The Ark Sakura (2 page)

Straight back from the entrance was a canvas-roofed rest area that probably doubled as a stage for outdoor concerts. Next to stands selling iced coffee and hamburgers was one selling shaved ice; I ordered a bowlful, flavored with syrupy adzuki beans. Seen through the protective wire-mesh fence, the dusty streets below looked like old torn fishnet. It seemed about to rain: mountains in the distance were swathed in clouds. The noise of thousands of car engines bounced off the sky and merged, interfering with the department-store Muzak in spurts like the gasps of a winded bullfrog.

The bowl of shaved ice and sweet purplish beans chilled my palms. People in the unroofed area were starting to head for the exits, but here nearly every seat was filled. I shared a table with a student (so I judged him to be from the long hair that fell to the nape of his slender neck, and his bloodshot eyes) wearing a dark blue T-shirt with white lettering that read PO PO PO. His face was bent over a bowl of chilled noodles. I crushed the beans in my ice with the back of my spoon, then scooped them up and ate them. The student looked up with a sound of joints cracking in his neck. Evidently he was offended by the critical gaze I had turned on him. It’s a bad habit I’ve developed ever since I started carrying the boarding passes with me. As I go out only once a month, I have to make the most of my time.

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

“Nah.” A noodle hung down on his chin; he pushed it into his mouth with a finger and added in a tone of disgust, “What a bunch of junk.”

“Even the eupcaccia?”

“The what?”

“Eupcaccia.” I pulled the plastic case out of my pocket and showed it to him. “It’s the name of an insect. Didn’t you see it? Second aisle from the back, around the middle, on the left.”

“What’s so great about it?”

“It’s a beetle, a kind of Coleopteron. The legs have atrophied, and it goes around and around in the same place like the hour hand of a clock, feeding on its own excrement.”

“So?”

“So isn’t that interesting?”

“Not especially.”

So much for him. Disqualified.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, let me say I believe the eupcaccia is symbolic of a certain philosophy or way of life: However much you may move around, as long as the motion is circular you haven’t really gone anywhere; the important thing is to maintain a tranquil inner core.

Someday, I thought, I’d like to design a logo based on the eupcaccia, for a group flag. It would have to be based on the back, not the belly. The segmented belly has too many lines, like the underside of a dried shrimp, but the back could be represented easily enough by two adjacent ovals. Sort of like the radiator grille on a BMW—the car with the world’s top driving performance. That settled it: I knew now where I was going to keep the eupcaccia. There could be no better place than the shelf over the toilet in my work area. That was where I kept all the luggage and other travel equipment. Suddenly I grinned, my humor restored at the notion of the eupcaccia as a travel accessory.

The student went off with a look of uneasiness. I had no intention of stopping him. Even apart from his boorish way of slurping his noodles, his approach to life was obviously wanting in gravity. The eupcaccia promised to become a useful litmus test, I thought, one that gave me an objective standard for deciding among potential crewmen. Anyone who showed no curiosity about such an insect—the fulcrum of a compass with which to draw the circumference of the very earth—was simply too insensitive to merit serious consideration.

I felt far greater interest in the young couple who had bought a eupcaccia before me. Where could they have gone?
They
were the ones I should have sounded out. Why did I never make the most of my opportunities? On second thought, however, the man anyway was no loss. He had been too restless, as if there were a Ping-Pong game going on inside his head. Hardly the type to adapt well to the life of a mole. The girl was another matter; she certainly would bear careful investigation. It had been
her
idea to buy the eupcaccia; besides, it was only logical that my first crew member should be a woman. Savoring the coldness of the ice in my mouth, I turned regretful thoughts of her over in my mind. Why hadn’t I spoken up right then? By now we might have been fast friends, based on our mutual interest in the eupcaccia. The only problem was the nature of her relationship with that man. If they were married, or anything like it, my hopes were wasted. Of course the eupcaccia itself belonged to the realm of soliloquy. It was hardly the sort of thing you’d expect a married couple to purchase together. On the other hand, I had to admit that unmarried couples who behave like man and wife are rare—far rarer than married couples who behave like mutual strangers.

Time to go. I had already had the amazing good fortune to stumble on the eupcaccia; it wouldn’t do to be greedy for more. And on a windy day like this I couldn’t drive after dark along that rocky ledge by the coast: salt spray would rust out the body of the jeep.

A shadow fell on the seat just vacated by the student. Conspicuously large cranium, heavy glasses for nearsightedness, dingy skin—it was the insect salesman. He unwrapped a sandwich and dragged a chair up, scraping it loudly against the floor. He still hadn’t seen me. It wasn’t an amazing coincidence that we should end up face to face, considering there were only a few seats vacant. He peeled off the top slice of bread from his sandwich, rolled it up into a cylinder, and began to take careful bites, sipping now and then from a can of coffee.

“Taking a break?” I said.

The insect dealer stopped chewing and looked up slowly. “You talking to me?”

“Don’t you remember me? You just sold me a eupcaccia a few minutes ago.”

For several seconds he continued to stare at me silently, through lenses so thick they seemed bulletproof. He seemed wary. Was it my weight? People tend to equate obesity with imbecility. Members of the opposite sex are distant, those of one’s own sex derisive. Fat is even an obstacle to finding employment. The ratio of body size to brain size suggests unflattering analogies to whales and dinosaurs. I don’t even like fat people myself—despite the obvious irony—and I generally avoid getting into conversations with them if I can help it.

“What’s the matter? You want your money back, is that it?”

In the back of my mind I still had reservations about the eupcaccia, but I didn’t want them forced into the open. I was in no mood to hear a confession.

“Not at all. I’m very happy with my eupcaccia. It’s given me a lot to think about. Did you collect all those specimens yourself? They say environmental pollution is getting so bad that insects are disappearing all over the place. Some dealers have to raise their own, I’ve heard.”

“Yes, and some go even further—they conjure up nonexistent specimens with tweezers and glue,
I’ve
heard.”

“How many have you sold altogether?” I asked, deeming it safest to change the subject.

“One.”

“No, really.”

“Look, if you want your money back, I don’t mind.”

“Why do you say that?”

“To avoid a hassle.”

“There were some other people who bought one before me.”

“No, there weren’t.”

“Yes, there were. Don’t you remember? A man and a young woman.”

“You haven’t been around much, have you? I hired them as
sakura—
decoys, shills, to lure customers.”

“They looked on the level to me.”

“Well, they have a standing contract with the department store, so they’re in a little better class than your average confidence man. Besides, the girl is terrific. She makes great cover.”

“She had me fooled.”

“She’s a looker, all right. She’s got real class. That son of a gun …”

“There’s a new system for classifying women into types,” I said. “I saw it in the paper. The ‘quintuple approach,’ I think it was called. According to that, women fall into five main types—Mother, Housewife, Wife, Woman, and Human Being. Which one would you say she is?”

“That sort of thing doesn’t interest me.”

“It’s all been carefully researched by a top ad agency. It’s some new tool they’ve worked out for market analysis, so it should be fairly reliable.”

“You believe that stuff?”

A flock of sparrows flew low overhead. Then came a rain-cloud that brushed the department store rooftop as it sped by in pursuit. Canvas flaps over the stalls fluttered and snapped in the wind; shoppers paused uncertainly. Here and there some stallkeepers were already closing up. They would be the ones whose goods were sold out, or who had given up on selling any more that day.

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to your stall? Looks like rain.”

“I’ve quit.” He laid thin slices of ham and tomato on top of each other, speared them with a fork, and grinned. His boyish grin went surprisingly well with his bald head.

“Don’t give up so soon,” I said. “The eupcaccia gives people something to dream about; I’m sure you can sell at least a couple more if you try.”

“You’re weird, you know that? What do you do for a living, anyway?” He stroked his head with hairy fingers until the smokelike wisps of hair lay flat against his scalp, making the top of his head look even bigger.

A customer wandered up to the stall next to the rest area where we were sitting. The item for sale there was an all-purpose vibrator, oval in shape, featuring a metal fitting for an electric drill on the end, in which a variety of tools could be inserted: back scratcher, toothbrush, facial sponge, wire brush, shoulder massager, small hammer … you name it. It certainly was ingenious, yet it failed to fire the imagination. Besides, there at the counter they had only samples. To make a purchase you had to go through some fishy rigmarole, leaving a ten percent deposit and filling out an order blank with your name and address; the device would supposedly be delivered to your doorstep (for a slight charge) within a week. I found it hard to see why anyone would want to buy such a thing.

“There you have the opposite of a dream,” I said. “Sheer practicality.”

“There you have a lesson in how to fleece people,” said the insect dealer. “Nothing wild or fantastic, you see. Plain, everyday items are best—kitchen stuff, especially. If you’re clever, you can even fool people in the same line. But it doesn’t bear repeating. You can never work the same place, or the same item, more than once. And until you’ve mapped out your next strategy, you’ve got to keep jumping from town to town. Not an easy life.”

“Does the eupcaccia bear repeating?” I asked.

“Ah—so now you’ve made up your mind it’s a fake.”

“Just eat your sandwich, please. What did you have for breakfast?”

“What does it matter?”

“I always have sweet potatoes, or pancakes, with coffee. I make my own pancakes.”

“I can’t make a good pancake.”

“Neither can I.”

“Haven’t eaten breakfast in a good ten years.”

“Was that thunder?”

“Who cares?”

He bit off a piece of his sandwich as if tearing into the world’s betrayal. I couldn’t blame him. If I were the discoverer of the eupcaccia, with sales so slow I’d undoubtedly feel the same way. A pillar of sand, understood only by dreamers. But even a pillar of sand, if it stands inside the earth, can hold up a skyscraper.

“If you like, I’ll take the rest of the eupcaccias off your hands. Another four or five wouldn’t hurt, anyway.”

“Why should you do that?” the insect dealer said, stuffing his mouth with the last of his sandwich. “Don’t talk like an idiot. I don’t know what little scheme you may have in mind …”

“All right. Just because I’m fat, you don’t have to snap at me that way.”

“Obesity has no correlation to character.” He stuck the wad of bread he was chewing over on one side of his mouth, and added in a muffled voice, “It’s caused by the proliferation of melanoid fat cells; only involves an inch or two of subcutaneous tissue.”

“You know a lot about it.”

“Just something I read in the paper.”

“Do you plan to sell the rest of the eupcaccias somewhere else?”

“Frankly, I’ve had a bellyful of them.”

“Surely you wouldn’t just throw them away?”

“They’re not even worth grinding up for medicine. I’ll save the containers, though; I paid enough for them.”

“Then why not let me have the lot? I’ll trade you that for a boat ticket. If you’re going to throw them away anyway, why not? You’ve got nothing to lose.”

Whoops—too soon to bring up the boat ticket. After this slip, I felt as unnerved as if someone had just goosed me with an ice cube. I’d been too anxious to keep him from belittling my purchase, feeling that any criticism of the eupcaccia was a reflection on my judgment as well. The clockbug contained, I felt, a revelation that could save humanity much rancor and anxiety.

Take the anthropoids, who are thought to share a common ancestor with the human race. They exhibit two distinct tendencies: one is to make groups and build societies—the aggrandizing tendency—and the other is for each animal to huddle in its own territory and build its own castle—the settling tendency. For whatever reason, both these contradictory impulses survive in the human psyche. On the one hand, humans have acquired the ability to spread across the earth, thanks to an adaptability superior even to that of rats and cockroaches; on the other, they have acquired a demonic capability for intense mutual hatred and destruction. For the human race, now on a level equal with nature, this two-edged sword is too heavy. We end up with government policies that make about as much sense as using a giant electric saw to cut open the belly of a tiny fish. If only we could be more like the eupcaccias …

“Trade it for what, did you say?”

“A boat ticket.”

“Ah, the old survey con.” He drank the rest of his canned coffee, and looked at me intently through his thick lenses. “If you’re trying to pull off one of those on me, better wait till you’re a little more experienced.”

“Huh?”

“You never heard of it? I guess not, from the look on your face. You know, you see them everywhere, those people standing on street corners with a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen in their hands.”

“I’ve seen them. What are they there for?”

“ ‘Tell me, madam, have you settled on your summer vacation plans?’ They start out like that, and they wind up extorting an entrance fee for some super-duper travel club.”

“You’ve got me wrong.” After some hesitation, I decided I had no choice but to bring out one of the leather cases. “See? A key and a boat ticket. It’s a ticket to survival.”