Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

My biological father (a pariah in his own hometown) goes by the nickname Inototsu — literally “charging boar,” which is certainly an accurate description of his personality. Not only is he as reckless and dangerous as a wild boar, but he used to run a fishermen’s inn out on a rocky cove called Inokuchi, or Boar’s Mouth (who would have thought the insect dealer would know anything about it!). The cove, where Mount Boar trails into the sea, is so called because it looks like the snout of a boar.

That there should be some physical resemblance between my biological father and myself probably couldn’t be helped. Both of us weigh nearly two hundred twenty pounds, but Inototsu is well over six feet tall and has a neck so short that he can’t wear ready-made shirts. He really seems less a hog than a giant boar, with all the domineering brute force of one. As a matter of fact, he is clumsy and timorous, but people always defer to him and are awed by his appearance. To hide a peculiarly wavy hairline, he used to wear a loud green hunting cap, which only increased people’s apprehension.

He always liked to stand out. He used to hang around the city hall when he had nothing better to do, and even had namecards printed up with some official-sounding bureaucratic title or other. Eventually he got more ambitious, and started hankering after a real councilman’s badge. His wife (my stepmother) was a practical woman; instead of protesting, she had him turn the deed to the fishing inn over to her for safekeeping. The inn was large, with a great many rooms, each provided with its own kitchen; it had a sizable clientele, including a number of cooks who liked to catch their own fish. Inototsu’s only other assets consisted of two twenty-five-ton fishing vessels. As his wife had feared, when he ran for office he sold these off to raise funds. But not even changing his hunting cap for a felt hat did any good; he always lost miserably. When his money was gone, he became a terrible alcoholic and never bathed. Eventually he smelled so bad that dogs would run away from him. In the end they even threw him out of the city hall.

One day he tripped over his wife and fell on her as she lay sleeping. He escaped with a nose out of joint, but she died from internal rupture. The rumor was that he had deliberately trampled her to death, but they let him go, for lack of evidence. Even so, his entire staff quit in fear. It was after that that Inototsu took in me and my mother.

My mother had run a little cigarette stand on Mount Boar, just across the town road. She had me after Inototsu raped her. Then the year after we went to the inn to live, the summer I was twelve, it was my turn to be accused of rape. The victim was a waitress thirty years older than me. The one who raped her wasn’t me — I just happened to be spying on the scene of the crime. But with Inototsu’s blood in my veins, I found it impossible to clear myself. Inototsu suddenly became a self-appointed emissary of justice; he caught me and shut me up in an abandoned underground quarry in the mountain (the present ship), where he kept me chained for an entire week, until Mother finally sneaked in and set me free.

It was then that I started putting on weight. I wish to make it absolutely clear that I was not born this way. My excess weight is compensation for this unreasonable violence inflicted on me in childhood. My left ankle still bears scars from the chain. At fourteen, I ran away from home, but I continued to gain weight, my hatred of Inototsu proliferating along with the scar tissue on my leg. Rumor has it that he still hasn’t abandoned his old dream of becoming a councilman. But who can take seriously a thug with a record of four (possibly seven) convictions, who is also an alcoholic and gives off a foul odor for thirty feet in all directions? Even I, his biological son, while living in the same city, have seen him face to face only once in the last few years.

So please, please don’t talk to me about pigs. Just the sound of that word makes me feel as if my entire personality had been stuffed in a meat grinder. Local people look on me as an overgrown hog, so I eliminated them from consideration as crew members from the start. I eliminated almost everyone I ever knew, however casually. Each person who seemed likely to call me a pig I changed mentally into a louse. And then crushed between my nails.

“Don’t hit the ceiling. No harm intended. As long as they don’t howl and make a lot of noise, I’ve got nothing against dogs. I have one myself — a mutt, nothing fancy.”

“So do I. What does that prove?”

“A spitz, I bet.”

“Flake off.”

“Well, if you don’t want to go have your knee looked at, I can’t make you.” He shifted the unlit cigarette in his mouth, and looked up at a nonexistent window. What did he see through it? “At this time of day, the first-aid room will be jammed anyway, with victims of department store fever. They say it’s endemic among housewives who go home to an empty house.”

“Then you’ll come with me to the ship?”

“I didn’t say that. I’ll hang on to the ticket, though. There’s always next time. When the sun starts to go down, I have to have a drink. That’s mainly what keeps me going, day in and day out. I’ll carry the eupcaccias out to your jeep for you.”

“You underestimate the gravity of the situation.”

“You overestimate it.” Briskly he clapped his hands — fleshy hands that made me think of heavy-duty gloves — and sprang to his feet. “I don’t brood over things the way you do. It’s not my style.”

“Oh, crap — say you’ll come with me. I’ve got booze on the ship, if that’s what you want. If we take the bypass, we can get there in less than an hour, and I know a shortcut that only a jeep can manage.”

“I can’t figure it out — why you’re counting so much on me.”

“Blame it on the eupcaccia. That’s what brought us together.”

“Look, as far as I’m concerned, the eupcaccia was a dud. I only sold one, so that proves it. I misread the people’s mind. What’s-his-name, the German psychologist, has a theory that this is the age of simulation games. Eventually reality gets confused with symbol. There’s a desire for enclosed spaces, like pillboxes — or with a little more aggression thrown in, tanks. If you can’t follow it, don’t worry. It was all in the paper. Anyway, the end result is a boom in electronic monsters, model guns, and computer war games. He could be on to something, don’t you think?”

“The shill said the reason the eupcaccias don’t sell is because they don’t have horns.”

“That could very well be. You sure you wouldn’t be better off teaming up with him instead of me?”

“Personally, I don’t give a shit about horns. One of these days I’m going to design a ship’s flag, and I have in mind a logo based on the eupcaccia.”

“In the end, what do you think you’ll do with your ship — subdivide or lease?”

“How could I put a price tag on life?”

The stairs came to an end in front of the basement door. The insect dealer put his hand on the knob and paused.

“They station a guard here to keep employees from carrying off merchandise,” he explained. “We don’t have anything to hide, but still you don’t want to undergo a body search, do you?”

He opened the door. Out poured that uniform concentration of noise that characterizes basement grocery sections of a large department store. A standing screen was placed before the door, but there was no sign of anyone around.

“Here we go.” Holding up the suitcase like the figurehead on a ship’s prow, he plunged into the crowd, shouting, “One side, please, sick man coming through, one side, please. Everybody out of the way, there’s a sick man coming through. ”