Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

  “Hear that?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I can hear them,” I said.

  INKling voices. More like a ringing in my ears, actually. Cutting through like drill bits of high-pitched sound, like the humming of insects gone wild, the sound careened off the walls and screwed into my eardrums.

  “Keep moving!” she yelled in my ear. I hadn’t noticed I wasn’t.

  She yanked on the rope. “We can’t stop here. If we stop, we’ll be dragged off and liquefied.”

  I couldn’t move. I was glued to the ground. Time was flowing backwards toward primeval swamps.

  Her hand came out of the dark and slapped me across the face. The sound was deafening.

  “To the right!” she barked. “To the right! You hear? Right foot forward! Right, you lamebrain!”

  My right leg creaked ahead.

  “Left!” she screamed.

  I moved my left foot.

  “That’s it. Slow and steady, one step at a time.”

  They were after us for sure, piping fear into our ears, conniving to freeze our footsteps, then lay their slimy hands on us.

  “Shine your light at your feet!” she commanded. “Back against the wall! Walk sideways, one step at a time. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Do not raise your light, under any condition.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are INKlings. Right there,” she lowered her voice. “But you must never, ever, look at an INKling. If you set eyes on an INKling, you’ll never look away.”

  We proceeded sideways, one step at a time, light at our feet. Cool air licked our faces, leaving the rank odor of dead fish. I wanted to puke. It was like we were in the worm-ridden guts of a giant fish carcass. The INKlings whined, frenzied, disorientingly shrill. My eardrums turned to stone. Gulps of bile backed up my throat.

  My feet kept edging along by sheer reflex. Occasionally, she called out to me, but I could no longer hear what she was saying. The blue light of her INKling-repel device was still on, so I guessed we were still safe. But for how long?

  I noticed a change in the air. The stink grew less putrid; the pressure on my ears evaporated. Sounds resonated in a different way. The worst was over. We let out sighs of relief and wiped off a cold sweat.

  For the longest time, she didn’t speak. Droplets of water echoed through the void.

  “Why were they so mad?” I asked.

  “We intruded on their sanctuary. They hate the world of light and all who live there.”

  “Hard to believe the Semiotecs would work with them, no matter what the benefits.”

  Her only response was to squeeze my wrist.

  Then after a bit: “Know what I’m thinking?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “I’m thinking it would be wonderful if I could follow you into that world where you’re going.”

  “And leave this world behind?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “It’s a boring old world anyway. I’m sure it’d be much more fun living in your consciousness.”

  I shook my head. Hell, I didn’t want to live in my own consciousness.

  “Well, let’s keep going,” she said. “We’ve got to find the exit through the sewer. What time is it?”

  “Eight-twenty.”

  “Time to switch porta-packs,” she said, turning on the other unit, then wedging the expended one clumsily into her waistband.

  It was exactly one hour since we entered the tunnel. According to the Professor’s instructions, there ought to be a turn to the left under the tree-lined avenue toward the Art Forum. This was early autumn, I seemed to remember. The leaves would still be green. Sunshine, the smell of the grass, an early autumn breeze played through my head. Ah, to lie back and look at the sky. I’d go to the barber, get a shave, stroll over to Gaien Park, lie down and gaze up at the blue. Maybe sip an ice-cold beer. Just the thing, while waiting for the end of the world.

  “You suppose it’s good weather out?”

  “Beats me. How should I know?” she retorted.

  Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn’t have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women’s wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits.

  My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine.

  My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity.

  The couple in the Skyline came to mind. Why did I have this fixation on them? Well, what else did I have to think about? By now, the two of them might be snoozing away in bed, or maybe pushing into commuter trains. They could be flat character sketches for a TV treatment: Japanese woman marries Frenchman while studying abroad; husband has traffic accident and becomes paraplegic. Woman tires of life in Paris, leaves husband, and returns to Tokyo, where she works in Belgian or Swiss embassy. Silver bracelets, a memento from her husband. Cut to beach scene in Nice: woman with the bracelets on left wrist. Woman takes bath, makes love, silver bracelets always on left wrist. Cut: enter Japanese man, veteran of student occupation of Yasuda Hall, wearing tinted glasses like lead in Ashes and Diamonds. A top TV director, he is haunted by dreams of tear gas, by memories of his wife who slit her wrist five years earlier. Cut (for what it’s worth, this script has a lot of jump cuts): he sees the bracelets on woman’s left wrist, flashes back to wife’s bloodied wrist. So he asks woman: could she switch bracelets to her right wrist?

  “I refuse,” she says. “I wear my bracelets on my left wrist.”

  Cut: enter piano player, like in Casablanca. Alcoholic, always keeps shot glass of gin, straight with twist of lemon, on top of piano. A jazz musician of some talent until his career went on the rocks, he befriends both man and woman, knows their secrets,…

  Par for TV, totally ridiculous underground. Some imagination. Or was this supposed to be reality? I hadn’t even seen the stars in months.

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” I spoke up.

  “Can’t stand what?” she asked.

  “The darkness, the moldy stink, the INKlings, you name it. These wet slacks, the wound in my gut. I can’t even imagine the world outside.”

  “Not much longer,” she said. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

  “My head’s out of it already,” I said. “Ideas are warping off in weird directions. I can’t think straight.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Movie people. Masatomi Kondo and Ryoko Nakano and Tsutomu Yamazaki.”

  “Stop. Don’t think about anything,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

  I tried not to think and my mind lowered to the clammy slacks clinging to my legs. When was the last time I took a leak?

  At the very least, I hadn’t pissed since going underground. Before that? I was driving, ate a hamburger, saw the couple in the Skyline. And before that? I was asleep. Then the chubby girl came and woke me. We’d headed out soon after. So before that? Probably I’d used the toilet at the hospital, when they sewed me up. But if I’d gone then, the pain would have been something to remember; the fact that I didn’t remember meant I hadn’t relieved myself—for how long?

  Everything wheeled around closer and farther, closer and farther, like a merry-go-round. When was it those two had come and done their dirty work on my belly? It had to have been before I
was sitting at the supermarket snack bar—or no? When had I last pissed? Why did I care?

  “Here it is,” she proclaimed, tugging my elbow. “The sewer. The exit.”

  I swept all thought of urination from my head and directed my eyes toward that one section of wall illuminated by her flashlight beam. I could make out the squared mouth of a dust chute, just big enough for one person to squeeze through.

  “That’s not a sewer pipe,” I observed.

  “The sewer’s beyond. This is a side vent. Just smell.”

  I stuck my head in and took a whiff. A drainpipe smell, to be sure. After wandering in this stinking underground maze, even the smell of sewage was comforting. A definite wind was blowing from up ahead.

  Presently there came slight ground vibrations, accompanied by the far-off sound of subway cars. The sound kept up for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, then passed, like a tap turning off. Yes, this was the exit.

  “We made it,” she said, planting a peck on my neck. “How do you feel?”

  “You had to ask,” I said. “I don’t know myself.”

  She crawled head first into the opening. Once her cushiony tail had disappeared into the hole, I followed suit. The narrow conduit led straight for a while. All my flashlight revealed was the wiggling of her bulbous behind. It reminded me of a head of Chinese cabbage in a wet skirt, tight over her thighs.

  “Are you back there?” she yelled out.

  “Right behind you,” I shouted.

  “There’s a shoe lying there.”

  “What kind of shoe?”

  “A man’s black lace-up.”

  It was an old shoe, the kind salarymen wear. Worn-out heel, mud caked on the toe.

  “Do you suppose the INKlings …?” I wondered out loud.

  “What do you think,” she answered.

  There was nothing else for me to look at, so I kept my eye on the hem of her skirt. It would rise way up on her thighs, revealing unmuddied white flesh. Up where women used to affix their stockings, up in that band of exposed skin between their stockings and their girdles. This, of course, was before the appearance of panty hose.

  One thing led to another, and soon my thoughts were wandering down memory lane. Back to the days of Jimi Hendrix and Cream and the Beatles and Otis Redding. I started whistling the beginning riff to Peter and Gordon’s I Go to Pieces. Nice song, a hell of a lot better than Duran Duran. Which probably meant I was getting old. I mean, the song was popular twenty years ago. And who twenty years ago could have predicted the advent of panty hose?

  “Why are you whistling?” she shouted.

  “I don’t know. I felt like it,” I answered.

  “What’s the song?”

  “Something you probably never heard of.”

  “You’re right.”

  “It was a hit before you were born.”

  “What’s the song about?”

  “It’s about coming apart at the seams,” I said simply.

  “Why’d you want to whistle a song like that?”

  I couldn’t come up with any cogent reason. It’d just popped into my head. “Beats me,” I said.

  Before I could think up another tune, we arrived at the sewer. A concrete pipe, really. Maybe a meter and a half in diameter, with effluent running at the bottom, about twenty centimeters deep. The edge was covered with mossy slime. The sound of several passing subway cars came from up ahead. Quite loud, actually. I could even see a brief glimmer of yellow lights.

  “What’s a sewer doing connected to the subway tracks?”

  “It’s not really a sewer,” she said. “It channels groundwater into the track gutters. It’s full of seeping wastes. Okay, only a little further. But we can’t let down our guard yet. The INKlings’ power extends all the way into the stations. You saw that shoe, didn’t you?”

  “Sure did,” I said.

  We followed the stream down the pipe, our shoes splashing in the liquid, dubbed over by the rumble of the trains. Never in my whole life had I been so happy to hear the subway. People boarding trains, reading papers and magazines, bound for work and pleasure. I thought about the color advertisements hanging over the aisles and the subway system maps over the doors. The Ginza Line is always yellow. Why yellow, I don’t know, but yellow it is. When I think Ginza Line, I see yellow.

  It didn’t take very long to reach the mouth of the pipe. There was an iron grill over the opening, with a hole torn just big enough for a person to pass. The concrete was gouged where an iron bar had been ripped out. INKling handiwork, happily for once. If the grill weren’t broken, we’d be stuck here with the outside world dangling before our eyes.

  Beyond the hole was a box for signal lanterns and other equipment. On the blackened row of oar-shaped columns between the tracks were lamps, the ones that always looked so faint when seen from the station platform but which now glared inordinately bright.

  “We’ll wait here until our eyes adjust to the light,” she instructed. “About ten minutes. Then we’ll go a little bit further and pause until we get used to stronger light. Otherwise we’ll be blinded. If the subway passes, do not look at it, not yet.”

  She sat me down on a dry patch of concrete, then took her place next to me.

  When we heard a train approaching, we looked down and shut our eyes. A flashing yellow light streaked across my eyelids. My eyes began to water. I wiped away the tears with my shirt sleeve.

  “It’s okay. You’ll get used to it,” she said, tears trailing down her cheeks as well. “We’ll just let the next three or four trains pass. Then our eyes will be ready for the station. Once we get there, we can forget about INKlings.”

  “I seem to remember this happening to me before,” I said.

  “Waiting in a subway tunnel?”

  “No, the light, the glare, my eyes tearing up.”

  “That happens to everyone.”

  “No, this was special light, special vision. My eyes had been altered. They couldn’t tolerate light.”

  “Can you remember anything else?”

  “No, that’s it. My recall is gone.”

  “Your memory is running backward,” she said.

  She leaned against me. I was cold to my bones, sitting in my wet slacks. The only warmth on my body was where the bulge of her breasts touched my arm.

  “Now that we’re going above ground, I suppose you have plans. Places to see, things to do, maybe some person you want to see?” she urged, looking over at my watch. “You’ve got twenty-five hours and fifty minutes left.”

  “I want to go home and take a bath, then go to the barber shop,” I said.

  “You’ll still have plenty of time left.”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I said.

  “May I go to your place with you?” she asked. “I’d like to take a bath, too.”

  “Sure, why not.”

  A second train was passing from the direction of Aoyama Itchome. We lowered our gaze and closed our eyes again.

  “You don’t need a haircut,” she said, shining her light on my head. “In fact, you’d probably look better with longer hair.”

  “I’m tired of long hair.”

  “Okay, but you still don’t need to go to the barber. When was the last time you had a haircut?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. I really couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even remember if I’d taken a leak yesterday; what happened a few weeks ago was ancient history.

  “Do you have any clothes I could fit into?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Oh well, I’ll think of something,” she said. “Are you going to use your bed?”

  “Use my bed?”

  “You know, call a girl over for sex?”

  “I hadn’t exactly planned on it,” I said.

  “Well, can I sleep there? I’d like to rest before going back for Grandfather.”

  “Fine by me, but the Semiotecs and System boys might barge in at any moment. I’m still quite popular, you know. And I don’
t have a door.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  A third train approached from the direction of Shibuya. I closed my eyes and counted slowly. I’d reached fourteen by the time the last car went by. My eyes were hardly affected at all.

  She released my arm and stood up. “Let’s get going.”

  I rose to my feet and followed her down to the tracks toward Aoyama Itchome.

  30

  Hole

  THE following morning the events in the Woods seem like a dream. Yet there on the table lies the old bellows box, curled up like a hurt animal. Everything was real: the fan turning in the underground wind, the sad face of the young Caretaker, his collection of musical instruments.

  I hear a distinct, alien sound in my head. It is as if something has pushed its way into my skull. Some flat intrusion, ceaselessly tapping. Other than that, my head feels fine. The sensation is simply not real.

  I look around the room from my bed. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ceiling, walls, warped floorboards, curtains in the window. Coat and scarf hanging on the wall, gloves peeking out of the coat pocket. There is the table and there, the musical instrument on the table.

  I test each joint and muscle of my body. Every articulation is as it should be. There is no pain in my eyes; not a thing is wrong.

  In spite of which, the flat sound persists. Irregularly, compositely, a weave of varying tones. Where can the sound be coming from? Listen as I might, the source eludes me.

  I get out of bed and check the weather. Immediately below my window, three old men are digging a large hole, the points of their shovels scooping into the frozen earth. The air is so cold that the sound glances off, to the bewilderment of my ears.

  The clock reads close to ten. Never have I slept so late. Where is the Colonel? Save for those days when I was feverish, he has always awakened me at nine o’clock without fail, bearing a breakfast tray.

  I wait for half an hour. When still the Colonel does not appear, I go down to the kitchen myself. After so many breakfasts with the Colonel, today I am without appetite. I eat half my bread and set aside the rest for the beasts. Then I return to my bed, wrap my coat about me, and wait for the stove to heat the room.