The Ark Sakura by Kōbō Abe

It’s about thirty feet to the entrance. I’ll be right behind you.”
    The insect dealer grabbed the rope and hauled himself up, his feet knocking down large clumps of dirt and sand at each step. This did not signify that he was any less surefooted than I; the slope was steep, and on it lay junk of all sizes and shapes, precariously piled together, each item supporting and supported by the rest. A monkey could have done no better without knowing where the footholds were.
    A thin, runty black dog with long ears came sidling over to my feet. Was this a newcomer, paying his respects? Thanks to my talented howling, the pack of dogs had quickly accepted me as their leader. With humans it wouldn’t be so easy.
    I put on my rubber boots and heavy-duty gloves. The insect dealer disappeared inside the abandoned car with a wave of his penlight. After the rope stopped swinging, I grabbed it and followed him. As I went up, I placed my feet safely and securely in the footholds, enjoying a mild sense of superiority. The rusted metal plate of the car door came before my eyes—beyond it gaped the mouth of the tunnel, exactly 4.83 feet square. I could see the insect dealer’s light flickering up ahead. Why they had chosen that exact measurement I did not know. The entranceway itself had a steel frame, but from there on the walls were bare rock, still showing the marks of the power saw with which they had been carved out. At my feet were rusted rails, their width adjusted to that of the handcars used for hauling stone. The tunnel cut directly under the town road, and continued another sixteen feet. Directly above the inmost part was where my biological mother had run her tobacco store—the place, incidentally, where I was born.
    The farther in you went, the more pronounced the acoustical alteration: high-pitched sounds created mutual interference and were absorbed into the stone walls, leaving only the deep roar of low-pitched sounds. The howl of wind, the boom of waves, the singing of tires on the highway, all had a common denominator: the sound of a great wet canvas flapping in the wind.
    “Oh, no—the lock’s gone. Come have a look.” His voice was muffled, as if he were speaking over the telephone.
    “It’s over on the far left, as you stand facing the latch.”
    He was right. The padlock was gone. It was stainless steel, a fairly big one several inches across, so there was no way we could have missed it. Someone had opened the door. It could only be them. Since it was a padlock, just turning the key wasn’t enough; you had to remove the whole thing from its fastening. They certainly weren’t going to stop there and just take the thing home as a souvenir. I’d been invaded. Bitterly, I regretted the lack of a keyhole that would have let me peer inside. I sat cross-legged before the steel door and listened attentively. Such a mélange of sounds came to my ears that I could hear nothing.

7
    THE TRAPS AND THE TOILET
    “Looks like they’re here, after all. I’m glad we didn’t make that bet.” The insect dealer spoke in an undertone, wiping the sweat from under his chin with the tail of his shirt. In the process, his pale abdomen was exposed, revealing next to his navel a dark red birthmark the size of my palm.
    “I told you I wasn’t being an alarmist,” I said.
    “But is it really them?” he asked. “Couldn’t it be somebody else?”
    “Forget it. Who else has a key?”
    “But we didn’t see any cars parked along the way—and that shortcut would be impossible to figure out from a map.”
    “Maybe they took the train.”
    “Eh? You never said anything about a train.”
    “If you can get right on the express without waiting, it’s faster. Put out that light.”
    The door was heavy steel, nearly half an inch thick, so the burden on its hinges was great. There was a certain trick to opening it. You had to pull it toward you, then push it up diagonally to adjust the hingepin before it would swing open silently