Beasts Head for Home by Abe Kobo

Author:Abe Kobo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Chapter 3

The Trap

XVI

As Kyūzō climbed up the slope, the trailing sound of Kō’s footsteps suddenly stopped. It was the fourth day since leaving the marsh. Five or six steps behind, Kō appeared as a dark mass as he lay groveling on the ground. Ignoring him, Kyūzō began walking on, but his stride gradually slowed, and he finally stopped in resignation. He tried calling out to Kō, but his voice was now gone. It was easier to walk than to raise his voice. Slowly he made his way back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in a frozen voice. He placed a hand on Kō’s shoulder as he tried to help him up, but Kō’s body suddenly went limp as he collapsed on his belly. The right half of his face, reflected in the slanting moonlight, appeared puffy and swollen. With each breath, the edge of his lips trembled slightly and the sides of his flattened nostrils expanded and contracted. His overflowing saliva formed white icicles that hung from his unshaven beard. He even seemed to be faintly snoring.

“Wake up!” Kyūzō yelled, using the back of his hand to hit Kō repeatedly behind the ears. His voice stung as it stuck to the back of his parched throat.

Muttering incoherently, Kō twisted his body to escape the blows from Kyūzō’s hand. Tucking his wounded left hand underneath his own body, he gave a hoarse cry and returned to his senses. Clutching Kyūzō’s arm, he jerked himself back up. As he knelt with his head lolling back and forth, he yelled out in a shrill voice, “Hit me again!”

Kyūzō continued beating him with both hands. His senses became dulled—it was just like beating cotton. However, his fingertips hurt so much that they felt like they were broken, the pain reverberating from his shoulders all the way to his ears. And yet it was only this pain that allowed him to confirm what he was doing.

“Enough. Let’s go.”

With a grunt, Kō used his unsteady hands to block Kyūzō’s blows and then looked fearfully around at the swelling hills of the wasteland, which with its back turned to them gave off a white radiance. “Shit! Let’s go.” Finding his grip on the walking stick, he staggered off with a bent posture, not yet standing fully erect. Around his waist was coiled a rope, which dangled long behind him and at the end of which was affixed his bag. With each step, the bag bounced back and forth as it slid along the ground behind him.

In the darkened minds of the exhausted men, the sound of the bag formed a line like the tracks made by some crawling insect. In fact, Kyūzō repeatedly conjured up the image of an insect slowly crawling from one end to the other of a broad white cloth, and he tried to identify that insect with himself. In this way, he began to feel that his insecure fate had now been given a secure foundation. Perhaps if one calculated the width of a single

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