Authors: Kōbō Abe
“There’s a bazooka in there too, you know.”
“That’s Komono’s little toy. What I really like is that gun chamber that doubles as a conference room. If only
our
office had been like that. A big round table surrounded by armchairs… .”
“Do you think relations between Komono and the adjutant are going to stay like that?” she asked.
“I’d like to hear what
you
think.” The shill indicated me, waving one hand as if in supplication. “With your leg free, there’ll be two separate lines of command. Things could get a bit sticky.”
“Everyone must need to use the bathroom,” I said. “How have you been managing?”
“Making do with the storage drums, and wondering vaguely what to do when they’re all full. But that’s all right, if your leg is coming out… . What are you waiting for? Come on out! If you can’t manage it alone, I’ll give you a hand. Shall I go get some more help?”
“No, just you is enough. I’m waiting for the prickles to go away.”
“It’s a terrible feeling, I know. But I certainly am glad it turned out this way. Now that the crisis is over, I don’t mind telling you we had quite a confrontation over which to choose—the toilet or your leg. Remember the pirate in
Treasure Island
—what was his name? Long John Silver. He had a wooden leg, and he cut quite a figure with it. The others said if the ship was really important to you, you should take a tip from him.”
“How’m I going to do this?”
“Grab on to my shoulders. I’ll walk around in a circle, like the donkey at the millstone.”
I hung on to his burly shoulders, looking no doubt like a fresh-pounded rice cake draped on a tree branch. The girl poured cooking oil from the shelf between my calf and the pipe, for lubrication. His penlight in his mouth, the shill started circling the toilet, while with another penlight the girl lit up his feet for him. The skin on my leg, especially around the shin, chafed against the pipe walls as if it would tear off. Even so, I began turning. Slowly I completed a quarter-turn, without the least sensation of being pulled down inside.
“Attaboy! Say, they’ll be knocked over dead when they see this.” Since he still had the penlight in his mouth, the words were muffled, but his voice was cheerful. I felt guilty. If possible, I had wanted to escape alone with the girl, but this was certainly no time to suggest such a thing. The shill had rights too. If I left him behind without telling him either that the toilet was now unusable (without, I guessed, extensive redesigning and reconstruction) or that I planned to escape through a secret passage, doubtless afterwards I would hate myself. Barring special circumstances—though, indeed, I could scarcely imagine what they might be—he deserved to come with us.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” asked the girl. (Why didn’t
she
tell the shill the truth?)
“A little pain makes it easier to bear—cancels out the pins and needles.”
“You’re coming up—a good inch!” she said encouragingly. “Keep it up!”
“Funny,” said the shill in the same muffled voice as before, penlight still in his mouth. “Who would have thought I’d outlive the whole rest of the world? Me! I can’t believe it.”
“What if it’s not true?” I couldn’t keep still. Would the girl feel disappointed? She didn’t look that way. She just looked from me to the shill and back and tilted her head to one side, her mouth drawn out in a line.
“Eh?”
“All that happened was that I set off some dynamite, to see if I could release the pressure inside the toilet.”
“You sure do things in a big way.” He didn’t seem especially outraged. “So you mean the bit about the nuclear blast wasn’t true?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s the way it goes. Shall we try turning the other way now? I bet you’re feeling a lot lighter.”
“He’s come up almost an inch and a half,” she said. “Just a little bit more now. Once the calf is out, you’re home free.”
“Aagh.” I grimaced with pain.
“Shall I slow down?”
“No, I’m okay. It just gave my knee a twinge there for a minute.”
“Well, well. So it was all a lie—the world is going on the same as ever, this very moment?”
“We aren’t trapped in here, either; there’s a secret way out. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“In other words, not one thing has changed. Go ahead, lean your full weight on me. It’s okay.”
He was acting too blasé. Had his extraordinary suspiciousness sealed off all his emotions? That couldn’t be. He had been overreacting to every little stimulus. Even the insect dealer had said to watch out for him, that people with heavy secretions of saliva were violent. Could he possibly not be aware of the seriousness of the situation? Or was the situation possibly not as serious as I found it? Perhaps his self-respect was involved: Someone who prides himself on his own sleight of hand can’t afford to fall all over himself with surprise every time someone else reveals the secret of a trick.
From the work hold flashed the highly condensed beam of a flashlight; footsteps drew near.
The girl whispered, “Should we turn off our lights?”
“That would only seem more suspicious. Just act natural.”
A figure stood in the tunnel entrance. By now the floodwater was ankle-deep, so whoever it was made no attempt to come further. The beam swept around the floor in a circular motion, like a lighthouse light. Of the storage drums, the five in the back containing kerosene, the three filled with alcohol, and the two filled with drinking water (I changed it once a week) stayed put, but the dozen or so empty ones had already floated out of line and were starting to drift over to the seaward wall. Probably the floor tilted in that direction. The vinyl-sheeted bundle lay in the same place as before, soaked in water. He must be sorry he’s dead now, hating baths as much as he did in his lifetime, I thought. Despite the flash of understanding, I couldn’t help him, and wouldn’t have, anyway; but slowly I was beginning to see that he had been a man of irremediable loneliness. The light swung around and found us.
“Terrible flood in here. What are you doing?” It was the insect dealer. But he pressed us no further. Probably he found it too troublesome to take responsibility for me and my present difficulty. “We called roll and found that fortunately seventy percent of the men were inside the blockade line. We’re incredibly busy. There aren’t many places left we haven’t looked, so we’ll have to change our search methods. Right now the men are hunting in every cranny, using condenser mikes. We’re going to try some excavating too. Captain, can you hang on a bit longer? It won’t be much more. Just say the word if you need anything to eat or drink. The body will keep awhile longer.”
“What do you suppose is happening outside?” said the shill innocently, asking the expected questions to avoid arousing suspicion.
“By now it’s raining glass shards and radiation. Well, Captain, don’t hesitate to let me know.” With this, he passed his light over the ceiling and withdrew. The shill hadn’t betrayed me. Evidently the seriousness of the situation had
not
escaped him.
“I think my calf just pulled free.”
The girl shone her penlight down inside the toilet, and stuck a finger between my leg and the pipe. I felt nothing.
“You’re right—there’s about a finger’s width of space there now.”
After that everything went unexpectedly easily. With one arm around each of their shoulders, I hauled myself up in midair, as simultaneously water came welling up. Probably the pressurization from below aided in my release—but now this toilet was no longer a toilet. I had thought my leg would be all bloody, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared: the shin and the top of my foot were skinned, and there was no other external injury. The whole leg was swollen and purplish-red, however, as if smeared with ink from a souvenir stamp pad at a Shinto shrine. Looking carefully, I saw that the old scar where I’d been chained long ago was sprinkled with tiny bloodstains, like grains of rough-ground pepper. It would be some time before I could wear a shoe again. The joint seemed unaffected, so I anticipated no difficulty walking, as soon as sensation returned. It was the rest of me that was totally worn out. I decided to sit down on the encyclopedia and continue hiding my leg in the toilet, until sensation returned to the sole of my foot and the crick in my ankle went away.
“Thanks a million. I’d about given up hope.”
“So nothing’s changed,” mused the shill. “I’m no different from before. We didn’t really ‘survive,’ after all.”
Clawing the sides of the toilet, I sought to endure the agony of returning sensation; it felt as if the raw nerves were at the mercy of a merciless wind. I forced myself to exercise the ankle.
“You’re strange, you know that?” I scoffed. “You actually sound regretful. None of that crowd is worth a moment’s regret, if you ask me.”
“They
are
a bedraggled lot, those old men,” he agreed. “Scraggly eyebrows, long hairs sticking out of their noses, wrinkled hippopotamuses under their chins … Well, you can’t blame them for how they look, can you? What I
can’t
forgive is that miserable, know-it-all thickheadedness of theirs.”
“As soon as you’re ready, let’s go. The longer we hang around here, the greater the chance they’ll be back.”
“He’s right,” said the girl, and added, laughing, “After all, you’re bound to have a lot to do after your new promotion.” She bent over in leapfrog position.
Laying a hand on her shoulder, I stood on my right leg and set my freed left leg on the floor. There was no pain, and the knee and hip joints did everything I told them to. The leg might
look
like a rotten eggplant, but inside, anyway, it was sound. Cheered, I shifted my weight. My vision whirled, and before I could tell what was happening, pain was shooting through my shoulder and arm, and I lay face down in water, Evidently sensation had not yet returned to the left leg. The shill and the girl helped me up.
“I’ll carry you piggyback,” said the shill. “Come on—this is no time to stand on ceremony. With you out of the toilet, every second counts.”
He was right. If they knew I’d gotten free, our chances for escaping here would dwindle. I put my arms around his neck, keeping my right foot on the ground to ease his burden. Reeling, he spluttered:
“How much do you weigh? You’re just as heavy as you look, aren’t you?”
The girl’s voice followed us. “You want your camera, don’t you? Shall I get it?”
“Yes, the one that’s out, and the case next to it, if you don’t mind. They’re heavy… . While you’re at it, I’d appreciate it if you could bring the eupcaccia.”
There were dozens of others out in the jeep, I knew, but somehow they weren’t the same. I could only be satisfied with
my
eupcaccia, the one that I had checked with my own eyes.
“Something bothers me …” said the shill, his breath coming hard. “It’s all this water. You don’t suppose the entire cave is going to be flooded, do you?”
“My guess, from the general topography, is that it won’t go higher than a foot or so off the ground. The work hold will be all right.”
“What about places lower than this?”
“Some will become pools, filled to the ceiling.”
“What if those girls are really hiding out somewhere? Then they could flee from the water right into a waiting net.”
I hadn’t thought of it before, but there
was
such a possibility. Was that my responsibility too? My brain could not forget the adjutant’s comment likening young girls to wet paper. It seemed unlikely, but what if these people, thinking this was all that remained of the world, should go on living here in this spurious ark for a year, two years, three, four—maybe a decade or longer—spinning out their days… .
The girl caught up with us in front of the lockers. “These are heavy. I see photography isn’t all just pushing buttons—it’s hard work!”
“You’d better believe it,” said the shill. “Even flea circus trainers end up with a sprained back, you know.” He used the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his chin, then rubbed the hand on the side of his trousers.
I glanced with satisfaction at the label on locker number one: “Flammable Solvents; Lathe Blades, All Sizes; Rubber Work Aprons; Infrared Lamps; Waterproof Sandpaper; Insulation; Corking Materials; Aluminum; Heat-resistant Facial Cream.” A plausible list of items that nobody would be likely to need or care about, and yet that aroused no suspicions. Even the most rapacious thief would surely decide it was not worth the trouble of breaking the lock.
Right 1—left 1—right 1.
The items actually stored inside were a close match for the label on the door, although in some cases the containers were barely filled, or empty. The idea was to lower the overall weight, but even so, I was careful not to make it suspiciously light. Rails were attached to the locker ceiling, and when a hook was removed, the shelves swung out opposite the door. In other words, they served as a hidden inner door.
From beyond the back of the locker, now opened, there swept up a moist breeze smelling rather like the warehouse in the fish market. The shill’s penlight lit up the casing of the escape hatch, which measured two feet by two and a half. The shill whistled.
“You could fool anybody with this.”
“Maybe I had a presentiment something like this would happen.”
“Where does it lead?” he asked.
“He says it comes out underneath the city hall,” answered the girl in my place. There was a lilt in her voice, as if she sensed light at the end of a very long tunnel.
“Is it safe?”
“Of course. The nuclear explosion’s a fake, and I deliberately left the dynamite unconnected here. Let’s go—there’s no time to waste. Once they’re on to us, that will be that.”
“What will they do when they find out?” asked the girl, hunching her shoulders and stifling a giggle.
“I wouldn’t worry. They’ll be too busy looking for those junior high school girls for the time being.” The shill passed a critical hand over the locker door.