight for the harbor.”

“Harbor?”

“Sure. That ticket gets you on board a ship, right? A ship means a harbor.”

“But my ship isn’t in the water. It’s sort of. ” I groped for a way to express it. “It’s in dry dock, you could say.”

“Well, it’s only a question of time till they find it and get on board.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s a map on the back of that ticket, isn’t there?”

“You mean you’ve already looked at it? That was quick.”

“It’s a habit of mine,” he said. “While I’m in the john, I have to have something to read.”

“Do you think they could find it with just that map to go on?”

“A fisherman could. I like deep-sea fishing myself, so I knew where it was the minute I saw it.”

“Oh. What about him? Does he fish? He did make that crack about fishing by lure. ”

“That area is full of great fishing spots,” said the insect dealer, giving his hip pocket a slap where the ticket apparently was. “I know my way around there pretty well. Wasn’t there an old fishermen’s inn somewhere near there?”

I felt a sick embarrassment, as if he’d told me my fly was open. I didn’t want to hear any more. To have the past dragged aboard my ship was the last thing I wanted. When we set sail, I wanted my slate as clean as a newborn baby’s.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to give you back your watch.”

On the second-floor landing, we took a final rest. My knee was almost entirely free of pain now and felt merely a bit stiff — though to keep my companion off his guard it seemed wiser to pretend otherwise. The insect dealer strapped his watch on his wrist, sat down on the eupcaccia suitcase, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

“No smoking.”

“I’m not going to light it. I only smoke five a day.”

“See there? You do want to survive.”

“No, just to enjoy my last moments. Lung cancer isn’t my idea of fun.”

We looked at each other, and shared a laugh for no reason.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “I guess it would be smarter to go straight to the ship than to waste time stopping by their office on a hunch. Are you coming with me?”

“Sure — as far as the first-aid room. It’s right on this floor, somewhere in back. You’ve got to attend to a sprain or it’ll get worse.”

“Hold on just a minute. That’s not what you said before. You promised you’d help me find them.”

“I did?”

“Besides, first aid isn’t going to help me drive my jeep. It’s parked down in the underground parking lot. The clutch weighs a ton.”

“You want me to drive it?”

“What’s the matter, can’t you drive?”

“Are you kidding? You’re looking at a former truckdriver. I’m just wondering why I should go that far out of my way for you.”

“Well, I gave you back your watch, but I notice you haven’t given me back my ticket.”

“If you want it back, just say so. I thought you’d traded me this for the rest of the eupcaccias.” He started to get up, fumbling in his hip pocket. Alarm took possession of me, as if I were watching an egg roll toward a table edge.

“Nobody’s asking for it back!”

“Lower your voice, will you?” he said. “I can’t stand loud voices. Dogs barking, hogs squealing, people yelling — it all drives me nuts.”

Hogs. Did someone say hogs? My ears buzzed as if filled with crawling insects. I wasn’t always a porker. When I was a boy, I was as skinny as a shish kebab skewer. Not all hogs are fat, either, as far as that goes. “Hog” became synonymous with “Fatso” back when ninety percent of all hogs raised were Yorkshires. The Yorkshire is a lard breed, and before synthetic oils and fats came into wide use, it was an important source of fat. Not just cooking fat: lard from Yorkshire hogs was used for a variety of things, from all-purpose salve and tallow to ointment for rectal suppositories — even a mustache pomade said to have been popular with the French aristocracy. Then, as demand for pork grew, the Yorkshire breed gave way increasingly to the bacon-type Landrace breed and the loin-and-ham-type Berkshire breed, both of which have a thin fat layer and a high proportion of excellent lean meat. With four extra ribs, the newer breeds were considerably longer and sturdier than their ancestors.