“I had a dream like this once, when was it … ?” He changed into a pair of rubber boots, bit off the string joining a brand-new pair of work gloves, and climbed over the backrest into the front seat. “Shall I go first? Two at a time probably wouldn’t work.”
“You’re probably right, although I’ve never tried it.”
“Then let me go first. I can’t think of anything worse than hanging from a rope, with a pack of hounds snapping at my rear end. It’s true, you know—round objects activate a dog’s hunting instincts. Must be the resemblance to animals seen from behind.” One foot on the running board, eyes casting about in the dark, he said, “Howl again to distract them, will you?”
I felt a sudden, inexplicable hesitation. Acquiring crew members was a matter of the deepest urgency, I knew all too well. But I had grown used to living in solitude. Logically I was prepared to welcome the insect dealer aboard, but emotionally I was terrified. I suspected that everything today had happened too fast. Certainly there had been times, after coming back from an outing, when the moment I inserted the key in the padlock I was assailed by an unbearable loneliness. But that never amounted to more than a fleeting spell of dizziness. As soon as I was settled in the hold, I would return to a mood of such utter tranquillity that the concept of loneliness lost all meaning. In the words of the insect dealer—or rather of something he had parroted out of the newspaper—I had perhaps fallen prey to the confusion of symbol and reality, to the longing for a safe place to hide.
“Hurry up and do your howl again,” the insect dealer urged. “I’m hungry.”
“First don’t you think we’d better work out a strategy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just in case they did beat us here, what are we going to do?”
“You’re worrying about nothing. That’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.”
I wasn’t in fact seriously expecting to find them there, but there were one or two signs that could have indicated an invasion during my absence. For example, that arrangement of chair legs and storage drums which I always inspected when I came back from my outings was noticeably out of order. Probably it meant nothing, considering the heavy downpour we had just had. Some caving in of the ground was only to be expected. It was equally possible that a cat had knocked the storage drum aside, using it as footing to escape the dogs.
A series of large trailer trucks went by overhead. When they were gone, the insect dealer said in a fed-up tone of voice, “All right, then, you want to bet? I say they’re not here. Are you willing to bet me they are?”
“How much?”
“The key to the jeep.”
Ignoring this, I said, “Actually I was talking about something different—a more general question of frame of mind. Having you here is naturally going to change the way I deal with unlawful occupation, compared to before… .”
“If it’s general frames of mind you’re talking about, how about cleaning up your front doorstep for starters?” He gave a laugh edged in irony. “Between your garbage dump and your pack of wild dogs, I’d say you don’t have too much to worry about. Nobody’s going to break in here. This place stinks to high heaven. Just trying to breathe gives me a headache.”
“It’s the weather. And what you smell is some disinfectant I scattered around.”
“I don’t think that’s all. Pardon me for saying so, but I suspect it has more to do with your personality, Captain. Overly defensive. Frankly, with a captain who’s so determined to shut people out, I must say the prospect of a long voyage doesn’t offer much excitement.”
“Look—if you were dealing in pots and pans or medicine bottles, you’d have an obligation to make them watertight, wouldn’t you? With a ship, it’s even more vital. Your whole life depends on it.”
“I’m not taking the shill’s part, mind you,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. But a ship’s captain has got to be a trifle more broad-minded, it seems to me… .”
“You were the one who kept insisting they were people to keep an eye on.”
“You’ve got to keep an open mind. If they managed to get inside despite all the obstacles in their way, they’d deserve a prize, wouldn’t they?”
“That’s right; it would be too much for that girl, anyway.”
“But then, anything you could handle—” he said, and quickly caught himself. “Oops, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Remember now, a ship’s captain has to be tolerant… . That just shows how much I really trust you. Anyway, don’t forget we live in an age when women climb the Himalayas. Although between these dogs and this garbage dump, it might be too much for her at that.”
I was starting to feel the same way. Maybe I was only jumping at shadows. It seemed impossible that the padlock on the entrance—or the gangway, properly speaking—would be missing. Was it merely fear of shadows that had led me to acquire a weapon in the person of the insect dealer—a weapon for which I would have no use?
“Okay. If the dogs go after you, I’ll distract them,” I said. I turned off the engine, and together we stepped out of the jeep. I handed him a penlight, and lit the way for him with a large flashlight. “The door on the driver’s side of that car opens directly into the tunnel, so watch your head. It’s about thirty feet to the entrance. I’ll be right behind you.”
The insect dealer grabbed the rope and hauled himself up, his feet knocking down large clumps of dirt and sand at each step. This did not signify that he was any less surefooted than I; the slope was steep, and on it lay junk of all sizes and shapes, precariously piled together, each item supporting and supported by the rest. A monkey could have done no better without knowing where the footholds were.
A thin, runty black dog with long ears came sidling over to my feet. Was this a newcomer, paying his respects? Thanks to my talented howling, the pack of dogs had quickly accepted me as their leader. With humans it wouldn’t be so easy.
I put on my rubber boots and heavy-duty gloves. The insect dealer disappeared inside the abandoned car with a wave of his penlight. After the rope stopped swinging, I grabbed it and followed him. As I went up, I placed my feet safely and securely in the footholds, enjoying a mild sense of superiority. The rusted metal plate of the car door came before my eyes—beyond it gaped the mouth of the tunnel, exactly 4.83 feet square. I could see the insect dealer’s light flickering up ahead. Why they had chosen that exact measurement I did not know. The entranceway itself had a steel frame, but from there on the walls were bare rock, still showing the marks of the power saw with which they had been carved out. At my feet were rusted rails, their width adjusted to that of the handcars used for hauling stone. The tunnel cut directly under the town road, and continued another sixteen feet. Directly above the inmost part was where my biological mother had run her tobacco store—the place, incidentally, where I was born.
The farther in you went, the more pronounced the acoustical alteration: high-pitched sounds created mutual interference and were absorbed into the stone walls, leaving only the deep roar of low-pitched sounds. The howl of wind, the boom of waves, the singing of tires on the highway, all had a common denominator: the sound of a great wet canvas flapping in the wind.
“Oh, no—the lock’s gone. Come have a look.” His voice was muffled, as if he were speaking over the telephone.
“It’s over on the far left, as you stand facing the latch.”
He was right. The padlock was gone. It was stainless steel, a fairly big one several inches across, so there was no way we could have missed it. Someone had opened the door. It could only be them. Since it was a padlock, just turning the key wasn’t enough; you had to remove the whole thing from its fastening. They certainly weren’t going to stop there and just take the thing home as a souvenir. I’d been invaded. Bitterly, I regretted the lack of a keyhole that would have let me peer inside. I sat cross-legged before the steel door and listened attentively. Such a mélange of sounds came to my ears that I could hear nothing.
7
THE TRAPS AND THE TOILET
“Looks like they’re here, after all. I’m glad we didn’t make that bet.” The insect dealer spoke in an undertone, wiping the sweat from under his chin with the tail of his shirt. In the process, his pale abdomen was exposed, revealing next to his navel a dark red birthmark the size of my palm.
“I told you I wasn’t being an alarmist,” I said.
“But is it really them?” he asked. “Couldn’t it be somebody else?”
“Forget it. Who else has a key?”
“But we didn’t see any cars parked along the way—and that shortcut would be impossible to figure out from a map.”
“Maybe they took the train.”
“Eh? You never said anything about a train.”
“If you can get right on the express without waiting, it’s faster. Put out that light.”
The door was heavy steel, nearly half an inch thick, so the burden on its hinges was great. There was a certain trick to opening it. You had to pull it toward you, then push it up diagonally to adjust the hingepin before it would swing open silently and smoothly. I listened, and heard only the rumble of the sea, murmurings of conches, drops of water falling—whether near or far was impossible to say.
It was too quiet. I pushed the door open still farther, went inside, and stood on the cedarwood deck. The insect dealer followed behind, gripping my belt. If what we had just come through were the gangway, this would be the hatch, not the deck. We were on the top landing of the stairs leading down into the hold. There was a damp green smell, and perfect silence. Nothing more. What had happened to the invaders? I felt an uneasy premonition.
I had not yet told the insect dealer, but the entire ship was booby-trapped to guard against trespassers. This very staircase leading down into the hold was a dangerous trap. It appeared to be the only way down, but the boards from the fourth step to the seventh held a nasty surprise: on one side they were fastened down with a spring hinge, while the other side was left free so that anyone putting his weight on them was bound to slip and fall. It was twenty-three feet to the bottom. An unlucky fall could easily prove fatal. The only safe way to go up and down was to use the ladder propped inconspicuously alongside the stairs.
Assuming you managed to pass this first hurdle, you still had to get by the stairs leading up to the bridge, a sort of terrace off the first hold. (I always refer to it as the bridge, although technically it’s my own cabin—the captain’s quarters.) Set foot on those stairs without first pushing the cancel button, and a fusillade of skyrockets will instantly fire. Put a hand on the drawer of my desk, and a spray can of insecticide will go off in your face. Nor would it be wise to show any interest in the bookmark stuck invitingly in my diary: Merely reaching for it would trigger an ultraviolet warning device, sending out a shower of crushed glass I made by grinding up old light bulbs. Individual fragments are as thin as mica and as sharp as razors; once they get in your hair you can’t brush them out, and if you tried to shampoo them out, your scalp would be cut to ribbons.
I had never expected any of this to be put to use. I had thought of it lightly as a sort of protective seal on the ship until the crew officially came on board. What got me started was a small Austrian utility machine that I bought to make duplicate keys. One day I used it to make a tiny screw to fasten on the sidepiece of my glasses. Next I repaired a fountain pen, and then added some parts to a used camera. Gradually it became a consuming passion, and I went around fixing, adding to, and remodeling everything I could lay hands on.
My masterpiece was an automatic air gun. It was no ordinary air gun; apart from a slight thickness of the shaft, it looked exactly like an umbrella. Unfortunately, there was no way to attach a sight, so I was forced to omit that feature. As a result, it could be used only at extremely close range, and never did achieve as much as I hoped in my war on rats—the original purpose for which I’d designed it. As an umbrella, however, it functions admirably. If I ever put it up for sale in that department store rooftop bazaar, it would certainly do better than the water cannon, anyway.
But what if I did inflict injury on a trespasser, I now wondered—would I be legally responsible?
After an interval that might have been two seconds, or twenty, the steel door clanged shut of its own accord, the reverberations conveying a vague sense of immense weight. The insect dealer switched his penlight on, but the shaft of light illuminated nothing; it only tapered off and disappeared, emphasizing the depth of the darkness (the room was 225’ X 100’ X 60’). He cast his voice into the blackness.
“Anybody here?”
“Yes.” The response came bundled in reverberations, and the beam of a flashlight bounced back. “You kept us waiting long enough. Hurry and turn on the lights, please.”
It was the shill, no doubt about it. His voice was cheerily off key, but it had a defiant, cutting edge. Next came the voice of the girl.
“Ooh! It hurts,” she said, but as she was not moaning, I assumed her injuries were minor. It was a relief to know they hadn’t been killed.
Drawn by their voices, the insect dealer took several steps forward, lost his balance and landed heavily on his rear. The beam from his penlight, which had been aimed at the floor, was swallowed up in the darkness.
“Why haven’t you got a banister here, for crying out loud? A person could get killed.” His voice was shrill. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said in a different key, “So it is you two. How’d you sneak in here?”
“Hey, it’s Komono!” The girl’s voice was bright. The shill must have said something to her, for she immediately started complaining again about the pain.
“You two are worse than a pair of cockroaches,” said the insect dealer. “How’d you get past the dogs?”
From the swaying shadows beyond the flashlight, the shill shot back, “That’s a fine hello. Let me ask you, then—who invited you to come poking your ugly face in here?”
Plainly the three of them were well acquainted. The insect dealer hadn’t leveled with me.
“You’re a fine one to talk,” countered the insect dealer. “I happen to know how you got your ticket—swiped it, didn’t you?”
“Now, now—don’t talk that way. One thing just led to another. We looked all over for you, you know.”
“Oh, you did, huh? Came all the way here to look for me, did you? That was big of you. Come off it.”
“As long as we pay the admission fee it’s okay, isn’t it?”
“There are certain qualifications.”
“Who’s asking you, Komono? Butt out.”
“Sorry, but I’ve been officially hired on by the captain here.”
I was pleased to hear myself introduced as the captain right from the start. Was the insect dealer genuinely taking my part?
“Captain?” said the shill. “Oh, right. He’s selling boat tickets, so he’s a captain.”
“Correct. I am the captain.” Better take a firm stand here. “And since this is a rather special ship, crew members do need some rather special qualifications.”
“What are Komono’s qualifications, may I ask?” The girl’s voice was tinged with sarcasm. “Ooh, it hurts… .”
“He’s sort of a combined adviser and bodyguard, you could say. Are you in a lot of pain?”
“My ankle is killing me.”
The shill’s high-pitched, high-speed voice cut in: “Well, imagine that. With Komono your bodyguard, we’ll all have to stay on our toes, won’t we? But you know, Captain, if it’s a bodyguard you want, then you ought to take a look at my qualifications too. Whatever I may lack in strength I can make up for in combat experience, I assure you.”
The girl spoke again. “Save the fighting till after the lights are on, please. What’s the matter with you, leaving me to suffer in the dark like this?”
“The young lady does have a point; it would be nice to get the lights on,” the shill conceded. “And she does seem to have sprained her ankle.”
The young la
dy, he had called her. A curious yet altogether old-fashioned and charming sort of appellation. It could have been simply a nickname, yet it bore a certain air of formality that rekindled my flickering hopes. Although for all I knew, that might be exactly how he intended for me to react. Perhaps this was more of his “fishing” gambit—a mere professional habit.
“There’s no feeling at all in the toes,” she said. “I think I may have broken the bone.”
“That stairway has a couple of rotten boards in it,” said the shill. “I wrenched my back too. You two had better watch out. Fall the wrong way and you’ll be lucky to get off with a fracture.”
Very well. There was no turning back now, anyway; I might as well accede to their request and switch on the lights. The switch was on an infrared remote-control device hanging from my belt. I traced along the vertical row of five buttons with my finger, tapped the top one lightly, and slid it to the right. Instantly the lights came on—fifty-six fluorescent lights, all blinking into action at once. However often I witness it, the drama of that moment never fails. Darkness itself has no spatial dimensions: the black expanse of a starless sky and the confinement of covers pulled over one’s head are equally dark. Perhaps that explains why images we conjure in the dark seem constricted and miniature: people become dwarfs; landscapes, potted plants. All the more reason why seeing the full aspect of the quarry interior come springing into view is as great a shock as if a mighty range of mountains had jumped full-blown out of an egg. In some ways it’s like gazing at a three-dimensional aerial photograph, but the scale is far greater.