Saburo is in a white military work tunic. He has a pickaxe over his shoulder. He starts shouting at them while they are still some distance off. He tells them they are on the front-line now, that they must develop the Yamamoto spirit, that the enemy could arrive at any time, right here, in Tokyo. ‘That sky,’ he bawls, pointing, ‘could turn black with enemy planes. We have to get ready for that! We have to get ready today!’ He glares at them, sucks in a deep breath, steadies himself, throws down his crutch and raises the pickaxe. After a dozen swings he looks round at Kyoko. ‘What are you waiting for?’
She starts to dig, tipping out with her shovel the ground he has broken. ‘You, too, Granny,’ says Saburo, roping together the two halves of an entrenching tool.
The neighbours neither move nor speak. The digging is very slow. After half an hour Mr Kawabata has to sit. An hour passes. The sweat drips from Saburo’s nose. He swings and falls, gets up and swings again. Kyoko, in her baggy trousers, shovels dully, competently, as if through a dung heap on her father’s farm. After two hours they stop. The old woman’s face is violently flushed.
Saburo addresses them again. ‘Trenches! Every household! Trenches to shelter in! Takano family, you have the biggest garden. You will set an example by digging the biggest trench. The deepest. Now go home. And remember, if you don’t want to roast, you better dig!’
Yuji helps Mr Kawabata to stand. Mrs Kawabata, wearing her women’s defence sash, is quietly weeping. ‘We’ll just have to roast,’ she says, once they have reached the safety of the street. ‘Old people like us won’t have a chance anyway. Excuse me,’ she says, ‘for saying something improper, but I hope it happens soon. After all, it’s not much to look forward to, is it?’
The neighbours, avoiding each other’s eyes, turn away to their houses.
Up in the sewing room, mid-afternoon, a woollen jacket over his knees, Yuji is allowing himself to drift towards sleep. Now he has the fire-watching, the days in the blue van, sleep is something he would like to store up, to have a reserve of to set against a future scarcity, for it seems inevitable now that he and everyone else is entering a time when they will peer at the world through the smoke-glass of an inassuagable fatigue. He lets the book (Les Fleurs du Mal) slide from his grip, lets his chin drop towards his chest, sighs, and sees, in the lasts instants of consciousness — the first, perhaps, of dreaming — a sun-cleaned image of Kyoko shovelling the earth in her garden, while the young cat, the absurdly named Foreign Girl, limps over the grass towards him.
When he wakes, coming to suddenly in the twilit room with no sense of how long he has slept, he feels oddly calm, sober and calm, as if, in sleep, some old difficulty has found an unexpected resolution, though what difficulty, what resolution, he cannot tell himself. He is stretched there, willing the moment to go on a little longer, when he hears noises from outside, from the garden, and turns his head sharply towards the platform door. He listens for a second, then scrambles to his feet, opens the door, and goes onto the platform. Saburo is leaning over the fence (what is he standing on?). He is leaning over the fence and shouting at Father.
‘You think I should come over and dig it for you? Are you afraid to get a blister on your hands? This is a final warning! If the trench is not started before nightfall . .’
And father says something back, a low voice, a slow voice. Whatever it is he says it leaves Saburo speechless.
Yuji hurries down the stairs, slips at the turn, bounces down the last few steps, almost knocks over Miyo. He meets Father at the door of the Western room. ‘Please excuse me,’ he says. ‘I ought to have started it. I will start immediately.’
He goes into the kitchen. Haruyo is steaming tofu for Mother’s evening meal. The look he gives her, loaded with rage, visibly unsettles her. He takes the lean-to key from its peg beside the door and goes out to the narrow path (the tradesmen’s path) that runs between the kitchen and the spindle hedge. He unlocks the lean-to. The air in there still tastes of summer, preserved somehow around the blades of tools, in the heat-warped wood of cobwebbed shelves. He chooses a mattock and walks through the garden holding it across his hips like a rifle. He should ask for Father’s advice, of course, for his instructions, but he starts to dig near the old pine stump, hacking at the ground until, after ten minutes, the muscles in his back begin to spasm. He crouches, brow against the mattock’s haft, cools off, then starts again, a slower, less angry rhythm that stops only when he can no longer clearly see his feet. If he is going to continue, he will need some light, and he is crossing the garden to fetch a lantern when Father summons him from the open door of the garden study. They go inside together.
‘I was just fetching a lantern,’ says Yuji.
‘Listen to me,’ says Father. He pauses. ‘I have phoned Kensuke. I have told him of our situation. I have told him I am no longer certain of my ability to protect your mother. Her tranquillity.’
‘You’re going to the farm?’
‘We will take the express on Wednesday.’
‘Wednesday!’
‘Tomorrow I will go to Setagaya. I will explain things.’
‘And me?’
‘You?’
‘You wish me to remain here?’
‘For us all to leave would draw . . unnecessary attention.’
‘I see.’
‘I have an obligation to your mother.’
‘Yes.’
‘If we stayed. If something happened . .’
‘When will you return?’
‘That will depend. Not, perhaps, until after the New Year. Do you need money?’
‘No.’
‘It may be easier for you when we have gone. I regret that we have not been able to help you more.’
‘I have been a burden to you . .’ says Yuji, mechanically.
‘You seem to be managing well enough these days.’
‘With Mr Fujitomi?’
‘You may end up a man of business, like your grandfather.’
‘It seems unlikely.’
‘Yes. Perhaps.’
‘It’s a long time since Mother travelled,’ says Yuji.
‘Yes,’ says Father. ‘Quite a long time.’
The window is a narrow rectangle a degree or so less utterly dark than the book-lined blackness of the study. Father has almost disappeared, can be seen only peripherally, as certain remote objects in the night sky are seen, by not looking at them directly. Again, they have come to the edge of a conversation, that long-postponed confessing that would begin — and either could begin it — with the words ‘After Ryuichi . .’. It might have freed them once (these two who have taken a certain pride in not speaking), but now, it seems, the time for it has passed. They have changed. They have been changed. Between them, the tilt of circumstance is quite different.
In the room the air is peppery against the lining of Yuji’s nose. He sniffs, dabs his nostrils with a finger. ‘The Wednesday express?’ he asks. For all he can see of Father, he might as well be speaking to himself.
4
Yuji is in the first car with Mother and Father. Haruyo and Miyo and most of the luggage are in the car behind. As the cars arrived late (held up by some parade in Iidabashi) and loading them took longer than expected, Father is fidgeting with the shirt cuff above his watch and scowling at the back of the driver’s head.