Inter Ice Age 4 Read online

  Of course, terrians themselves were nothing especially extraordinary for the young man. If one went to the aerium in the museum you could see them any time. Dragging along their chain of gravity, amid household furnishings that were said to be quite authentic, they were, from the looks of them, dull creatures, clumsily moving around, cringing on floors. Incongruous busts, greatly distended to contain the air chambers they called lungs. Handicapped things, obliged to use strange implements called chairs simply to keep their accustomed posture. He could not picture in his dreams what such life would be. In art class aquans were taught that the old terrian arts were crude and awkward compared to their own.

  For instance, music was by definition the art of vibrations. That is, it was something that enfolded the whole body in water vibrations of differing lengths. But in the instance of terrians, it was constructed only by the vibration of air. And these air vibrations could only be caught by small, specialized organs known as eardrums. Naturally then, such music was monotonous and had little variation.

  When you looked at terrians in the museums, you got that feeling. But one could not imagine just what the music really was like by simply positing such a state of affairs. Was there not some special world completely different from what one might infer from under the water? Diaphanous, shifting air . . . clouds dancing in the heavens, assuming shapes of all kinds ... a world of fabulous dreams, an unreal world.

  It was written in history books how the aquans’ ancestors on that ruined, misery-filed land, though wounded, had bravely struggled on to the last. As one looked back, one could see they possessed a real frontier spirit. Despite their conservatism they had had the courage to plunge the scalpel into their own flesh, to change themselves into aquans. Whatever their motives, one must show honor and gratitude to their courage, which has brought about present aquan existence.

  But could one sense such courage, such daring, in the land creatures in museums? Scholars called their inferiority a degeneration arising from their loss of a positive participation in society as individuals. That might be, yet couldn’t one say that there was something in them one didn’t understand? It was impossible to claim they had nothing more than frontier spirit. The youth’s ideas were not very coherent, but as he had experienced the surface breeze, he was fascinated and obsessed by the world of the past that had functioned beyond the wall of air. Studies about forms of life at the time of land living had advanced to a fairly high level. Even grammar school texts devoted quite a number of pages to the period of terrian life. But one could understand the inner life of people then only by inference, given the discrepancy between aquan feelings and theirs. There was a particular fear of the bad effects of land diseases, although actually those diseases might be merely sorts of congenital nervous disorders. Perhaps because the history of life in the water was still relatively short and because certain trial and error elements still remained in the administration of aquan society, they might still spread, thus affecting everyone’s thinking. As a result their study was not much encouraged. Yet the temptation to break the taboo about leaving the water appealed very much to the youth.

  Before he realized it, it had become daily routine for him to make secret excursions when work was over. He would ride around on a water scooter, searching for traces of land-people’s life, as far away as the closing time of his dormitory would permit, passing through the bubbles of air ceaselessly sent up volcano-like by the factories, over the corner of the aeroscopic emplacement that was suspended by myriad buoys, and over the submarine pasture lands, stretching out on a floor of green light. Above him the waves gleamed dully as if seen through the underside of rippled glass.

  But within these time limitations he had not been able to reach a plateau high enough to break the surface of the water. In the area around him land had already ceased to be.

  One day the youth stopped his music teacher and ventured to question him. Wasn’t land music really not the art of sound heard only with the ears, but something that could be experienced through the skin like the wind? he asked. The teacher emphatically denied it, shaking his head.

  — You see, wind is the simple movement of air and not the vibration of it.

  — But don’t we say “a song is wafted on the air”?

  —Water transmits music, but water is not music. When you give air a significance over and above being a raw material for industrial purposes, you’re under the unfortunate influence of mysticism.

  But the youth had heard more in the wind than mere material for industrial use. Even though it was his teacher who had spoken, there was a possibility of error. He resolved to ascertain once more for himself whether the wind was or was not music.

  After a while there was a three-day holiday. Taking advantage of it, he set out with a friend on a pleasure boat that made the rounds of the ruins. It was a high-speed craft and brought them in barely half a day to the great terrian ruins of what was formerly called Tokyo. There was a well-equipped camp with shops selling wonderful souvenirs, and even a zoo of land animals that was internationally famous. It had become a most amusing holiday resort. Exploring the labyrinthine crannies and passages of the grim ruins piled together like clusters of small boxes, scattering the little fish before one, was a mildly thrilling and exciting amusement. When one looked down on the town, there were strange things called streets that spread out like a net. You might call them roofless tunnels for walking. As terrians could use only level surfaces and could not leave the ground, such devices were doubtless necessary. But what a senseless waste of space. At first it was funny, but when you thought about it, it was a moving sight. The vestiges of their ancestors’ struggle against the wall that was earth. Their efforts and schemes to make themselves a little lighter, to subtract themselves a little from gravity. There, even a little plastic box filled with air would fall straight down. The scramble for land and its partition. They had made their bodies move by pushing against the ground with their two thin legs. Empty space . . . dryness . . . wind . . . where even water itself, which came in scattered drops called rain, fell downward from above.

  But the youth had no time to admire such wonders. Leaving enjoyment and curiosity to his simple companion, he went swimming, quietly and alone, farther into the hinterland, as he had planned. If he swam a good day in a northwesterly direction, he should reach the land remains that he had learned about in geography. Gradually the sun sank toward the horizon. It was the moment of the day when the waves glittered most beautifully, but as he advanced, the surrounding seascape grew monotonously darker. Shadows of death seemed to lurk in the belt of land that had been newly added to the sea.

  Looking around, he could see above the ruins of Tokyo the light of a telescopic illumination floating like a luminous fish. Suddenly he was frightened and wondered whether he should not go back, but against his will his feet propelled him on.

  The youth swam and swam. Deep ravines, hidden rocks, more and more rugged relief. The dead shapes of land vegetation standing like spines. And then faint white spots clustering at the summit of a rise. Perhaps the bones of land animals that had died together, driven there by the oncoming sea.

  The youth continued swimming the whole night. Three times he rested, keeping up his strength by eating fish he caught and some sweet jelly he had brought with him. But having never swum more than fifteen minutes without his scooter, he was so tired he could hardly feel his arms and legs. And yet he kept on. Just as dawn was breaking, he was able to reach the sought-for land. He rose up, cutting through the surface of the sea. Land, yes, but only a tiny island scarcely a half mile in circumference, barely lifting its head above the surface of the water.

  With the last of his strength the youth crawled up onto the land. He had imagined that in order to hear the music of the wind he would have to stand upright on the land surface, but when he had crawled up he was unable to move and lay flat on the ground, heavily, as if his body had suddenly absorbed the weight of the world. It was all he could do to raise a s
ingle finger. Besides, his breathing was painful, as if he had received a foul blow in a wrestling match. But assuming that there was oxygen in the air too, he made little of it.

  The longed-for wind was blowing. It washed over his eyes especially, and something, as if in response, came seeping out from within them. He was happy. Perhaps these were tears, it occurred to him, obviously a land sickness. He no longer felt like moving.

  Soon he stopped breathing.

  Then after the passage of several scores of days the sea swallowed up the little island too, and the dead youth was carried off by the ocean currents.

  Now I wonder if I can raise my own fingers, I mused. No, maybe not. Like those of the aquan youth who had crawled up on land, my fingers were as heavy as lead.

  Far away a trolley bell sounded faintly. A truck sped by, making the earth tremble. Someone cleared his throat softly. The window frame vibrated and the pane rattled once or twice-perhaps the wind had risen.

  At length, beyond the door the sucking sounds of the killer’s rubber soles drew near. But I still could not believe it. Could man be made to assume responsibility by just existing? Perhaps so. In a quarrel between parents and children it is always the children who judge. Perhaps it was an actual law that the creator be judged by the created, intentions notwithstanding.

  Outside the door, the footsteps stopped.

  Postscript

  The controversy about whether the future is affirmative or negative has been going on for many years. Numerous literary works have expressed an affirmative world image or a negative one by using the form of the future.

  I, however, have taken neither the one nor the other course. In fact, it is extremely doubtful whether one has the right to sit in judgment of the values of the future. I believe that if one does not have the right to deny a given future, neither does he have the right to affirm it.

  The real future, I think, manifests itself like a “thing,” beyond the abyss that separates it from the present, beyond the value judgments of the present. For example, if a man from the fifteenth century could return to life today, would he consider the present hell or paradise? Whatever he thought, one thing is quite clear and that is that he would no longer have the competency to judge. It’s the present, not him, that judges and decides.

  I too, therefore, believe that I must understand the future not as something to be judged but something rather that sits in judgment on the present. Thus, such a future is neither utopia nor hell and cannot become an object of curiosity. In short, it is nothing more or less than future society. And even if this society is developed to a far higher degree than the present one, it only occasions suffering in the eyes of those entombed in their microscopic sense of a continuing, predictable present.

  The future gives a verdict of guilty to this usual continuity of daily life. I consider the problem an especially important theme in these critical times. Thus I decided to try to grasp the image of a future that intrudes on the present, a future that sits in judgment. Our usual sense of continuity must give way the instant it faces the future. In order to understand the future, it is not enough simply to be living in the present. We must be clearly aware that there is real evil in the very commonplace order of things we call everyday living.

  Perhaps there is no such thing as a cruel future. The future, properly speaking, is already cruel by virtue of being the future. The responsibility for this cruelty lies not on the side of the future, but on that of a present unable to accept the abyss that separates the two. This novel appeared in serial form in the Sekai Magazine over a period of about nine months; during that time I was myself tormented by the cruelty of this abyss. And I realized that it was impossible for me to completely escape it.

  The reader is free, of course, to read into the novel either hope or despair. But whichever he does, I doubt that he will be able to avoid a confrontation with this cruelty of the future. If one avoids the ordeal, entrenched in the conviction that there is hope in the future, such hope does not go beyond the realm of wishing. Whether hope or despair, the subjective judgments within the frame of our sense of continuity between present and future have overcome us, I fear.

  This novel ends with the death of this sense of continuity. But it will furnish neither understanding nor solution of any sort. You, reader, are plagued by myriad doubts. Much I still do not grasp myself. For instance, what precisely is the position of the assistant, Tanomogi? Does he merely represent a capitalist? Or is he a revolutionary acting under orders of the aquan society produced through the forecasting machine? Or is he a reformist whose intent it is to manipulate capitalists who do good while wishing to do evil? My uncertainty continued as I wrote; it is still unclarified.

  Yet I shall have fulfilled one of the purposes of this novel if I have been able to make the reader confront the cruelty of the future, produce within him anguish and strain, and bring about a dialogue with himself.

  And so, when you raise your eyes from this book, your reality lies there before you. To paraphrase Professor Katsumi: The most frightening thing in this world is discovering the abnormal in that which is closest to us.

  Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924 but grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, where his father, a doctor, was on the staff of the medical school. As a young man Mr. Abe was interested in mathematics and insect collecting as well as the works of Poe, Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Kafka. He received a medical degree from Tokyo University in 1948, but he has never practiced medicine. In that same year he published his first book, The Road Sign at the End of the Street. In 1951 he was awarded the most important Japanese literary prize, the Akutagawa, for his novel The Crime of Mr. S. Karuma. In 1960 his novel The Woman in the Dunes won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. It was made into a film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1963 and won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It was the first of Mr. Abe's novels to be published in translation in the United States, in 1964. The Face of Another (1966) was also made into a film by Mr. Teshigahara. Most recently, his novel The Ruined Map was published here in 1969. Mr. Abe lives with his wife, Machi, an artist, on the outskirts of Tokyo.

  E. Dale Saunders, translator of Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes (1964), The Face of Another (1966), and The Ruined Map (1969), received his A.B. from Western Reserve University (1941), his M.A. from Harvard (1948), and his Ph.D. from the University of Paris (1952). He is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, having previously taught at International Christian University, Tokyo, and at Harvard University. Among his publications are Mudra: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture (1960) and Buddhism in Japan (1964).