Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [40]
What was that noise? It seemed to come from the vicinity of the kitchen just beyond the curtain. I could not help but hear the faint clinking of glass containers among the muffled noises … that peculiar, fricative sound of air and liquid. I did not realize that beer produced such a forlorn sobbing.
“YOU HAVE nothing against a bottle of beer, I suppose?”
That had not been my reason for coming here especially. What had caused me to drop in at the microbus in the dry river bed was rather hunger. When I thought about it, I realized I had had only a bowl of noodles since morning. It did not mean there was a lack of eating places, for there were apparently some old-fashioned restaurants, of the kind seen but rarely now, near where you come out on the main street in the third ward. But my appetite was piqued by the possibility of getting somewhat closer to the real character of the self-styled brother in the microbuses.
“In the red-lantern stalls, you’re pretty well known, I hear, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got sharp ears. I expected as much.”
There was not the slightest timidity in his arrogant laugh.
“When I took the examination for entering the company I wasn’t very good. Why was it only in collecting information that I got top marks? You find it strange? We have to be examined. For instance, I took a turn around a department store with the examiner, and then I had to say how many girls were wearing red skirts or what the color was of the shoes the man who was making a purchase at the tie counter had on. But the test on collecting information was a little different. Certain situations were given and I was supposed to answer true or false in each instance: whom one should ask, what should be asked, and how it was to be done. I answered everything with a cross. The examiner questioned me, of course, on why I did that. So I told him. The technique of collecting information is hard, but it’s even harder to stop up your ears.”
The road between the cliff and the embankment of the pear orchard was as black as a tunnel, and I had the illusion of having forgotten to turn on my headlights. I felt the steering wheel wrenched by a sudden gust of wind. The rising ground and the pear orchard ended in a short, abrupt slope. The road formed a T with the bank. At once I could see a cluster of lanterns. But it was quite different from what I had imagined. The various cars were not in a single line, nor were they connected by strings of lights, and there was no music, no commotion as in a fair grounds. Red lanterns dangled saucily in the wind, and on the side of the broad, dry river bed several little buses, their gloomy, pale mouths open, were scattered here and there in a semicircle, irregularly spaced and facing in different directions.
But it was the view of the opposite side of the river, separated by the bank, that caught my attention. Until now it had not been visible, being concealed by the levee around the pear orchard, but a broad expanse of naked terrain clear of fields, houses, and woods was brilliantly illuminated from three sides, like a stage, by great projectors three feet in diameter. About a hundred yards to the left a field office and a number of mess buildings, like blocks of light, were brimming with animation; it was as bustling as a miniature city. Bulldozers and power shovels were biting into the front of the hill. Patterned stripes cut by the caterpillar trucks ran in and out among them. A dump road connected the highway with the work site. Suddenly the sound of a siren howled across the river bed, and the roar of motors and machinery that had reverberated through the black sky slipped into silence. Three trucks set out in the direction of the work site from the mess hall. Every truck, it appeared, had more than enough relief teams, and as I watched the ceaselessly lit area I realized that there were three reliefs working round the clock. “Now is the period of peak activity,” he said, raising his voice. I drove