At night, medics enter the apartment of the main character to take his wife to the hospital. The ambulance drives off. Everything happens so quickly that neither the woman, nor the man – a nameless employer of a company producing sports shoes – is able to ask the crucial questions: who called the medics? Which hospital? She’s perfectly healthy, isn’t she?
The next day the man sets off to find his wife and arrives at a hospital that resembles a grotesque, Kafka-style labyrinth. Disguised as a security, he explores its corridors. The “residents” are constantly being surveilled and recorded by listening devices. Everyone – with no exceptions – is full of sexual desires which is also carefully studied by the medical stuff, supervised by the Horse-man.
Sounds macabre? Mysterious? Metaphysical? You’ll find all the elements in Kōbō Abe’s writing and it depends on you – the reader – how deep you want to go into this world and what your interpretation will be.
