Secret Rendezvous (Vintage International) - Softcover

Abe, Kobo

 
9780375726545: Secret Rendezvous (Vintage International)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0375726543 ISBN 13: 9780375726545
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

From the acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes comes Secret Rendezvous, the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital.

From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters. Within a few days, though no closer to finding his wife, the unnamed narrator finds himself appointed the hospital’s chief of security, reporting to a man who thinks he’s a horse. With its nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is another masterpiece from Japan’s most gifted and original writer of serious fiction.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924, grew up in Manchuria, and returned to Japan in his early twenties. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Before his death in 1993, Abe was considered his country's foremost living novelist, and was also widely known as a dramatist. His novels have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been best sellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, Kangaroo Notebook, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, and The Ruined Map.

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laimed author of Woman in the Dunes comes Secret Rendezvous, the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital.
From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters. Within a few days, though no closer to finding his wife, the unnamed narrator finds himself appointed the hospital’s chief of security, reporting to a man who thinks he’s a horse. With its nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is another masterpiece from Japan’s most gifted and original writer of serious ficti

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Sex:  Male
Name: (omitted)
Code number: M-73F
Age:  32
Height: 1.76 meters
Weight: 59 kilograms

Thin at first glance, but muscular. Wears contact lenses for mild near-sightedness in both eyes. Slightly frizzy hair. Inconspicuous scar at left corner of mouth (from a quarrel during student days, although the subject is extremely mild-tempered). Smokes under ten cigarettes daily. Special talent is roller skating. Has worked temporarily as male nude model. Currently employed at Subaru Sporting Goods Store. Director of sales promotion for jump shoes (sporting shoes with special elastic body--air-bubble springs--built into soles). Hobby is tinkering with machines. In sixth grade, won a bronze medal in newspaper-sponsored inventor contest.

This report contains the results of an investigation of the above man. Since it is not apparently meant for publication, I won't adhere strictly to form.

Before dawn, at around ten minutes past four, as I recall, I went as scheduled to the site of the old army target practice range to take the horse his dinner, and while there was suddenly entrusted with this assignment. Since I had been about to insist that the investigation be moved into full gear anyway, I was not particularly upset. But the investigation I'd had in mind concerned the whereabouts of my wife. Unfortunately, at that point there were no indications of any kind regarding the person to be investigated, not even as to sex, and so naturally I assumed my wishes had been respected. Usually an investigation confers certain powers on the one in command; it seemed possible that at last I had won that much confidence.

Besides, the horse was in uncommonly good spirits this morning. He said he had trotted around and around the well-trodden 248-meter-long target range, managing to complete eight laps in all. During the whole time he claimed to have fallen down only three times; if true, it was quite a feat.

"In short, the trick is to run just with your two hind legs." Breathing hard between words, he wiped the sweat from his face with a towel wrapped around his neck, gulped down in a single draught the carton of milk I had brought, then stood up proudly on his hind legs and gave a little skip. "You see, I end up using my front legs, from force of habit. That's the problem right there. To run like a horse, you've got to leave all the kick up to your hind legs, and just throw in the forelegs as a kind of rudder."

We were on the impact side of the indoor target range, which stretched out on an east-west axis, long and cavernous. High along the walls at the ceiling's edge, fixed-sash skylights were lined up like train windows, but still it was quite dark. By the wall straight ahead of us were layers of sandbags, directly in front of which was a deep trench used in manipulating the targets. On either side of the trench were big lighting fixtures, also used in target practice. Their slanting rays were all that illuminated the enclosure. The west end, where the firing positions were, was like a black hole. When the horse skipped, a double shadow stretched out long and thin across the dry, white ground, like insects struggling in a spider's web.

Since the fellow was obviously convinced that he was a horse, I didn't contradict him to his face, but he was a far cry from the real thing. His balance was all off. His trunk was short and dumpy, with the hips lowered and the hind legs bent as though he were squatting over the toilet. At that rate, not even a paper saddle would have stayed put. However charitable I tried to be, at best he looked like a rickety baby camel, or a four-legged ostrich.

To make matters worse, above the waist he had on a blue tank top edged in dark red, while-below the waist, in front and back, he had on navy-blue sweat pants and heavy white sneakers. Around his waist he had wrapped enough bleached cotton cloth to hide the gap between his top and his pants. It was altogether tasteless.

"Actually, now that you mention it, that's how it is with bicycles, too, isn't it? You have to apply the brakes to the rear wheel first, or going downhill it's dangerous."

"Anyway, at this rate who knows. Maybe by tomorrow I'll be able to hop around in a pair of jump shoes!"

The horse gave a short laugh; I did not join in. The echo of his laughter reverberated emptily in the air, passing by like a puff of breath. The structure of the ceiling, arches alternating with square blocks, was evidently intended to muffle sound, but it had little effect. Maybe they had built it that way to keep from using pillars.

After gulping down a ham-and-lettuce sandwich, barely chewing, the horse sipped on a cup of sugarless coffee from a thermos. He told me he wanted to stay a little longer and go on practicing. With his appearance in the founding day celebration only four days off, he seemed fairly nervous. He is evidently determined to keep his own existence a secret until then, for greater effect, but he has nothing to worry about; nobody would be crazy enough to go poking around a firing range at such an odd hour.

I was just leaving when he asked me to take charge of the investigation. Casually, he handed me a notebook and three cassette tapes. The notebook was a large one with fine-quality paper--the very notebook I am writing in now. The labels on the backs of the tapes all bore the code M-73F, with serialized numbers; he explained that they contained records of wiretapping and other means used in tracking the object of the investigation.

I couldn't help feeling suspicious. All along, with information about my wife in hand, they had been pretending to know nothing! I was enraged, and yet relieved at this evidence that somehow their plans had changed. In any case, three days had already gone by since she disappeared. It was impossible to sit still any longer. I hurried back to my room, sat down, and played the tapes through from start to finish. It took just over two hours. After listening to them all, I spent another hour or so just sitting and staring into space.

My expectations were betrayed. Nowhere in those recordings was there the slightest trace of my wife. In fact, there was no trace of any woman, let alone my wife. The one being minced, peeled, and poked at by wiretaps and shadowers was a man. A man on display, torn into fragments of tongue-clucking, throat-clearing, off-key humming, chewing, entreaties, hollow obsequious laughter, belches, sniffling, timid excuses. . . . And that man was none other than I myself, running around in frantic circles seeking my vanished wife.

Gradually, consternation gave way to indignation. Of all the asinine tricks. I could only think that I was being ridiculed. "If you want to find your wife, first find yourself"--was that what the horse was trying to say? Unfortunately, I only wanted to know where she was, nothing so very complicated. Looking for my own whereabouts would be like a pickpocket filching his own wallet, or a detective slipping handcuffs on himself. No thanks, I could do without the moralizing at this point.

On top of everything else, the horse has made me agree to some rather strange conditions. For example, to keep me from twisting facts to my own advantage, he insists that I undergo a lie detector test at any time, on demand. Also, he wants me to avoid personal pronouns as far as possible, and to write in the third person. In other words, I'm supposed to refer to myself as "the man," and to him as "the horse." Is he trying to put a gag on me, and keep me from dealing directly with anyone but himself? What is he so jittery about?

But finally, in fact, I have begun to write. Nor is...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375726543
ISBN 13 
9780375726545
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
192
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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