But at least he was human – at least he had some sort of conscience. For he’d been kind enough to leave the small sum of five thousand yen in each account to tide us over. That made me feel better. It was about the same amount as we spent on food each month. Yes! That was all we needed to keep us going until the next payday.
You see, our hard-earned savings are always going to be taken from us by someone – whether we have any or not.
The World Is Tilting
Marine City started tilting at the end of a particularly blustery autumn one year. A typhoon in September sent waves of almost tsunami-like proportions into the bay, where the City rested on an artificial island. The waves breached one of the bulkheads on the ballast tanks used to stabilize Marine City, causing its centre of gravity to shift south-southwestwards.
The entrance to the bay was on the south-southwest, and just after the middle of October, Marine City gradually started tilting towards the Pacific Ocean. But the angle could have been no more than about two degrees, and nobody noticed it at the time. Nor did it cause any inconvenience. Rod Le Mesurier first became aware of the tilt when an old university professor, Proven McLogick, spoke to him at a bus stop. They were both waiting for a bus to take them over Marine Bridge into the metropolis.
“Look you there, Master Le Mesurier,” said the Professor. “Look at the northeastern wall of yon North No. 2 Block. The wall is supposed to be vertical, is it not. But try lining up the perpendicular of the corner with the perpendicular of the wall on that thirty-six-storey building – oh, what is it called? Yes, the Notatall Building, over there in the distance. Do you not see? Their tops are askew of one another.”
Unlike the City’s women, Rod was always most deferential to Professor McLogick, and perhaps because of this the Professor often spoke to him. Rod looked out in the direction indicated by the old man’s leaden-grey, spindly finger, and saw that the top of the multistorey building across the water in the metropolis was indeed tilting by about half an inch to the right, as his eye saw it, from the fifth floor of an apartment block on the northern edge of the City.
“So it is. It’s sticking out a bit, isn’t it. The Notatall Building must be tilting to the northeast.”
“No, young man. The North No. 2 Block is tilting to the southwest. Look from over here. It’s parallel to the perpendicular of North No. 1 Block, is it not.”
Their conversation, which concluded somewhat sonorously that the whole of Marine City must therefore be tilting to the southwest, was overheard by Miss Loyalty, an office worker with proper and orderly features, who happened to be waiting at the same bus stop. Later that morning, she used her office telephone to report the conversation to the Mayor. The Mayor of Marine City, still in her first year of office, was a fifty-eight-year-old woman named Fedora Last. She’d always been on bad terms with Professor McLogick anyway. It was she who’d called for the creation of a “marine city” in the first place, and this distinction had led to her being elected the City’s first Mayor. She loved Marine City to an almost obscene degree.
Fedora Last took the call from Miss Loyalty in her private office. She’d never entertained any particular opinion or feeling about Le Mesurier, though she knew him to be a salaried worker, since she was acquainted with his wife Caprice, an employee of the City. But she reacted quite strongly when she heard the name of Professor McLogick.
The Mayor ordered Rory O’Storm, the Chief of Police, to investigate the Professor, on the grounds that his observation was an uncivil act designed to spread malicious rumours, based on his spiteful intent to cause anxiety among the citizens. Later that day, Professor McLogick was called to the telephone in his university laboratory, and answered it with calm composure.
“Another order from Old Fat Arse,” he said with a chuckle. Old Fat Arse was his nickname for Fedora Last, that being an anagram of her name. He was certainly fond of annoying her.
Marine City had an official news journal as befitting any large town, and at the beginning of April six prominent citizens, including the Mayor, had gathered in the Community Hall for an editorial round-table discussion. During the discussion, there was a heated confrontation between Fedora Last and Professor McLogick. Asked what Marine City needed most of all at the present time, the Mayor answered “A narrative”. The other five interpreted this “narrative” as they wished, and so voiced their agreement. In fact, Fedora Last was thinking of a “Marine City Creation Story” in which her own name would go down in legend, along the lines of Joan of Arc. Professor McLogick, on the other hand, took the “narrative” to be a modern concept. The “narrative” as a postmodern term dates way back to 1979, when Jean-François Lyotard used it in his book La Condition Postmoderne. Here, “narrative” as a modern concept was used for the first time, for example in the sense that “the narrative of democracy is over”. But then people started using the term to mean just what they wanted it to mean. Very few people interpreted the word correctly and used it in its original sense, as Professor McLogick did. So it would be fair to say that Fedora Last and Professor McLogick stood at opposite ends of the spectrum in their interpretation of the word “narrative”. And it was therefore inevitable that they would not see eye to eye.
“Who will create this ‘narrative’, Mayor?”
“All of us, of course.”
“Who do you mean by ‘us’? Someone first has to create an ideology for the narrative, do they not?”
“A narrative is not an ideology. Do you mean to deny our democratic principles?”
“So your intention is not to create a narrative that will replace democracy?”
“My intention is to create a narrative.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
Professor McLogick, exasperated at the Mayor’s utter lack of comprehension, could hold back no more. “Alas, I fear it’s true. By nature, women are in all respects inferior to men.”
“I could have you arrested for that,” the Mayor retorted. “Women will respond to the physical violence of men with the violence of language. Sometimes, women’s linguistic violence will spark physical violence by men. Therefore, linguistic violence should also be punished. It was a man who said that. But now, men’s linguistic violence is a penal offence, while that of women is not. It was me who proposed this law and pushed it through. You know that very well.”
“Yes, I know. But it wasn’t me who said what I said. It was Schopenhauer.”
“Shoppinghour?! Bring him here. Where is the man with such a ridiculous name?”
“He died about 180 years ago,” answered the Professor.
Fedora Last was speechless. As she later divulged to her subordinate Caprice Le Mesurier, she’d been momentarily stunned by the thought that, if he knew someone who’d died about 180 years ago, Professor McLogick must himself be more than 200 years old.
Also at the meeting were the entrepreneur Kapital Interest, the poetess Stille Hungova, and the writer Justa Plagiarist. The round-table meeting was somehow brought to a conclusion through their mediation. But from that time on, Fedora Last remained wary of Professor McLogick. This argument was followed by a series of trifling incidents between the pair, which would be quite risible to record in detail – for example, the incident concerning the assessment of municipal tax, the quarrel in the French restaurant “Le Château” that had to be broken up by a waiter, the students who were incited to set off fireworks and use abusive language in front of the Mayor’s official residence – and so on, and so on.
On returning home from work that day, Rod Le Mesurier was surprised to find his wife Caprice at home before him. She immediately began to attack him.
“You started the rumour that Marine City’s tilting, didn’t you.”
“It’s not a rumour, it’s true.”
Rod made abundant use of voice impressions, hand gestures and other signals to explain his conversation with Professor McLogick at the bus stop that morning, along with their va
rious observations and conclusions.
“Look, you can see it from here. All the blocks in that estate are tilting, but not the Notatall Building.”
Caprice made no attempt at all to look across to the dusk-smothered metropolis to which Rod pointed from their 11th floor window. Instead, she spat out with venom: “You’re a fool.”
“Am I?”
Rod’s eyes widened. He fixed a stare on his wife, who stood there in her negligée with arms folded.
“Didn’t you think it might just be the Notatall Building that’s tilting to the north-northeast? That’s why I say you’re a fool.”
“Actually, that’s what I thought at first.”
“You were completely taken in by that old goat. How many times must I tell you not to talk to idiots like him?”
Rod Le Mesurier found himself struck lightly on the head with a bottle opener, fashioned from a kangaroo’s paw, that lay on the dining table. He calculated the pain level at 3.6 kiltago. “I’m a fool, yes I am,” he said in utter dejection.
“Yes, you’re a fool. Come over here, then.”
Miss Loyalty arrived home at about the same time. Noting that the angle of the Chagall print on her wall was wrong, she adjusted the frame with an abnormal degree of precision that amply explained why she was still single. Despite her realization that this was already the third time she’d corrected the angle, she failed to make the connection between this and the conversation she’d reported earlier in the day.
The next day, Professor McLogick proceeded to the police station with drawings showing the tilt of Marine City, which he’d ordered a student in the Engineering Department to survey the previous afternoon. To the detective who came to take his statement he roared, “This is a serious matter, you won’t do, get me the Chief of Police!” He showed the drawings to Rory O’Storm when the Chief at last came out, and explained that the tilt of Marine City was neither false rumour nor malicious gossip, but was, in fact, fact.
“And what do you think is the cause of the tilt?” asked O’Storm as if seeking guidance, unable to contradict the proof he’d been shown.
“The typhoon in September, and the fact that the ballast is unstable, I should say.”
By “the ballast is unstable,” he meant that it was made of pachinko balls.
“But what about the bulkheads?”
“One of them has been breached. And it’s possible that others might also be breached in future, by way of a chain reaction.”
“So you’re saying the tilt could get worse?”
“That’s right. I’m glad you’re so quick to understand.” Professor McLogick smiled. “It’s a good job the Chief of Police isn’t a woman, at least.”
Rory O’Storm thought he might just go ahead and commission the university to do a detailed survey for the police. He could report it to the Mayor later. It was not beyond him to understand that Fedora Last would never trust the drawings and other data that Professor McLogick had brought with him. If he reported them heedlessly, she might turn her anger on the Chief of Police himself.
That night, a magnitude 4 earthquake awoke Fedora Last as she slept in her private room at the Mayor’s official residence. She herself had proudly proclaimed that Marine City could never be struck by an earthquake, as it rested on a floating artificial island. But she’d recently learnt that violent upheavals of sea water could also shake the island to a perceptible degree. Fedora couldn’t sleep. Was it just her imagination, or had she heard the faint sound of thousands of pachinko balls rolling coarsely along the bottom of the city’s foundations just a moment ago? It was a sound that held such loathsome memories for Fedora Last, who somewhat regretted using these, of all things, as ballast for an artificial island.
Though it was now thirty-five years ago, Fedora Last’s husband, who used to work in a paper factory, had been an avid gambler. He would waste his whole monthly salary on pachinko, a pinball game that used hundreds of metal balls. As if that weren’t enough, he mounted up debts as well. Losing a small amount on pachinko in one day would turn into a monumental loss over the year. And though he might win a small sum every few days, he would merely spend the winnings on drink, and the cash would vanish before he got home. With no spending money and a child to care for, Fedora was unable to find a side job. So, when her husband was sacked for skipping work and taking excessive advances on his salary, Fedora took the opportunity to divorce him, and from that time on devoted all her energy to a women’s group in the lower echelons of a political party.
Due to the ensuing tsunami rather than the earthquake itself, Marine City was tilting just over three degrees to the south-southwest by the following morning. The poetess Stille Hungova awoke with a terrific headache that day. At first, she thought she must be still hungover, but her head failed to clear by lunchtime, and in the afternoon she decided to go to the nearby Toximere Clinic. In the Clinic’s waiting room she found many other women with the same complaint. Her conversations with them merely told her that many of their husbands also had the same headache, that all of them were also suffering from vertigo, and so on. They did not inform her, however, that they’d all slept with their heads turned to the south the previous night and that none of them had slept facing north, which was generally considered unlucky.
The first to confirm the tilt in Marine City’s elevation, now more than three degrees, was Stubber Nasamule, head of the public works contractor Nasamule Engineering. He was in the process of putting up a sales kiosk in Marineland Park, under commission from the Parks Department. At first, on surveying the half-completed kiosk with a spirit level and finding that the floor was tilting by three degrees, he started to panic, thinking he’d botched the job. But when he placed his spirit level at various points inside and outside the park just to be sure, he discovered that every point he surveyed was tilting a little more than three degrees to the south-southwest. He went to City Hall to report this fact, and was received there by Caprice Le Mesurier. She disliked his old-fashioned, chauvinistic tone of voice, started to argue with him in the middle of his report, and handed him over to security when he began to shout back. To make matters worse, she deliberately omitted to pass the report to Fedora Last. This was partly because she was afraid of further aggravating the Mayor, who, for some reason, had been in a bad mood since the morning. But it was also because she had a premonition that the tilt in Marine City’s elevation would have inauspicious consequences for her.
There were a number of casualties in Marine City that day.
Many resulted from falls on stairs, sloping roads, sloping entrances to buildings, and so on. Some women and elderly citizens were in critical condition after suffering blows to the head as they fell. Several infants playing on a south-facing slide at a nursery school suffered broken teeth and other injuries when they collided with the ground after sliding down at abnormally high speed. As luck would have it, those with the most serious injuries were all taken to different hospitals, where they were assumed to have sustained their injuries through carelessness. As a result, no one was able to grasp the unusually large scale of casualties in the City as a whole.
Meanwhile, many others who lived in Marine City but worked in the metropolis started to complain of headaches, ringing ears, and dizziness caused by abnormality in the semicircular canals of their inner ears soon after they started work, and sought treatment at clinics near their respective workplaces. Rod Le Mesurier also had a headache, again. Calculating the pain level as 5.2 kiltago, he took himself to a clinic near his office during the lunch break. In all cases, the symptoms soon disappeared when the functions of locomotive analysis in three-dimensional space returned to normal. But when evening came, the sufferers all returned to Marine City, which was of course tilting at an angle of more than three degrees, and this restored the abnormality in their semicircular canals.
“You know, it’s just as I thought – the whole island’s tilting!” Rod Le Mesurier felt compelled to announce that evening, knowing only too well how hi
s wife would react.
Caprice Le Mesurier glared at her husband with eyes glinting yellow, like a leopard’s. “You’re going to start on about that again, are you. Well, you know that if the rumour spreads, they’ll all say it’s your fault. Then I’ll be sacked, and we’ll have to leave Marine City.”
“Haven’t you got a headache? Well anyway, you know those things builders use, spirit levels? I’m going to try and bring one home tomorrow, you see.” It was the first time Rod hadn’t been silenced merely by the look on his wife’s face. He worked for a company that made nothing but measuring instruments for stationery, construction tools, medical instruments and the like. He belonged to the Development Division in the company’s laboratory.
To her credit, Caprice gave it a moment’s thought. After all, there’d also been the altercation with Stubber Nasamule earlier in the day. Of course, the central thrust of her “thought” was self-protection and self-advancement, as always. “If I’m the first to discover that Marine City is tilting and report it to the Mayor, I could get promoted. But what if it’s all a pack of lies?”
“Actually, it was Professor McLogick who first discovered it.”
“No,” and she glared at him again. “Once the tilt has become undeniable, I will be the first to discover it and report it to the Mayor – officially, not as a malicious rumour. Do you understand?”
Unable to follow his wife’s logic, Rod changed the subject. “The North No. 2 Block was tilting a bit more when I looked this morning. Well, I’m going to get our company to make a lot of spirit levels and distribute them to stationers all over Marine City. We’ll make a lot of money when everyone starts noticing the tilt, I should think.”