Читать онлайн «The Ark Sakura»
Автор Кобо Абэ
Kobo Abe
The Ark Sakur
Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
VINTAGE BOOKS NEW YORK
A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
First Vintage International Edition, March 1989
Copyright © 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc. , New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in Japanese as
THE ARK SAKURA
1
MY NICKNAME IS PIG — OR MOLE
Once a month I go shopping downtown, near the prefectural offices. It takes me the better part of an hour to drive there, but since my purchases include a lot of specialized items — faucet packing, spare blades for power tools, large laminated dry cells, that sort of thing — the local shops won’t do. Besides, I’d rather not run into anyone I know. My nickname trails after me like a shadow.
My nickname is Pig — or Mole. I stand five feet eight inches tall, weigh two hundred fifteen pounds, and have round shoulders and stumpy arms and legs. Once, hoping to make myself more inconspicuous, I took to wearing a long black raincoat — but any hope I might have had was swept away when I walked by the new city hall complex on the broad avenue leading up to the station.
The city hall building is a black steel frame covered with black glass, like a great black mirror; you have to pass it to get to the train station. With that raincoat on, I looked like a whale calf that had lost its way, or a discarded football, blackened from lying in the trash. Although the distorted reflection of my surroundings was amusing, my own twisted image seemed merely pitiful. Besides, in hot weather the crease in my double chin perspires so much that I break out in a rash; I can’t very well cool the underside of my chin against a stone wall the way I can my forehead or the soles of my feet. I even have trouble sleeping. A raincoat is simply out of the question. My reclusion deepens.If I must have a nickname, let it be Mole, not Pig. Mole is not only the less unappealing of the two but also more fitting: for the last three years or so I’ve been living underground. Not in a cylindrical cave like a mole’s burrow but in a former quarry for architectural stone, with vertical walls and level ceilings and floors. The place is a vast underground complex where thousands of people could live, with over seventy stone rooms piled up every which way, all interconnected by stone stairways and tunnels. In size the rooms range from great halls like indoor stadiums to tiny cubby-holes where they used to take test samples. Of course there are no amenities like piped water or drainage, or power lines. No shops, no police station, no post office. The sole inhabitant is me. And so Mole will do for a name, at least until something better suggests itself.
