It was exactly the same smile—the embodiment of Ippei’s new character—that Kōji had first seen following his release from prison, and for the first time he felt he understood what it meant. He had been rejected, forced out by that smile.
There was something about Ippei’s smile that reminded him of that serene hourglass that had come and gone amid the billowing steam of the dirty prison bathhouse. Struck with fear, Kōji embraced Yūko. He gazed at her cold, meek face and her closed eyes as she lay in his arms. He kissed those lips, working in vain to rid his mind at once of the image of Ippei’s smile. But this time the kiss had lost completely its exquisite taste.
When he came to, the sky had clouded over. Being unprepared for bad weather, they tidied their things away in silence, helped one another to their feet, and thought about the long and arduous trek home through the rain. Yūko carried the empty picnic hamper on the return journey.
Chapter 4
One particular evening after the end of the rainy season, Kōji found himself drinking alone in the only bar in the village. Lately, he had been coming here often on his own. The worse his estrangement from the villagers became, the more he came deliberately into the middle of the village to drink. And when the young villagers, who had returned in dribs and drabs at the end of the fishing season, heard the rumors about Kōji’s prison record, this only served to heighten their curiosity and their desire to become his drinking companions. Kōji’s crime became the relish for their beer—like a meritorious deed carried out on the field of battle in days gone by.
Even now, when he came down to the village from the Kusakado greenhouse, the sight of the star-filled midsummer night sky never ceased to amaze him. It was altogether different from the sky one saw in the city. Those innumerable stars were like a huge blanket of shiny mildew growing across the heavens.
It was a dark night in the village, with the brightest lights belonging to the last bus stopping at Toi at 8:45 p.m. and the occasional passing truck, their headlights shining mercilessly as they played on the rows of old houses standing alongside the prefectural highway.
The bus was supposed to run once an hour, but sometimes two or three came one after another in succession, or else nothing came along at all for two hours or more. Each time these large vehicles passed by, the rows of houses would vibrate like old chests of drawers, and then, when the bus stopped at the central crossroads and discharged its load of passengers, the local youths—who had been enjoying the cool of the evening on the roadside—teasingly greeted the familiar faces they recognized.
Even at night, there were a couple of fairly well-lit ice shops, with general menus displaying items like watermelons, lemonade, and Chinese noodles. They even had televisions, and the young villagers would congregate there to watch a baseball game or boxing match.
The bar, Storm Petrel, stood alone on the northern fringes of the run of stores, isolated from the others, and gave out all the more a dim light in the dark town. It was a crude hut with blue-painted panel walls; the sign, in English, should have displayed “Storm Petrel,” but the painter had mistaken the spelling and instead it read “Storm Pertel.”
But nobody criticized this oversight, and even the proprietor didn’t mind, so the black lettering, which was now covered in dust from the passing buses, had soon taken on an aged appearance.
Several dozen empty beer bottles were piled up to one side of the entrance. Despite the heat, the windows were closed in by crimson curtains.
Now and then, a popular song played in the background. The twenty-square-yard interior was bathed in a dim red light and looked a little shady. There was no barmaid, so the husband and wife proprietors had to take drinks orders themselves. There were just a few plain tables and chairs scattered about the room.
In one corner, a token stand-up bar had been installed, with an electric fan above it, and there was a tabby cat that, despite having its tail yanked constantly by the younger customers, only ever reacted by wearily changing its sleeping position.
It was early, and the regular customers hadn’t yet gathered. Kōji swapped gossip about Teijirō’s daughter, Kimi, with the owner. Kimi hadn’t stayed with her father at all during her ten-day vacation from the instrument factory in Hamamatsu. She had stayed the first night in a room of her own at the Kusakado greenhouse, and after that she lodged at the Seitōkan—an inn owned by her relatives. Teijirō himself had hardly spoken a word to his daughter, despite her long absence.
It seemed there were some ill feelings between them that nobody had previously been aware of. They had lived together, quite happily on the face of it, for some time after her mother had died.
Then one day Kimi suddenly left home and went to work as a factory girl in Hamamatsu; her father closed up the house and went to live at the Kusakado greenhouse, where a gardener was needed. Since his arrival in the village, Kōji hadn’t heard any stories about Teijirō’s daughter from Teijirō himself.
Not only was Kimi beautiful but she also knew it, and she let everyone else know it, too. The village girls and ordinary locals considered her presence a nuisance.
Before Kimi came home, several girls would come along with the local young men to drink at the Storm Petrel. But once she returned, she became the only female customer in the place.
Before long, this otherwise reputable drinking establishment—which had never before suffered any kind of moral censure—came to be seen as a place of ill repute.
This sudden decline in reputation in a matter of a few days was a remarkable change, and yet Kimi was not the sort of woman to behave flirtatiously.
Matsukichi, a fisherman, and Kiyoshi, a member of the Self-Defense Forces, both Kimi’s childhood friends, quarreled over her. But so far, there was no indication that she had given herself to either of them.
Kimi owned a ukulele. She carried this brand-new item—the manufacture of which she had been partly responsible for—wherever she went. Occasionally, while drinking, she would strum the instrument and sing. From deep within her bosom (which was the largest among all the girls in the village), from the bottom of the ashen gloom that drifted up from the flesh of her breasts, her voice rose up like a bucket in a well, brimming with abundant quantities of water, and those around soon forgot how poor her singing really was.
At around 9:00 p.m., Kimi, Matsukichi, and Kiyoshi came into the bar together with three other youngsters, and with their arrival, the peaceful evening in the Storm Petrel came to an end.
Kiyoshi called over to Kōji, who moved away from the bar and joined them at their table.
As usual, Kimi had her ukulele. The distant breeze from the electric fan blew her stray hairs about as she drank a highball and explained, in a businesslike manner, how the ukulele was manufactured.
First of all, the various parts are laid out in order: the mahogany sound board, the maple sides, and the neck. A groove is introduced into the sound board with a cutter and the circumference of the sound hole is then decorated with celluloid inlay. This was Kimi’s job.
The sides of the gourd-shaped body were formed by boiling the wooden boards and then bending them into shape using an electric press mold.
There were also more intricate stages of the manufacturing process, such as attaching the linings and plastic bindings, and sanding the edges of the ukulele’s body. But the task that demanded the highest degree of technical skill was attaching the neck to the body, and this was a job undertaken by fastidious craftsmen.
Once the rosewood fret board had been glued on, the instrument was polished with cloth before being sent to be lacquered. After the body assumes its perfectly polished finished form, four nylon strings are attached to complete the instrument—and the ukulele is ready to produce its first sound.