Post by etm solmerano on Nov 16, 2009 6:07:01 GMT -5
The Magic Chalk
By Kobo Abe
Kôbô Abe (1924–1993) was a Japanese novelist and playwright, a leader of the avant-garde. His familiarity with Western literature, existentialism, surrealism, and Marxism influenced his distinctive treatment of the problems of alienation and loss of identity in postwar Japan. Abe’s books include the claustrophobic novel Suna no onna (1962; Woman of the Dunes, 1964) and minimalist plays such as Bo ni natta otoko (The Man Who Turned into a Stick, 1969). Born in Tokyo, Abe spent his childhood and adolescence in Japanese-occupied Manchuria where his father was a professor of medicine. In 1940 he enrolled at Seijo High School in Tokyo; in 1943 he entered Tokyo University Medical School in accordance with his father's wishes. His studies were cut short by nervous exhaustion and a short period in a mental hospital. At the end of World War II (1939-1945) Abe was supporting himself as a street vendor while writing poems and short stories. He published his first book of poems, Poems by an Unknown, privately in 1947. Further poems, under the title Road Sign at the End of a Road, appeared in a magazine the following year. Abe joined a group of surrealist writers and artists and became interested in avant-garde filmmaking and theater. His first collection of short stories, published in 1951, won him the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's highest literary prize. Woman of the Dunes tells of an entomologist tricked into entering a sandpit and, like a trapped insect, forced to shovel sand for the rest of his life. The novel won Abe international recognition and was translated into 20 languages. The film version by avant-garde director Teshigahara Hiroshi became a classic of Japanese filmmaking. The hero of Abe’s equally disturbing second novel, The Face of Another (1962), is a man whose face has been severely burned. After learning the techniques of plastic surgery, he models himself a new, more handsome face. He then seduces his wife, but is not sure if he is lover or husband; she is not deceived but does not know if she loves him for his former self or as his new self. In The Ruined Map (1969), a detective searching for a missing man gets lost himself and loses his self-identity in a soulless, labyrinthine megalopolis—Abe's depiction of present-day Tokyo. The Man Who Turned into a Stick recalls the nightmarish predicament of the hero of “The Metamorphosis” (1915; trans. 1937) by Austrian (Czech) writer Franz Kafka. Abe wrote many other works on psychological themes for the stage, such as Uniform (1955) and The Ghosts Are Here (1958). He formed his own theater group in 1967 and took a production of his play You Too Are Guilty on tour to the United States in 1979.
Next door to the toilet of an apartment building on the edge of the city, in a room soggy with rood leaks and cooking vapors, lived a poor artist named Argon.
The small room, nine feet square, appeared to the lager it was because it contained nothing but a single chair set against the wall. His desk, shelves, paint box, even his easel had been sold for bread. Now only the chair and Argon left. But how long would these two remain?
Dinnertime drew near, “How sensitive my nose has become!” Argon thought. He was able to distinguish the colors and proximity of the complex aromas entering his room. Frying pork at the butcher’s along the streetcar line: yellow ocher. A southerly wind drifting by the front of the fruit stand: emerald green. Wafting from the bakery: stimulating chrome yellow. And the fish the housewife below was broiling, probably mackerel; sad cerulean blue.
The fact is, Argon hadn’t eaten anything all day with a pale face, a wrinkled brow, an Adams apple that rose and fell, a hunched back, a sunken abdomen, and trembling knees, Argon trust both to his pockets and yawned three times in succession.
His fingers found a stick in his pocket.
“Hey, what’s this? Red chalk. Don’t remember it being there.”
Playing with the chalk between his fingers, he produced another large yawn.
“Aah. I need something to eat.”
Without realizing it, Argon began scribbling on the wall with the chalk. First, an apple. One that looked big enough to be a meal itself. He drew a paring knife beside it so that he could eat it right away. Next, swallowing hard as baking smells curled through the hallway and window to permeate his room, he drew bread. Jam filled the size of a basketball glove. Butter filled rolls. A loaf is large as a person’s head. He envisioned cracks, dough bursting through the surface, and the intoxicating aroma of yeast. Beside the bread, then, a stick butter as large as a brick. He thought of drawing some coffee. Freshly brewed as a steaming coffee, in a large jug like cup. On a saucer, three matchbox-size sugar cubes.
“Damn it!” He ground teeth and buried his face in his hands.
“I’ve got to eat!”
Gradually his consciousness sank into darkness. Beyond the windowpane was a bread and pastry jungle, a mountain of canned goods, a see of milk, a beach of sugar, a beef and cheese orchard—he scampered about until, fatigued, he fell asleep.
A heavy thud on the floor and the sound of smashing crockery woke him up. The sun had already set, pitch black. Bewildered, he glanced toward the noise and gasped. A broken cup. The spilled liquid, still steaming, definitely coffee, and near it were the apple, bread, butter, sugar, spoon, knife and (luckily unbroken) the saucer. The picture he had chalked in the wall had vanished.
“How could it . . . ?”
Suddenly every vein in his body was wide-awake and pounding. Argon stealthily crept closer.
“No, no it can’t be. But look it’s real. Nothing fake about the smothering aroma of his coffee. And here the bread is smooth to the though. Be hold, taste it. Argon, don’t you believe it’s real even now? Yes it’s real. I believe it, but frightening. To believe it is frightening. And yet, it’s real. It’s edible!”
The apple tasted like an apple (a “snow” apple). The bread tasted like bread (American flour). The butter tasted like butter (same content as label on the wrapper—not margarine). The sugar tasted like sugar (sweet). Ah, they all tasted like the real thing. The knife gleamed, reflecting his face.
By the time he came to his sense, Argon has somehow finished eating and have a sigh of relief. But when he recalled why he had a sign like this, he immediately became confused again. He took the chalk in his fingers and stared at it intently. No matter how much he scrutinized it, he couldn’t understand and what he didn’t understand. He decided to make sure by trying it once more. If he succeeded a second time, then he would have to concede that it had actually happened. He thought he would try to draw something different, but in his haste he drew another familiar—looking apple. As soon as he finished drawing, it fell easy from the wall. So this is real after all. A repeatable fact.
Joy suddenly turned his body grid. The tips of his nerves broke through his skin and stretches toward the universe, rusting like a fallen leaves. Then, abruptly, the tension eased, and, sitting down on the floor, he burst out laughing like a panting goldfish.
“The laws of the universe have changed. My fate has changed; misfortune has taken its leave. Ah the age of fulfillment, a world of desires realized . . . God, I’m sleepy. Well, the, I’ll draw a bed. This chalk has become as precious as life itself, but a bed is something you always need after eating your fill, and it never really wears out, so no need to be miserly about it. Ah, for the first time in my life I’ll sleep like a lamp.”
One eye soon fell asleep, but the other day awake. After today’s content he was uneasy about what tomorrow might bring. However, the other eye, too, finally closed in sleep. With eyes working out of sync he dreamed mottled dreams throughout the night.
Well, this worrisome tomorrow dawned in the following manner.
He dreamed that he was being chased by a ferocious beast and fell off a bridge. He had fallen off the bed… No. When he awoke, there was no bed anywhere. As usual, there was nothing but that one chair. Then what had happened last night? Argon timidly looked around the wall, tilting his head.
There, in red chalk, were drawings of a cup (it was broken!), a spoon, a knife, apple peel, and a butter wrapper. Below these was a bed—a picture of the bed off which he was supposed to have fallen.
Among all of last night’s drawings, only those he could not eat had once again become pictures and returned to the wall. Suddenly he felt pain in his hip and shoulder. Pain in precisely the place he should feel it if he had indeed fallen out of bed. He gingerly touched the sketch of the bed where the sheets had been rumpled by sleep and felt a slight warmth, clearly distinguishable from the coldness of the rest of the drawing.
He brushed his finger along the blade of the knife picture. It was certainly nothing more than chalk; there was no resistance, and it disappeared leaving only a smear. As a test he decided to draw a new apple. It neither turned into a real apple and fell nor even peeled off like a piece of unglued paper, but rather vanished beneath his chafed palm into the surface of the wall.
His happiness had been merely a single night’s dream. It was all over, back to what it was before anything had happened. Or was it really? No, his misery had returned fivefold. His hunger pangs attacked him fivefold. It seemed that all he had eaten had been restored in his stomach to the original substances of wall and chalk powder.
When he had gulped from his cupped hands a pint or so of water from the communal sink, he set out toward the lonely city, still enveloped in the mist of early dawn. Leaning over an open drain that ran from the kitchen of a restaurant about a hundred yards ahead, he thrust his hands into the viscous, tar-like sewage and pulled something out. It was a basket made of wire netting. He washed it in a small brook nearby. What was left in it seemed edible, and he was particularly heartened that half of it looked like rice. An old man in his apartment building had told him recently that by placing the basket in the drain one could obtain enough food for a meal a day. Just about a month ago the man had found the means to afford bean curd lees, so he had ceded the restaurant drain to the artist.
Recalling last night’s feast, this was indeed muddy, unsavory fare. But it wasn’t magic. What actually helped fill his stomach was precious and so could not be rejected. Even if its nastiness made him aware of every swallow, he must eat it. Shit. This was the real thing.
Just before noon he entered the city and dropped in on a friend who was employed at a bank. The friend smiled wryly and asked, “My turn today?”
Stiff and expressionless, Argon nodded. As always, he received half of his friend’s lunch, bowed deeply and left.
For the rest of the day, Argon thought.
He held the chalk lightly in his hand, leaned back in the chair, and as he sat absorbed in his daydreams about magic, anticipation began to crystallize around that urgent longing. Finally, evening once again drew near. His hope that at sunset the magic might take effect had changed into near confidence.
Somewhere a noisy radio announced that it was five o’clock. He stood up and on the wall drew bread and butter, a can of sardines, and coffee, not forgetting to add a table underneath so as to prevent anything from falling and breaking as had occurred the previous night. Then he waited.
Before long, darkness began to crawl quietly up the wall from the corners of the room. In order to verify the course of the magic, he turned on the light. He had already confirmed last night that electric light did it no harm.
The sun had set. The drawings on the wall began to fade, as if his vision had blurred. It seemed as if a mist was caught between the wall and his eyes. The pictures grew increasingly faint, and the mist grew dense. And soon, just as he had anticipated, the mist had settled into solid shapes—success! The contents of the pictures suddenly appeared as real objects.
The steamy coffee was tempting, the bread freshly baked and still warm.
“Oh! Forgot a can opener.”
He held his left hand underneath to catch it before it fell, and, as he drew, the outlines took on material form. His drawing had literally come to life. All of a sudden, he stumbled over something. Last night’s bed “existed” again. Moreover, the knife handle (he had erased the blade with his finger), the butter wrapper, and the broken cup lay fallen on the floor.
After filling his empty stomach, Argon lay down on the bed.
“Well, what shall it be next? It’s clear now that the magic doesn’t work in daylight. Tomorrow I’ll have to suffer all over again. There must be a simple way out of this. Ah, yes! A brilliant plan—I’ll cover up the window and shut myself in darkness.”
He would need some money to carry out the project. To keep out the sun required some objects that would not lose their substance when exposed to sunlight. But drawing money is a bit difficult. He racked his brains, then drew a purse full of money…The idea was a success, for when he opened up the purse he found more than enough bills stuffed inside.
This money, like the counterfeit coins that badgers made from tree leaves in the fairy tale, would disappear in the light of the day, but it would leave no trace behind, and that was a great relief. He was cautious nonetheless and deliberately proceeded toward a distant town. Two heavy blankets, five sheets of black woolen cloth, a piece of felt, a box of nails, and four pieces of squared lumber. In addition, one volume of a cookbook collection that caught his eye in a secondhand bookstore along the way. With the remaining money he bought a cup of coffee, not in the least superior to the coffee he had drawn on the wall. He was (why?) proud of himself. Lastly, he bought a newspaper.
He nailed the door shot, and then attached two layers of cloth and a blanket. With the rest of the material, he covered the window, and he blocked the edges with the wood. A feeling of security, and at the same time a sense of being attacked by eternity, weighed upon him. Argon’s mind grew distant, and, lying down on the bed, he soon fell asleep.
Sleep neither diminished nor neutralized his happiness in the slightest. When he awoke, the steel springs throughout his body were coiled and ready to leap, full of life. A new day, a new time … tomorrow wrapped in a mist of glittering gold dust, and the day after tomorrow, and more and more overflowing armfuls of tomorrows were waiting expectantly. Argon smiled, overcome with joy. Now, at this very moment, everything, without any hindrance whatsoever, was waiting eagerly among myriad possibilities to be created by his own hand. It was a brilliant moment. But what, in the depths of his heart, was this faintly aching sorrow? It might have been the sorrow that God had felt just before Creation. Beside the muscles of his smile, smaller muscles twitched slightly.
Argon drew a large wall clock. With a trembling hand he set the clock precisely at twelve, determining at that moment at the start of a new destiny.
He thought the room was a bit stuffy, so he drew a window on the wall facing the hallway. “Hm, what’s wrong?” The window didn’t materialize. Perplexed for a moment, he then realized that the window could not acquire any substance because it did not have an outside; it was not equipped with all the conditions necessary to make it a window.
“Well, then, shall I draw an outside? What kind of view would be nice? Shall it be the Alps or the Bay of Naples? A quiet pastoral scene wouldn’t be bad. Then again, a primeval Siberian forest might be interesting.” All the beautiful landscapes he had seen on postcards and in travel guides flickered before him. But he had to choose one from among them all, and he couldn’t make up his mind. “Well, let’s attend to pleasure first,” he decided. He drew some whiskey and cheese and, as he nibbled, slowly thought about it.
The more he thought, the less he understood.
“This isn’t going to be easy. It could involve work on a larger scale than anything I—or anyone—has ever tried to design. In fact, now that I think about it, it wouldn’t do simply to draw a few streams and orchards, mountains and seas, and other things pleasing to the eye. Suppose I drew a mountain; it would no longer be just a mountain. What would be beyond it? A city? A sea? A desert? What kind of people would be living there? What kind of animals? Unconsciously I would be deciding those things. No, making this window a window is serious business. It involves the creation of a world. Defining a world with just a few lines. Would it be right to leave that to chance? No, the scene outside can’t be usually drawn. I must introduce the kind of picture that no human hand has yet achieved.”
Argon sank into deep contemplation.
The first week passed in discontent as he pondered a design for a world of infinitude. Canvases once again lined his room, and the smell of turpentine hung in the air. Dozens of rough sketches accumulated in a pile. The more he thought, however, the more extensive the problem became, until finally he felt it was all too much for him. He thought he might boldly leave it up to chance, but in that case his efforts to create a new world would come to nothing. And if he merely captured accurately the inevitability of partial reality, the contradictions inherent in that reality would pull him back into the past, perhaps trapping him again in starvation. Besides, the chalk had a limited life-span. He had to capture the world.
The second week flew by in inebriation and gluttony.
The third week passed in a despair resembling insanity. Once again his canvases lay covered with dust, and the smell of oils had faded.
In the fourth week Argon finally made up his mind, a result of nearly total desperation. He just couldn’t wait any longer. In order to evade the responsibility of creating with his own hand an outside for the window, he decided to take a great risk that would leave everything to chance.
“I’ll draw a door on the wall. The outside will be decided by whatever is beyond the door. Even if it ends in failure, even if it turns out to be the same apartment scene as before, it’ll be far better than being tormented by this responsibility. I don’t care what happens, better to escape.”
Argon put on a jacket for the first time in a long while. It was a ceremony in honor of the establishment of the world, so one couldn’t say he was being extravagant. With a stiff hand he lowered the chalk of destiny. A picture of the door. He was breathing hard. No wonder. Wasn’t the sight beyond the door the greatest mystery a man could contemplate? Perhaps death was awaiting him as his reward.
He grasped the knob. He took a step back and opened the door.
Dynamite pierced his eyes, exploding. After a while he opened them fearfully to an awesome wasteland glaring in the noonday sun. As far as he could see, with the exception of the horizon, there was not a single shadow. To the extent that he could peer into the dark sky, not a single cloud. A hot dry wind blew past, stirring up a dust storm.
“Aah … It’s just as though the horizon line in one of my designs had become the landscape itself. Aah …”
The chalk hadn’t resolved anything after all. He still had to create it all from the beginning. He had to fill this desolate land with mountains, water, clouds, trees, plants, birds, beasts, fish. He had to draw the world all over again. Discouraged, Argon collapsed onto the bed. One after another, tears fell unceasingly.
Something rustled in his pocket. It was the newspaper he had bought on that first day and forgotten about. The headline on the first page read, “Invasion Across 38th Parallel!” On the second page, an even larger space devoted to a photograph of Miss Nippon. Underneath, in small print, “Riot at N Ward Employment Security Office,” and “Large-scale Dismissals at U Factory.”
Argon stared at the half-naked Miss Nippon. What intense longing. What a body. Flesh of glass.
“This is what I forgot. Nothing else matters. It’s time to begin everything from Adam and Eve. That’s it – Eve! I’ll draw Eve!”
Half an hour later Eve was standing before him, stark naked. Startled, she looked around her.
“Oh! Who are you? What’s happened? Golly, I’m naked!”
“I am Adam. You are Eve.” Argon blushed bashfully.
“I’m Eve, you say? Ah, no wonder I’m naked. But why are you wearing clothes? Adam, in Western dress—now that’s weird.”
Suddenly her tone changed.
“You’re lying! I’m not Eve. I’m Miss Nippon.”
“You’re Eve. You really are Eve.”
“You expect me to believe this is Adam—in those clothes—in a dump like this? Come on, give me back my clothes. What am I doing here anyway? I’m due to make a special modeling appearance at a photo contest.”
“Oh, no. You don’t understand. You’re Eve, I mean it.”
“Give me a break, will you? Okay, where’s the apple? And I suppose this is the Garden of Eden? Ha, don’t make me laugh. Now give me my clothes.”
“Well, at least listen to what I have to say. Sit down over there. Then I’ll explain everything. By the way, can I offer you something to eat?”
“Yes, go ahead. But hurry up and give me my clothes, okay? My body’s valuable.”
“What would you like? Choose anything you want from this cookbook.”
“Oh, great! Really? The place is filthy, but you must be pretty well fixed. I’ve changed my mind. Maybe you really are Adam after all. What do you do for a living? Burglar?”
“No, I’m Adam. Also an artist, and a world planner.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. That’s why I’m depressed.”
Watching Argon draw the food with swift strokes as he spoke, Eve shouted, “Hey, great, that’s great. This is Eden, isn’t it? Wow. Yeah, okay, I’ll be Eve. I don’t mind being Eve. We’re going to get rich—right?”
“Eve, please listen to me.”
In a sad voice, Argon told her his whole story, adding finally, “So you see, with your cooperation we must design this world. Money’s irrelevant. We have to start everything from scratch.”
Miss Nippon was dumbfounded.
“Money’s irrelevant, you say? I don’t understand. I don’t get it. I absolutely do not understand.”
“If you’re going to talk like that, well, why don’t you open this door and take a look outside.”
She glanced through the door Argon had left half open.
“My God! How awful!”
She slammed the door shut and glared at him.
But how about this door,” she said, pointing to his real, blanketed door. “Different, I’ll bet.”
“No don’t. That one’s no good. It will just wipe out this world, the food, desk, bed, and even you. You are the new Eve. And we must become the father and mother of our world.”
“Oh no. No babies. I’m all for birth control. I mean they’re such a bother. And besides, I won’t disappear.”
“You will disappear.”
“I won’t. I know myself best. I’m me. All this talk about disappearing—you’re really weird.”
“My dear Eve, you don’t know. If we don’t re-create the world, then sooner or later we’re faced with starvation.”
“What? Calling me ‘dear’ now, are you? You’ve got a nerve. And you say I’m going to starve. Don’t be ridiculous. My body’s valuable.”
“No, your body’s the same as my chalk. If we don’t acquire a world of our own, your existence will just be a fiction. The same as nothing at all.”
“Okay, that’s enough of this junk. Come on, give me back my clothes. I’m leaving. No two ways about it, my being here is weird. I shouldn’t be here. You’re a magician or something. Well, hurry up. My manager’s probably fed up with waiting. If you want me to drop in and be your Eve every now and then, I don’t mind. As long as you use your chalk to give me what I want.”
“Don’t be a fool! You can’t do that.”
The abrupt, violent tone of Argon’s voice startled her, and she looked into his face. They both stared at each other for a moment in a silence. Whatever was in her thoughts, she then said calmly, “All right, I’ll stay. But, in exchange, you will grant me one wish?”
“What is it?” If you stay with me, I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”
“I want half of your chalk/”
“That’s unreasonable. After all, dear, you don’t know how to draw. What good would it do you?”
“I do not know how to draw. I may not look like it, but I used to be a designer. I insist on equal rights.”
He tilted his head for an instant, then straightening up again, said decisively, “All right, I believe you.”
He carefully broke the chalk in half and gave one piece to Eve. As soon as she received it, she turned to the wall and began drawing.
It was a pistol.
“Stop it! What are you going to do with that thing?”
“Death, I’m going to make death. We need some divisions. They’re very important in making a world.”
“No, that’ll be the end. Stop it. It’s the most unnecessary thing of all.”
But it was too late. Eve was clutching a small pistol in her hand. She raised it and aimed directly at his chest.
“Move and I’ll shoot. Hands up. You’re stupid, Adam. Don’t you know that a promise is the beginning of a lie? It’s you who made me lie.”
“What? Now what are you drawing?”
“A hammer. To smash the door down.”
“You can’t!”
“Move and I’ll shoot!”
The moment he leaped the pistol rang out. Argon held his chest as his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor. Oddly, there was no blood.
“Stupid Adam.”
Eve laughed. Then, raising the hammer, she struck the door. The light streamed in. It wasn’t very bright, but it was real. Light from the sun. Eve was suddenly absorbed, like mist. The desk, the bed, the French meal, all disappeared. All but Argon, the cookbook which had landed on the floor and the chair were transformed back into pictures on the wall.
Argon stood up unsteadily. His chest wound had healed. But something stronger than death was summoning him, compelling him—the wall. The wall was calling him. His body, which had eaten drawings from the wall continuously for four weeks, had been almost entirely transformed by them. Resistance was impossible now. Argon staggered toward the wall and was drawn in on top of Eve.
The sound of the gunshot and the door being smashed were heard by others in the building. By the time they ran in, Argon had been completely absorbed into the wall and had become a picture. The people saw nothing but the chair, the cookbook, and the scribblings on the wall. Staring at Argon lying on top of Eve, someone remarked, “Starved for a woman, wasn’t he?”
“Doesn’t it look just like him, though?" said another.
“What was he doing, destroying the door like that? And look at this, the wall’s covered with scribbles. Huh. He won’t get away with it. Where in the world did he disappear to? Calls himself a painter!”
The man grumbling to himself was the apartment manager.
After everyone left, there came a murmuring from the wall.
“It isn’t chalk that will remake the world …”
A single drop welled out of the wall. It fell from just below the eye of the pictorial Argon.
By Kobo Abe
Kôbô Abe (1924–1993) was a Japanese novelist and playwright, a leader of the avant-garde. His familiarity with Western literature, existentialism, surrealism, and Marxism influenced his distinctive treatment of the problems of alienation and loss of identity in postwar Japan. Abe’s books include the claustrophobic novel Suna no onna (1962; Woman of the Dunes, 1964) and minimalist plays such as Bo ni natta otoko (The Man Who Turned into a Stick, 1969). Born in Tokyo, Abe spent his childhood and adolescence in Japanese-occupied Manchuria where his father was a professor of medicine. In 1940 he enrolled at Seijo High School in Tokyo; in 1943 he entered Tokyo University Medical School in accordance with his father's wishes. His studies were cut short by nervous exhaustion and a short period in a mental hospital. At the end of World War II (1939-1945) Abe was supporting himself as a street vendor while writing poems and short stories. He published his first book of poems, Poems by an Unknown, privately in 1947. Further poems, under the title Road Sign at the End of a Road, appeared in a magazine the following year. Abe joined a group of surrealist writers and artists and became interested in avant-garde filmmaking and theater. His first collection of short stories, published in 1951, won him the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's highest literary prize. Woman of the Dunes tells of an entomologist tricked into entering a sandpit and, like a trapped insect, forced to shovel sand for the rest of his life. The novel won Abe international recognition and was translated into 20 languages. The film version by avant-garde director Teshigahara Hiroshi became a classic of Japanese filmmaking. The hero of Abe’s equally disturbing second novel, The Face of Another (1962), is a man whose face has been severely burned. After learning the techniques of plastic surgery, he models himself a new, more handsome face. He then seduces his wife, but is not sure if he is lover or husband; she is not deceived but does not know if she loves him for his former self or as his new self. In The Ruined Map (1969), a detective searching for a missing man gets lost himself and loses his self-identity in a soulless, labyrinthine megalopolis—Abe's depiction of present-day Tokyo. The Man Who Turned into a Stick recalls the nightmarish predicament of the hero of “The Metamorphosis” (1915; trans. 1937) by Austrian (Czech) writer Franz Kafka. Abe wrote many other works on psychological themes for the stage, such as Uniform (1955) and The Ghosts Are Here (1958). He formed his own theater group in 1967 and took a production of his play You Too Are Guilty on tour to the United States in 1979.
Next door to the toilet of an apartment building on the edge of the city, in a room soggy with rood leaks and cooking vapors, lived a poor artist named Argon.
The small room, nine feet square, appeared to the lager it was because it contained nothing but a single chair set against the wall. His desk, shelves, paint box, even his easel had been sold for bread. Now only the chair and Argon left. But how long would these two remain?
Dinnertime drew near, “How sensitive my nose has become!” Argon thought. He was able to distinguish the colors and proximity of the complex aromas entering his room. Frying pork at the butcher’s along the streetcar line: yellow ocher. A southerly wind drifting by the front of the fruit stand: emerald green. Wafting from the bakery: stimulating chrome yellow. And the fish the housewife below was broiling, probably mackerel; sad cerulean blue.
The fact is, Argon hadn’t eaten anything all day with a pale face, a wrinkled brow, an Adams apple that rose and fell, a hunched back, a sunken abdomen, and trembling knees, Argon trust both to his pockets and yawned three times in succession.
His fingers found a stick in his pocket.
“Hey, what’s this? Red chalk. Don’t remember it being there.”
Playing with the chalk between his fingers, he produced another large yawn.
“Aah. I need something to eat.”
Without realizing it, Argon began scribbling on the wall with the chalk. First, an apple. One that looked big enough to be a meal itself. He drew a paring knife beside it so that he could eat it right away. Next, swallowing hard as baking smells curled through the hallway and window to permeate his room, he drew bread. Jam filled the size of a basketball glove. Butter filled rolls. A loaf is large as a person’s head. He envisioned cracks, dough bursting through the surface, and the intoxicating aroma of yeast. Beside the bread, then, a stick butter as large as a brick. He thought of drawing some coffee. Freshly brewed as a steaming coffee, in a large jug like cup. On a saucer, three matchbox-size sugar cubes.
“Damn it!” He ground teeth and buried his face in his hands.
“I’ve got to eat!”
Gradually his consciousness sank into darkness. Beyond the windowpane was a bread and pastry jungle, a mountain of canned goods, a see of milk, a beach of sugar, a beef and cheese orchard—he scampered about until, fatigued, he fell asleep.
A heavy thud on the floor and the sound of smashing crockery woke him up. The sun had already set, pitch black. Bewildered, he glanced toward the noise and gasped. A broken cup. The spilled liquid, still steaming, definitely coffee, and near it were the apple, bread, butter, sugar, spoon, knife and (luckily unbroken) the saucer. The picture he had chalked in the wall had vanished.
“How could it . . . ?”
Suddenly every vein in his body was wide-awake and pounding. Argon stealthily crept closer.
“No, no it can’t be. But look it’s real. Nothing fake about the smothering aroma of his coffee. And here the bread is smooth to the though. Be hold, taste it. Argon, don’t you believe it’s real even now? Yes it’s real. I believe it, but frightening. To believe it is frightening. And yet, it’s real. It’s edible!”
The apple tasted like an apple (a “snow” apple). The bread tasted like bread (American flour). The butter tasted like butter (same content as label on the wrapper—not margarine). The sugar tasted like sugar (sweet). Ah, they all tasted like the real thing. The knife gleamed, reflecting his face.
By the time he came to his sense, Argon has somehow finished eating and have a sigh of relief. But when he recalled why he had a sign like this, he immediately became confused again. He took the chalk in his fingers and stared at it intently. No matter how much he scrutinized it, he couldn’t understand and what he didn’t understand. He decided to make sure by trying it once more. If he succeeded a second time, then he would have to concede that it had actually happened. He thought he would try to draw something different, but in his haste he drew another familiar—looking apple. As soon as he finished drawing, it fell easy from the wall. So this is real after all. A repeatable fact.
Joy suddenly turned his body grid. The tips of his nerves broke through his skin and stretches toward the universe, rusting like a fallen leaves. Then, abruptly, the tension eased, and, sitting down on the floor, he burst out laughing like a panting goldfish.
“The laws of the universe have changed. My fate has changed; misfortune has taken its leave. Ah the age of fulfillment, a world of desires realized . . . God, I’m sleepy. Well, the, I’ll draw a bed. This chalk has become as precious as life itself, but a bed is something you always need after eating your fill, and it never really wears out, so no need to be miserly about it. Ah, for the first time in my life I’ll sleep like a lamp.”
One eye soon fell asleep, but the other day awake. After today’s content he was uneasy about what tomorrow might bring. However, the other eye, too, finally closed in sleep. With eyes working out of sync he dreamed mottled dreams throughout the night.
Well, this worrisome tomorrow dawned in the following manner.
He dreamed that he was being chased by a ferocious beast and fell off a bridge. He had fallen off the bed… No. When he awoke, there was no bed anywhere. As usual, there was nothing but that one chair. Then what had happened last night? Argon timidly looked around the wall, tilting his head.
There, in red chalk, were drawings of a cup (it was broken!), a spoon, a knife, apple peel, and a butter wrapper. Below these was a bed—a picture of the bed off which he was supposed to have fallen.
Among all of last night’s drawings, only those he could not eat had once again become pictures and returned to the wall. Suddenly he felt pain in his hip and shoulder. Pain in precisely the place he should feel it if he had indeed fallen out of bed. He gingerly touched the sketch of the bed where the sheets had been rumpled by sleep and felt a slight warmth, clearly distinguishable from the coldness of the rest of the drawing.
He brushed his finger along the blade of the knife picture. It was certainly nothing more than chalk; there was no resistance, and it disappeared leaving only a smear. As a test he decided to draw a new apple. It neither turned into a real apple and fell nor even peeled off like a piece of unglued paper, but rather vanished beneath his chafed palm into the surface of the wall.
His happiness had been merely a single night’s dream. It was all over, back to what it was before anything had happened. Or was it really? No, his misery had returned fivefold. His hunger pangs attacked him fivefold. It seemed that all he had eaten had been restored in his stomach to the original substances of wall and chalk powder.
When he had gulped from his cupped hands a pint or so of water from the communal sink, he set out toward the lonely city, still enveloped in the mist of early dawn. Leaning over an open drain that ran from the kitchen of a restaurant about a hundred yards ahead, he thrust his hands into the viscous, tar-like sewage and pulled something out. It was a basket made of wire netting. He washed it in a small brook nearby. What was left in it seemed edible, and he was particularly heartened that half of it looked like rice. An old man in his apartment building had told him recently that by placing the basket in the drain one could obtain enough food for a meal a day. Just about a month ago the man had found the means to afford bean curd lees, so he had ceded the restaurant drain to the artist.
Recalling last night’s feast, this was indeed muddy, unsavory fare. But it wasn’t magic. What actually helped fill his stomach was precious and so could not be rejected. Even if its nastiness made him aware of every swallow, he must eat it. Shit. This was the real thing.
Just before noon he entered the city and dropped in on a friend who was employed at a bank. The friend smiled wryly and asked, “My turn today?”
Stiff and expressionless, Argon nodded. As always, he received half of his friend’s lunch, bowed deeply and left.
For the rest of the day, Argon thought.
He held the chalk lightly in his hand, leaned back in the chair, and as he sat absorbed in his daydreams about magic, anticipation began to crystallize around that urgent longing. Finally, evening once again drew near. His hope that at sunset the magic might take effect had changed into near confidence.
Somewhere a noisy radio announced that it was five o’clock. He stood up and on the wall drew bread and butter, a can of sardines, and coffee, not forgetting to add a table underneath so as to prevent anything from falling and breaking as had occurred the previous night. Then he waited.
Before long, darkness began to crawl quietly up the wall from the corners of the room. In order to verify the course of the magic, he turned on the light. He had already confirmed last night that electric light did it no harm.
The sun had set. The drawings on the wall began to fade, as if his vision had blurred. It seemed as if a mist was caught between the wall and his eyes. The pictures grew increasingly faint, and the mist grew dense. And soon, just as he had anticipated, the mist had settled into solid shapes—success! The contents of the pictures suddenly appeared as real objects.
The steamy coffee was tempting, the bread freshly baked and still warm.
“Oh! Forgot a can opener.”
He held his left hand underneath to catch it before it fell, and, as he drew, the outlines took on material form. His drawing had literally come to life. All of a sudden, he stumbled over something. Last night’s bed “existed” again. Moreover, the knife handle (he had erased the blade with his finger), the butter wrapper, and the broken cup lay fallen on the floor.
After filling his empty stomach, Argon lay down on the bed.
“Well, what shall it be next? It’s clear now that the magic doesn’t work in daylight. Tomorrow I’ll have to suffer all over again. There must be a simple way out of this. Ah, yes! A brilliant plan—I’ll cover up the window and shut myself in darkness.”
He would need some money to carry out the project. To keep out the sun required some objects that would not lose their substance when exposed to sunlight. But drawing money is a bit difficult. He racked his brains, then drew a purse full of money…The idea was a success, for when he opened up the purse he found more than enough bills stuffed inside.
This money, like the counterfeit coins that badgers made from tree leaves in the fairy tale, would disappear in the light of the day, but it would leave no trace behind, and that was a great relief. He was cautious nonetheless and deliberately proceeded toward a distant town. Two heavy blankets, five sheets of black woolen cloth, a piece of felt, a box of nails, and four pieces of squared lumber. In addition, one volume of a cookbook collection that caught his eye in a secondhand bookstore along the way. With the remaining money he bought a cup of coffee, not in the least superior to the coffee he had drawn on the wall. He was (why?) proud of himself. Lastly, he bought a newspaper.
He nailed the door shot, and then attached two layers of cloth and a blanket. With the rest of the material, he covered the window, and he blocked the edges with the wood. A feeling of security, and at the same time a sense of being attacked by eternity, weighed upon him. Argon’s mind grew distant, and, lying down on the bed, he soon fell asleep.
Sleep neither diminished nor neutralized his happiness in the slightest. When he awoke, the steel springs throughout his body were coiled and ready to leap, full of life. A new day, a new time … tomorrow wrapped in a mist of glittering gold dust, and the day after tomorrow, and more and more overflowing armfuls of tomorrows were waiting expectantly. Argon smiled, overcome with joy. Now, at this very moment, everything, without any hindrance whatsoever, was waiting eagerly among myriad possibilities to be created by his own hand. It was a brilliant moment. But what, in the depths of his heart, was this faintly aching sorrow? It might have been the sorrow that God had felt just before Creation. Beside the muscles of his smile, smaller muscles twitched slightly.
Argon drew a large wall clock. With a trembling hand he set the clock precisely at twelve, determining at that moment at the start of a new destiny.
He thought the room was a bit stuffy, so he drew a window on the wall facing the hallway. “Hm, what’s wrong?” The window didn’t materialize. Perplexed for a moment, he then realized that the window could not acquire any substance because it did not have an outside; it was not equipped with all the conditions necessary to make it a window.
“Well, then, shall I draw an outside? What kind of view would be nice? Shall it be the Alps or the Bay of Naples? A quiet pastoral scene wouldn’t be bad. Then again, a primeval Siberian forest might be interesting.” All the beautiful landscapes he had seen on postcards and in travel guides flickered before him. But he had to choose one from among them all, and he couldn’t make up his mind. “Well, let’s attend to pleasure first,” he decided. He drew some whiskey and cheese and, as he nibbled, slowly thought about it.
The more he thought, the less he understood.
“This isn’t going to be easy. It could involve work on a larger scale than anything I—or anyone—has ever tried to design. In fact, now that I think about it, it wouldn’t do simply to draw a few streams and orchards, mountains and seas, and other things pleasing to the eye. Suppose I drew a mountain; it would no longer be just a mountain. What would be beyond it? A city? A sea? A desert? What kind of people would be living there? What kind of animals? Unconsciously I would be deciding those things. No, making this window a window is serious business. It involves the creation of a world. Defining a world with just a few lines. Would it be right to leave that to chance? No, the scene outside can’t be usually drawn. I must introduce the kind of picture that no human hand has yet achieved.”
Argon sank into deep contemplation.
The first week passed in discontent as he pondered a design for a world of infinitude. Canvases once again lined his room, and the smell of turpentine hung in the air. Dozens of rough sketches accumulated in a pile. The more he thought, however, the more extensive the problem became, until finally he felt it was all too much for him. He thought he might boldly leave it up to chance, but in that case his efforts to create a new world would come to nothing. And if he merely captured accurately the inevitability of partial reality, the contradictions inherent in that reality would pull him back into the past, perhaps trapping him again in starvation. Besides, the chalk had a limited life-span. He had to capture the world.
The second week flew by in inebriation and gluttony.
The third week passed in a despair resembling insanity. Once again his canvases lay covered with dust, and the smell of oils had faded.
In the fourth week Argon finally made up his mind, a result of nearly total desperation. He just couldn’t wait any longer. In order to evade the responsibility of creating with his own hand an outside for the window, he decided to take a great risk that would leave everything to chance.
“I’ll draw a door on the wall. The outside will be decided by whatever is beyond the door. Even if it ends in failure, even if it turns out to be the same apartment scene as before, it’ll be far better than being tormented by this responsibility. I don’t care what happens, better to escape.”
Argon put on a jacket for the first time in a long while. It was a ceremony in honor of the establishment of the world, so one couldn’t say he was being extravagant. With a stiff hand he lowered the chalk of destiny. A picture of the door. He was breathing hard. No wonder. Wasn’t the sight beyond the door the greatest mystery a man could contemplate? Perhaps death was awaiting him as his reward.
He grasped the knob. He took a step back and opened the door.
Dynamite pierced his eyes, exploding. After a while he opened them fearfully to an awesome wasteland glaring in the noonday sun. As far as he could see, with the exception of the horizon, there was not a single shadow. To the extent that he could peer into the dark sky, not a single cloud. A hot dry wind blew past, stirring up a dust storm.
“Aah … It’s just as though the horizon line in one of my designs had become the landscape itself. Aah …”
The chalk hadn’t resolved anything after all. He still had to create it all from the beginning. He had to fill this desolate land with mountains, water, clouds, trees, plants, birds, beasts, fish. He had to draw the world all over again. Discouraged, Argon collapsed onto the bed. One after another, tears fell unceasingly.
Something rustled in his pocket. It was the newspaper he had bought on that first day and forgotten about. The headline on the first page read, “Invasion Across 38th Parallel!” On the second page, an even larger space devoted to a photograph of Miss Nippon. Underneath, in small print, “Riot at N Ward Employment Security Office,” and “Large-scale Dismissals at U Factory.”
Argon stared at the half-naked Miss Nippon. What intense longing. What a body. Flesh of glass.
“This is what I forgot. Nothing else matters. It’s time to begin everything from Adam and Eve. That’s it – Eve! I’ll draw Eve!”
Half an hour later Eve was standing before him, stark naked. Startled, she looked around her.
“Oh! Who are you? What’s happened? Golly, I’m naked!”
“I am Adam. You are Eve.” Argon blushed bashfully.
“I’m Eve, you say? Ah, no wonder I’m naked. But why are you wearing clothes? Adam, in Western dress—now that’s weird.”
Suddenly her tone changed.
“You’re lying! I’m not Eve. I’m Miss Nippon.”
“You’re Eve. You really are Eve.”
“You expect me to believe this is Adam—in those clothes—in a dump like this? Come on, give me back my clothes. What am I doing here anyway? I’m due to make a special modeling appearance at a photo contest.”
“Oh, no. You don’t understand. You’re Eve, I mean it.”
“Give me a break, will you? Okay, where’s the apple? And I suppose this is the Garden of Eden? Ha, don’t make me laugh. Now give me my clothes.”
“Well, at least listen to what I have to say. Sit down over there. Then I’ll explain everything. By the way, can I offer you something to eat?”
“Yes, go ahead. But hurry up and give me my clothes, okay? My body’s valuable.”
“What would you like? Choose anything you want from this cookbook.”
“Oh, great! Really? The place is filthy, but you must be pretty well fixed. I’ve changed my mind. Maybe you really are Adam after all. What do you do for a living? Burglar?”
“No, I’m Adam. Also an artist, and a world planner.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. That’s why I’m depressed.”
Watching Argon draw the food with swift strokes as he spoke, Eve shouted, “Hey, great, that’s great. This is Eden, isn’t it? Wow. Yeah, okay, I’ll be Eve. I don’t mind being Eve. We’re going to get rich—right?”
“Eve, please listen to me.”
In a sad voice, Argon told her his whole story, adding finally, “So you see, with your cooperation we must design this world. Money’s irrelevant. We have to start everything from scratch.”
Miss Nippon was dumbfounded.
“Money’s irrelevant, you say? I don’t understand. I don’t get it. I absolutely do not understand.”
“If you’re going to talk like that, well, why don’t you open this door and take a look outside.”
She glanced through the door Argon had left half open.
“My God! How awful!”
She slammed the door shut and glared at him.
But how about this door,” she said, pointing to his real, blanketed door. “Different, I’ll bet.”
“No don’t. That one’s no good. It will just wipe out this world, the food, desk, bed, and even you. You are the new Eve. And we must become the father and mother of our world.”
“Oh no. No babies. I’m all for birth control. I mean they’re such a bother. And besides, I won’t disappear.”
“You will disappear.”
“I won’t. I know myself best. I’m me. All this talk about disappearing—you’re really weird.”
“My dear Eve, you don’t know. If we don’t re-create the world, then sooner or later we’re faced with starvation.”
“What? Calling me ‘dear’ now, are you? You’ve got a nerve. And you say I’m going to starve. Don’t be ridiculous. My body’s valuable.”
“No, your body’s the same as my chalk. If we don’t acquire a world of our own, your existence will just be a fiction. The same as nothing at all.”
“Okay, that’s enough of this junk. Come on, give me back my clothes. I’m leaving. No two ways about it, my being here is weird. I shouldn’t be here. You’re a magician or something. Well, hurry up. My manager’s probably fed up with waiting. If you want me to drop in and be your Eve every now and then, I don’t mind. As long as you use your chalk to give me what I want.”
“Don’t be a fool! You can’t do that.”
The abrupt, violent tone of Argon’s voice startled her, and she looked into his face. They both stared at each other for a moment in a silence. Whatever was in her thoughts, she then said calmly, “All right, I’ll stay. But, in exchange, you will grant me one wish?”
“What is it?” If you stay with me, I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”
“I want half of your chalk/”
“That’s unreasonable. After all, dear, you don’t know how to draw. What good would it do you?”
“I do not know how to draw. I may not look like it, but I used to be a designer. I insist on equal rights.”
He tilted his head for an instant, then straightening up again, said decisively, “All right, I believe you.”
He carefully broke the chalk in half and gave one piece to Eve. As soon as she received it, she turned to the wall and began drawing.
It was a pistol.
“Stop it! What are you going to do with that thing?”
“Death, I’m going to make death. We need some divisions. They’re very important in making a world.”
“No, that’ll be the end. Stop it. It’s the most unnecessary thing of all.”
But it was too late. Eve was clutching a small pistol in her hand. She raised it and aimed directly at his chest.
“Move and I’ll shoot. Hands up. You’re stupid, Adam. Don’t you know that a promise is the beginning of a lie? It’s you who made me lie.”
“What? Now what are you drawing?”
“A hammer. To smash the door down.”
“You can’t!”
“Move and I’ll shoot!”
The moment he leaped the pistol rang out. Argon held his chest as his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor. Oddly, there was no blood.
“Stupid Adam.”
Eve laughed. Then, raising the hammer, she struck the door. The light streamed in. It wasn’t very bright, but it was real. Light from the sun. Eve was suddenly absorbed, like mist. The desk, the bed, the French meal, all disappeared. All but Argon, the cookbook which had landed on the floor and the chair were transformed back into pictures on the wall.
Argon stood up unsteadily. His chest wound had healed. But something stronger than death was summoning him, compelling him—the wall. The wall was calling him. His body, which had eaten drawings from the wall continuously for four weeks, had been almost entirely transformed by them. Resistance was impossible now. Argon staggered toward the wall and was drawn in on top of Eve.
The sound of the gunshot and the door being smashed were heard by others in the building. By the time they ran in, Argon had been completely absorbed into the wall and had become a picture. The people saw nothing but the chair, the cookbook, and the scribblings on the wall. Staring at Argon lying on top of Eve, someone remarked, “Starved for a woman, wasn’t he?”
“Doesn’t it look just like him, though?" said another.
“What was he doing, destroying the door like that? And look at this, the wall’s covered with scribbles. Huh. He won’t get away with it. Where in the world did he disappear to? Calls himself a painter!”
The man grumbling to himself was the apartment manager.
After everyone left, there came a murmuring from the wall.
“It isn’t chalk that will remake the world …”
A single drop welled out of the wall. It fell from just below the eye of the pictorial Argon.