Читать книгу Distant Thunder - Wahei Tatematsu - Страница 6

THE VINYL sweat under the blinding sunlight. A close inspection would have revealed a rainbow sparkling in each of the microscopic beads of water. When gravity no longer supported them, droplets fell like white-hot tears. Mitsuo peeled off his sweat-drenched T-shirt and draped it over a steel pipe which hung overhead. Steam rose from the sweatstains. He carelessly touched the blazing pipe with his hand and recoiled as his flesh sizzled.

All afternoon the sunshine had been intense, perhaps the strongest all year. The tomato roots bit deep into the earth, power surging into the branches and producing large, pendulous fruit. In contrast, outdoor tomato crops remained in the seedling stage. Mitsuo twisted the thermometer out of the ground and took a reading. Hurriedly, he opened the skylight and rolled up the vinyl away from ground level. A gentle breeze blew in, and he smelled the sultry tang of the earth. A radio hanging from one of the pipes droned a monotonous violin composition.

With the vinyl stripped away, the nearby apartment complex rose into view. Thirty of the brand-new concrete structures stood like blocks. Mitsuo had no idea how many people lived there. Random apartment noises drifted over with the breeze.

While running a hose over the plants, Mitsuo stared at the color of the soil, gauging the amount of water seeping in. The length of the roots depended on how deep the water penetrated the soil. He knew that with water and additional fertilizer the tomatoes would ripen. Mitsuo felt that his lifeblood now ran through every centimeter of the two thousand square meters of the hothouse. He couldn't let this second year's crop be a failure. Last year, he had used too many hormones and the plants hadn't pollinated fully, resulting in seedless and hollow fruit. A completely worthless crop.

Three women approached and peered through the opening in the vinyl. The shadows of the leaf clusters hid Mitsuo from their sight. He stood on tiptoe and saw ankles outside the hothouse.

"Whaddaya want?"

The women were startled by the sudden burst from an unexpected direction. Mitsuo appeared out of the shadows. Once again the women recoiled, seeing him stripped to the waist. At every step of his approach, his rubber-soled boots squished in the mud.

The woman standing in the middle pasted an ingratiating smile on her face. "Well hello there. How about selling us some of your tomatoes? We'll pay a fair price. They look so juicy, and they smell wonderful."

The women held their breath, awaiting Mitsuo's reaction. Their clean palms sparkled as they touched the vinyl. Mitsuo narrowed his eyes at them and barked, "Come on in."

They moved to enter, and Mitsuo realized they were holding children by the hand. The apartment buildings shimmered in the distance as though resting in a pool of water.

"Oh, the heat in here is awful!" the women exclaimed as they stepped inside. Their shoes sank into the muddy soil.

"Children, don't scratch at the tomatoes! You'll ruin them," one mother said.

"This place is fantastic! So this is how tomatoes are grown. You farmers really go to a lot of trouble for us."

The hothouse was suddenly full of commotion. Mitsuo continued watering, irritated by the smell of cosmetics.

"They're like red light bulbs!" one of the children yelled shrilly.

Mitsuo decided that was an interesting thought. People judged by color. He'd sell them the ripe ones, too far gone for shipment.

"The ones you buy in the supermarket are just going rotten," he said. "They look like tomatoes, but they've got no taste. They're green when we send em out of here, and it's three days before you eat em. Take a close look. Color's the same, but the shine's completely different."

Mitsuo was surprised at his talkativeness. He had never seen any of these apartment women except from a distance. They sent their husbands off to work early each morning, then sleepwalked through the rest of the day in their sundrenched buildings, watching their children play or standing around chatting. Some of them were attractive enough, but when he imagined what they must think of him in his working clothes, Mitsuo found it hard to strike up a conversation.

"A group of us talked it over, and we're here as representatives. Or as a suicide squad, considering how scary everyone thinks you are."

The same woman who had spoken first stood directly in front of Mitsuo. Her hair was tinted a light red. The color spread through it unevenly; no doubt it had once been dyed an even darker shade. The child she held by the wrist struggled to get free.

"This ain't a tourist spot, you know," Mitsuo felt it necessary to remind her.

"Give us a discount. We're neighbors, after all."

"Neighbors, huh?" The hose twisted about his feet. He turned off the faucet, wiped his hands with the towel slung from his waist and jerked his chin at the women. "All right, I'll sell you some. You bring anything to carry em with?"

"Doing us a favor, huh? Well, we'll play along."

The other women timidly held out shopping bags in Mitsuo's direction. They stood as though prepared to flee if necessary.

The red-haired woman said, "We'll give them a try if you sell them for three hundred yen." The outline of her figure was plainly visible through the material of her cheap house-dress. Mitsuo pulled pruning shears from his waist pocket and snipped four of the red fruit from vines close at hand. The woman took the tomatoes in both hands and sniffed them. Mitsuo cut off one more and handed it to her. She shrugged her shoulders and placed the tomatoes in a bag which her child held open for her. Mitsuo did the same for the other two women, and soon felt nine one-hundred yen pieces warming his palm.

The visitors receded into the distance, their shadows shimmering through the moist vinyl. Gazing through it, Mitsuo focused on their figures as they marched across the grass. Heat rose hazily from the roofs of the four-story buildings. The concrete seemed on the verge of melting. Far in the distance, snow-peaked mountains glistened in the sun. The hothouse sparkled in seeming union with the hills.

Everything changes; only the mountains remain. Two years before, the land now occupied by the apartment complex had been a swatch of paddies, chestnut groves, and trees of all kinds, teeming with plant and animal life. A lattice of fields had spread over the tree-surrounded valley, cut through by the river. The neat, attractive fields had been lovingly cultivated through the generations. The rice harvest was always plentiful. Mitsuo used to work all day with his parents to plow, weed, plant, and harvest the fields, the villagers hollering gossip to each other when they came within shouting distance. In the evenings, Mitsuo set fish traps in the water channels and by morning would have a netful of tiny crucian carp and loach. Sometimes, carp weighing a full kilogram would somehow wedge themselves inside the traps.

Then the prefecture decided to locate an apartment complex and a manufacturing center there. Offered fistfuls of money, the villagers rushed to sell their land. The family conferred with Mitsuo's older brother Tetsuo, a banker in Tokyo, who indifferently advised them to sell if the offer were high enough. With everyone else selling, they could hardly continue farming by themselves. The others would assume they were selfishly holding out for a better deal.

The bulldozers came in waves, uprooting the trees, carving the land, and burying the fields. The chestnut groves were destroyed, the river diverted, the land flattened. Buildings rose from the earth like piles of timber. Trucks came loaded with goods, and new residents followed. The builders widened the old country lanes and paved them with asphalt. Soon they were covered by an endless stream of cars. Supermarkets, sushi bars, and night clubs suddenly materialized. The transformation was utterly astonishing.

As part of the bargain, Mitsuo and his parents were given jobs in the new candy plant. His brother the banker said that since they had money coming in they should leave their savings untouched. Mitsuo drove a van, delivering the candy to wholesalers in town, while his parents supervised the cleaning crew. But with plenty of cash at hand, the family soon saw no reason to endure the grind. The three of them quit at the same time. The other former villagers did the same. Mitsuo built a hothouse on the tiny plot of land that his family still owned. He wasn't particular about what he grew: tomatoes, celery, flowers, anything would be fine. He just wanted to farm again.

"Wow! Hey, everybody, over here! Come on, there's nothing to be scared of." Following the voice, a stream of women with shopping bags flowed into the hothouse. There were ten of them in all. Mitsuo shut off the radio. Charging along the furrows were half a dozen kids, sounding like a river of falling pebbles.

"They're fresh, but they don't come cheap," said a short, plump woman, smiling. The women stroked the tomatoes as though petting a dog's belly.

"Don't touch! You'll damage em and they'll rot." The women's eyes narrowed at Mitsuo's rebuke. The plump woman maintained her smile, which wrinkled up about her eyes, and stepped toward Mitsuo.

"Watch your kids," Mitsuo said. "I've got pesticides over there. Your darlings get covered with em and they're dead." A hubbub erupted, the women screaming out the names of their own children as they ran toward them. This ain't a field trip, he thought.

The plump woman dragged her wriggling child up to Mitsuo and said, out of breath, "We heard you were very nice. Handsome, too." Sweat ran over her makeup, and her lipstick was starting to cake. Her daughter thrashed about in her arms, and Mitsuo could see past the child's red skirt and up her fleshy legs to her panties. The other women came up with their own kids.

"Three hundred yen. You'll never find a better price. Just stand right here and open your bags." Mitsuo waved his arms, forming the women into a line, then cut five ripe tomatoes for each, choosing ones similar in size. The women all looked Mitsuo straight in the face as they held the bags open to receive the fruit. Mitsuo wondered for a moment if the women truly found him handsome but decided they were only schemers out for a lower price. Warning the children to wash the fruit before eating, he presented one small, overripe tomato to each.

Darkness began to fall over the tomato plants. A cool breeze whispered upon Mitsuo's skin. He rolled down the vinyl and the undulating leaves immediately fell motionless. He washed the spade and locked the hothouse door. He didn't know why he bothered locking it; anybody who wanted to get inside could just cut through the vinyl. He stepped outside to the powerful scent of grass. His body was sunburnt, and his blood pulsed like froth on a wave. Headlights of a car bringing someone home from work danced before his eyes, blinding him momentarily.

The asphalt road, spreading like a black belt, passed straight through the garden and divided his family's remaining land into two sections. The main building of his home stood on the other side of the road, tiled roofs looming large against the twilight sky. Light was visible only from the living room, where Mitsuo's grandmother lay on the sofa watching television. Gaudy colors streamed from the set. The family had poured a fortune into the house, still less than a year old. The results were truly magnificent, but with the rest of the neighborhood equally parvenu, the house in no way stood out. The engineering firm had egged the former villagers on, everyone competing to build the most gorgeous residence. Rosewood went to make the pillars of the ornamental alcove, pressed cedar the floors, and Taiwanese marble the living room mantlepiece. They had also had a chandelier installed. Switching on the lights created a rainbow effect. One consultant had advised them that a truly splendid house demands top-grade material through and through, even in places one doesn't ordinarily look. Accordingly, not one sheet of plywood was used in the construction. Since the family rarely entertained, everyone had a private room. To prevent yellowing of the tatami and to inhibit mold from growing on the mats and the walls, the sliding doors of most of the rooms were always kept shut.

The rag Mitsuo had spread out to dry by the front door that morning was clean and stiff. He rinsed it at the hand pump by the storage shed, wiped his feet, and stepped into the hallway. He passed from room to room, switching on the lights. The wet soles of his feet stuck to the floor. Although the cedar was of the highest quality, it hadn't dried completely before being laid. In consequence, the wood was beginning to warp and the varnish was wearing off. The living room tatami was grimy with dust, which felt like spider webs on Mitsuo's feet. The bathroom and kitchen were no cleaner than the other rooms.

The din from the TV roared through the house. Mitsuo thrust open the mahogany door of the living room, and music screamed off the walls. Angrily he yelled, "Granma, where's dinner?"

Granma slowly straightened herself on the sofa. Blue Hawaiian surf leapt from the screen beyond her wrinkled cheeks. "It's on the kitchen table. There's fried mackerel, and you can heat up the miso soup." Her voice quavered over several octaves in one sentence. She'd covered the leather sofa with a futon.

"You've been watching that damn thing all day, haven't you?"

"Did you say something?" Granma frowned and tilted her ear toward her grandson. She hardly ever bathed, leaving her white hair dull and her ears filled with wax. Mucus clotted the corners of her eyes.

"Keep watching TV like that and your cataracts are only gonna get worse!" Mitsuo tossed her a towel to clean her eyes, but it fell on the floor. It had been wrapped around his neck all day and reeked of sweat. The towel looked filthy against the green carpet. Granma's nod conveyed nothing. She shrank into the futon as she lay down again. Mitsuo suddenly felt famished and threw the door open behind him. It was as though the racket from the TV were holding the door back.

Splatters of mud traced a path up the white walls. Although Mitsuo was in the habit of washing his feet and hands at the pump after work, his dirt-streaked work clothes always brushed against the walls. A van pulled into the garden and Mitsuo's mother, Tomiko, got out. Mitsuo heard her say, "See you tomorrow." The clamor from the TV failed to drown out the sound of thin, gum-soled work shoes treading the earth. It had to be more than one person.

"Michi, I'm home." Mitsuo went to greet his mother at the front door. His best friend Koji stood there, in shorts and a T-shirt. Tomiko entered the hallway with a supermarket paper bag. She beckoned Koji to come in.

"It's good to have dinner together once in a while. I got to thinking about how it used to be. Let's all have a beer. I bought all kinds of snacks to go with it."

Mitsuo joined his mother in waving Koji in. Koji said, "OK," dusted himself off, and lumbered in. Tomiko bent down, still holding the bag, and arranged her shoes and Mitsuo's rubber boots. Leek and Japanese radish leaves protruded from the top of the bag. What's the world coming to when farmers buy their vegetables? Mitsuo thought.

Tomiko yelled into the living room through the half-open mahogany door, "Granma, you're going to drive us crazy with that TV! Think about other people for a change." She waited until the sound grew inaudible, then closed the door. The sudden silence pounded in Mitsuo's ears. His mother had temporarily solved one problem, but Mitsuo knew she'd only created another, since she would now have to do the cooking tomorrow. He stepped into the kitchen and heard the hum of the refrigerator motor. He pulled out three beers and lined them up. Instantly, beads of moisture formed on the bottles.

"Construction work's a bitch, ain't it," said Mitsuo.

Mitsuo filled Koji's cup, then his own. Each man had dirt beneath his fingernails.

"Naw, it's easy. All you need's a body." Koji gulped his beer and exhaled deeply. "But the first month was tough as hell, even though I've always done farm work. I found muscles I never knew I had. But they toughen up, and you're set for life."

"You gonna do it all your life?"

"Hell, I dunno. Got those fields of mine, ya know. Can't get it done without machines, though. Gonna get a bulldozer's license, go to a training school for it."

"Koji, that's wonderful!" Tomiko said. "No one else has as much energy as you. You know, there's no need for you to work so hard on the crew. The pay's the same no matter how much you do." Tomiko cleared away the newspaper from the tabletop and sliced the mackerel, placing one piece on each man's plate. The fish was tough and cold. There was no telling when it had been fried. In the course of chewing, the fibers separated and became stuck between the teeth, requiring beer to rinse them out.

"Ah, this is just like old times. Koji, you used to come for dinner every night. If it weren't for you, Michi would've never made it through childhood. He was so thin, and you made him eat three bowls of rice to keep up with you."

Tomiko took a cup and sat facing Koji. The sweat glistened on her sunburnt face. In elementary school, Mitsuo had hardly eaten anything and was often sick. It took him a full hour to traverse the paths along the fields and arrive at school. Concerned, Tomiko invited Koji, with his enormous appetite, to come for dinner every night, giving Mitsuo a competitor in eating. The two boys were in the same grade, but Koji was as powerful as a tractor. The boys in the upper grades couldn't match him. He fought like a madman, even against the biggest and strongest boys, attacking with stones at hand until his combatants were covered with blood. He did it quickly, too; no one ever had a chance to apologize before the blows came. Mitsuo, who never went anywhere without Koji, couldn't recall being bullied by older kids.

Tomiko tore open the paper bag and bit open packets of dried squid and peanuts. Something in a red packet caught Mitsuo's eye, and he reached for it. It was artificially colored cod roe.

"You're really popular, Auntie. The men all say you're like one of the boys, the kind of jokes you tell. I've known you twenty years now, but I never guessed you were so down-to-earth." Koji tossed a fistful of peanuts into his mouth as he spoke. Tomiko giggled, showing her gold teeth.

Mitsuo clicked his teeth in displeasure. "You go around telling dirty jokes, huh? That makes you just as bad as your husband."

Tomiko ignored her son's comments and smiled at Koji with her chin in her hands. "I may look like a worker in these clothes, but I don't do a tenth of the work Koji does. I just do traffic control. They've got those one-way streets at construction sites, right? I just hold up red or green flags, telling cars to stop or go."

"Wow, that's some power you've got there." Mitsuo poked his finger through the plastic wrap surrounding the cod roe and peeled away one long strip of it from the styrofoam packaging. He dropped the roe into his mouth and discovered it was far too salty. Feeling suddenly nauseated, he quickly washed the saltiness down with a long pull on his beer.

"It's a great feeling. Like I'm a cop or something." Tomiko's sunburnt face reddened as she drank her beer. Mitsuo sucked at the roe jammed between his teeth, then brought up something he had wanted to ask. "Ma, how about giving me a hand shipping the tomatoes? I could really use the help."

"I promised the foreman I'd be there. If I walk out, who's going to wave the flags? Everyone'll have to shift jobs." She smiled at Koji, seeking his complicity. I blew it, Mitsuo thought. I should have said I'd pay her wages. Tomiko wiped the sweat from the corners of her eyes with a muddy towel. The TV began blaring once more, and her expression changed.

Mitsuo said, "I'm gonna take a bath. I sweat my ass off working in that hothouse all day, and it puts me in a bad mood."

"When old people don't like something they just do whatever they damn well please." Gulping down the remainder of her beer, Tomiko went to draw a bath. The men heard splashing water. Mitsuo crammed cold rice into his mouth and drowned it in beer. Taste didn't matter so long as the hunger disappeared. Koji helped himself to his third bowl of rice.

"'Bout a dozen of them apartment women came to the hothouse today, looking to buy tomatoes. Looked like they wanted something else, too. Who knows, I may score with one of em."

"The hell you say," Koji roared, lifting his unshaven face. "Send one my way, too."

"If you ain't working with me, you ain't gonna get a chance. Come help me out tomorrow. With just me there, I'm too busy to make friends, know what I mean?"

"I'll be there." Koji laughed and licked his lips, which shone.

The phone rang. They heard running footsteps, then Tomiko's voice saying, "Hello? Ah, it's you Tetsuo. It's been a while."

Mitsuo licked his lips in turn. A gritty, salty aftertaste remained on his tongue. Again he saw the group of women who'd come in the sticky afternoon heat, tugging their children behind them. He imagined taking one of the women into the hothouse and stripping her in the shadows of the tomato plants. Thoughts of his own rippling power excited him. In his fantasy, a child stood off to one side, crying its eyes out.

"I can't stand it; I've got too much energy left. Let's go into town." Mitsuo placed both palms upon the table and stood. Table crumbs stuck to his skin. Koji remained seated calmly, and clamped his hands on Mitsuo's.

"Let's get clean first. Looking like day laborers ain't gonna get us anywhere."

Tomiko returned from the bath and popped the tab on a fresh can of beer. She tottered back into her chair, folded her arms on the table, and looked at her son and Koji one after the other. "Well, drink up. Let's enjoy ourselves tonight, the three of us."

"Got something to do. Me and Koji're goin' out." Mitsuo averted his glance from his mother's face. Silence. He stuck out his hand to take another piece of cod roe, but left it where it was, just scratching at it with his fingernail. He felt a gelid sensation on his fingertips. The thin layer of film over the blood vessels burst, and the roe broke apart into bright red clumps.

A horn sounded in the garden. Koji had modified the muffler of his Skyline, and the engine roared thunderously, like a large truck. Mitsuo pulled on a clean pair of jeans, jammed a comb in his wet hair, and headed outside. A cool breeze played upon his bronzed cheeks. In the headlights, the hothouse appeared to be on fire. The tomatoes burned black and flames danced on the leaves.

Koji leaned his shoulder out of the car window and yelled, "Hey lady-killer, you should've dried your hair."

Mitsuo opened the door with a soft, white, wrinkled finger. Koji shot away before Mitsuo had completely settled in his seat, and the door slammed shut on its own. The glass in the passenger's window fogged almost instantly, and Mitsuo lowered the window to dry his hair in the rush of wind. It would be dry by the time they hit town.

"Have to do the planting. It's only one acre, so it'll be done in two days. If you help me, that is." Koji's words spurted from his mouth in unison with the vibrations of the car. Each time they rounded a curve, the headlights brought the roadside thickets to life. Koji never slowed, and his sharp jerks on the wheel drew squeals from the tires. He whistled. "How about stopping in on your papa?"

"Don't wanna see his face." Mitsuo slapped Koji's hand off his shoulder. Koji pretended to lose control of the car, jerking wildly on the steering wheel. They continued winding down the road.

"What does your mother think about your old man? You wouldn't believe how she gets off on telling those dirty stories. She's tough. Everyone likes her."

"She's just putting on an act."

The lights of the town appeared through the darkness, moving right and left as the road curved one way or another. The sky above was a fiery red. The sight reminded Mitsuo of his older brother who'd called earlier asking for money. Scrounging for the down payment on a house, Tetsuo was still three million yen short. As the eldest son, he claimed he was entitled to a share of the money from the sale of the family land. As far as Mitsuo was concerned, Tetsuo was lucky it had been their mother who had answered the phone. He himself would have told his brother straight off that if Tetsuo's head wasn't up his ass he'd know their father had left home two months ago, taking the bankbook and the family seal with him.

Just when the weather had turned, bringing a cold, dry and dusty wind, the old man had stopped coming home. He rented an apartment in town and set up a love nest with his mistress. At first, Mitsuo had given them a week at most. How long could it take the fool to realize she was interested only in his cash?

The car crossed an interchange. Along the sides of the road signs studded with yellow lightbulbs flashed in the darkness, advertising a gas station and a restaurant. The surroundings were getting brighter. They crossed a river. The surface of the water reflected the windows of the nearby buildings.

Mitsuo got out in front of the sturdy front gate of the elementary school. The gate was always left unlocked, and ever since the town had started taking shape the schoolyard had doubled as a parking lot. The surrounding neon made the blackness seem like a swamp, and Mitsuo had hesitated a moment before finally stepping out.

On the main street a pack of men in suits sang drunken melodies, their arms laced around each others' necks. Mitsuo bounced energetically along, feeling excitement in each step he took.

Koji seemed excited, too. He said, "A man needs to get into town every now and then, eh?"

"Yeah, we're too young to be country bumpkins."

"Hey fellas, come have fun in here." A man in a black suit with a bow tie put an arm around each of their shoulders in feigned geniality. His breath stank of curry. He raised his little finger and stuck it in front of Mitsuo's nose, at the same time elbowing him in the side.

Koji said, "We'll have a drink. Hey, we're still sober!"

"Drinking's better with a pretty girl to flirt with. All the beer you can drink for five thousand yen." The man stood in front of Mitsuo and held up the five fingers of one hand. Mitsuo folded back two of the fingers. The man re-extended one and pressed it against Mitsuo, "OK, four thousand yen for the both of you. It's a deal."

Mitsuo walked with one arm pressed on the man's shoulder. "I'm telling you, I'm telling you," the man repeated, meaninglessly, jabbing Mitsuo in the side.

Koji came up from the other side and leaned on the man's remaining shoulder. "Remember, it's four thousand yen for the both of us." The men stumbled along like entrants in a three-legged race.

As they walked, Mitsuo asked the guide, whose hair was now dyed in neon, "Where are you taking us?"

"The finest cabaret in Japan."

Men in short pink coats walked about clapping their hands to attract customers. The names of various establishments were printed on their coats. One said to Mitsuo and Koji, "Say, you men look like you could be with a woman night and day. How about it?" Their own guide urged them forward.

Women dressed in negligees, mini skirts, and nurse uniforms stood beside the blinking lights of the entrance of their destination, beckoning them inside. Light bulbs in five colors illuminated the arch-shaped door, though the stairway down was murky. The man continued using all his strength to push Mitsuo and Koji forward. He seemed to regard them as prey, and his hunt unfinished until he'd shoved them down the hole of the entrance and slammed the door behind them.

Ear-piercing sound greeted them inside. Once in, they were made to hand over five thousand yen a piece. Mitsuo and Koji were led to separate seats by a waiter carrying a flashlight. The chords of an electric guitar pounded off the walls and ceiling. The room smelled of smoke, cosmetics, and toilets. Low-slung sofas for two were set facing the same direction. Mitsuo sat and felt he was squatting in a hole. A waiter brought a small bottle of beer and a glass and left them on the table. Brilliant flashes of light shot forth from a mirror ball. At a seat far off he could see shoulders emerging from a deep-red dress. Shafts of light from the mirror ball darted into a man's neck like arrows. Mitsuo poured his beer into the glass and drank. It was lukewarm. Light shone in the bubbles of froth. The noise was deafening, to the point that the room almost seemed quiet. The woman in red appeared suddenly at Mitsuo's side and shouted into his ear, "Excuse me!"

He made room for her on the sofa. She clung to his neck, kissing him on the ear as she whispered, "Sorry it took me so long to get here. We don't have enough girls tonight." Mitsuo felt her slobber dribbling down his face. He stuck his hand through the sleeve of her dress. She raised her elbow to make it easier for him to touch her breasts. Leaning against him, she drank her beer as he stroked her pliant body. He gently pinched her nipples between his fingers, then moved his hand down past the wrinkles on her belly. As he attempted to get into her panties, she stood and said, 'I'll be right back." She brushed her lips against his cheek and vanished into the darkness.

For a long while, Mitsuo continued to sit by himself. He had polished off his beer some time before. When he lit a match, he saw scratches on the back of the sofa in front of him, and the rim of his glass shone orange. He puffed on a cigarette, but since he couldn't see the exhaled smoke it was as though he weren't smoking at all. He threw the butt on the floor, and the sparks bloomed like a flower. A waiter squatted down beside him. Mitsuo turned his head and heard him shout, "Are you planning to stay longer?"

Mitsuo slapped himself on the knees and stood. The waiter lit his way out of the room with the flashlight. Mitsuo spat on the floor. Even in the darkness he could tell that his guide had clenched his fist. The register sat as though at the bottom of a box. An old man punched calculator buttons in the light of a desk lamp. Mitsuo climbed the stairs, the sky a lustrous square visible above.

The tout saw him and said, "Thank you!" then laughed. "I'm sure you found our service top-rate. Our girls are well trained, you know."

"You're full of shit. I didn't get no woman, and all the beer you can drink' was one stinking half-sized bottle!"

"You're the one who's full of shit." The man sniffed Mitsuo's chest like a spaniel, pretending the scent of lingering perfume was so overpowering it had to be fanned away.

Meanwhile Koji bounded up through the exit and waved at Mitsuo. "Just as I thought, you waited for me. Ah, I'm glad I didn't stay longer, but it was hard getting away from that woman. She kept hanging on to me, saying, 'Just a little longer darling.' Gotta hand it to her, she works hard at her job. Well, I'll be sure to come here again."

He handed the tout a tip of five hundred yen and began strutting down the street. Mitsuo spat again. The neon reflected in his spittle made it look like a live worm that might wriggle away at any moment.

Though having drunk hardly any beer, Mitsuo felt himself in a stupor, and blazing with fire. A group of young people emerged from a bar and split their tab in the street. Mitsuo and Koji came to a river lined with stones on either bank. The water stank of rotting garbage. By day, one saw fat, colorful carp jostling each other in the water as they fed off the trash and animal remains. No doubt the fish tasted like mud. In spite of that, Mitsuo felt the urge to do some night-fishing. A row of tiny bars lined the riverside. The one at the end was named "Roman." Beyond lay housing.

Mitsuo stepped into the bar and was greeted in an odd voice by the proprietress, Chii. She stashed away her knitting, jamming it in a paper bag. When she realized it was Mitsuo, bewilderment crept across her face. Mitsuo took over her stool and motioned for the hesitant Koji to enter the bar. He felt Chii's warmth on the stool's wooden seat. He glanced at the knitting needles and gray yarn Chii had thrust into the paper bag and tossed into a corner. Taking a hot towel from her, he pressed it against his face, allowing it to linger there for some time.

Chii spoke in a husky, masculine voice. "I suppose you've come to fetch your father home?"

"Nope. Just came for a beer."

"Shall I have him come on down?"

"We've got nothing to talk about. If I saw his face I'd likely up and punch him." She bent beneath the counter and opened the refrigerator. The white light illuminated her face. She was forty-five, with heavy makeup hardly suiting her age. Her off-the-shoulder dress was designed to make her look younger, but the flabbiness of her shoulders gave her away. Mitsuo noticed a dime-sized vaccination scar on her upper arm. A cockroach rustled up a wall. Chii stood in front of Mitsuo, wiping a bottle of beer with a rag. Mitsuo clicked his tongue as he stared at her double chin.

"How's business?"

"Terrible. You need to drop in more often."

"What, and help my old man's squeeze? You're just like my mother. Lust makes things complicated."

Chii ignored him. "I only get a few stragglers off the street. I'm going broke. I should have kept my job at the bar instead of opening this place."

Damn right, Mitsuo thought. The money for everything in the bar, the glasses, the refrigerator, the stools, the telephone, even for the lease, all came straight from his family's bank account. It was their money, the money they'd gained from selling their land. After quitting his job at the candy factory, Mitsuo's father had gone stir crazy. He started to visit one particular bar almost every evening, a place he had come across one night while drinking at an end-of-the-year party with his buddies in the agricultural association. He would idle about all day, then call a taxi and go out at nine o'clock, strutting as though he were off to discuss a major corporate takeover. He refused to listen to his wife or Mitsuo. Sometimes he raged at Tomiko, telling her to leave him alone now that he had everything he'd worked all his life to achieve. Behind her back, he assured Mitsuo that Chii was a business genius, that anything invested with her would be returned ten, maybe twenty times over. He asserted he'd worked himself ragged into his old age and was entitled to enjoy life. He even argued that he was living vicariously for his father and grandfather, who'd worked themselves to death without ever knowing pleasure.

Koji broke in, "What are you knitting?"

Chii smiled and sipped her beer. "A sweater for him. I unraveled my cardigan to do it."

"We're hitting the hot season, you know."

"Maybe it'll make him want to be with me come winter."

Her voice grated on Mitsuo's nerves.

"This is a drag," Koji griped. "We came to town to have fun and we're just moping around." He stared at his fogged-up glass and fell silent.

Chii decided to put on some music. The tune she chose was a ditty popular five years earlier. Mitsuo drank in silence. The smell of sunflowers rose from his chest. Chii sliced a preserved cucumber and served the pieces to the men on a chipped plate. Everything she did seemed to be in slow motion.

Mitsuo jumped off his stool. "I'm going to see the old fart." He'd drunk only half his beer. Koji began to stand, but Mitsuo clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, "I'll be back in thirty minutes. Wait for me here."

He wandered the streets of the town. The leaves of a fig tree hung over the wall of a house, the roots stretching into the alley running in front of the house. Huge white flowers from a tree Mitsuo couldn't identify blossomed in the darkness. He passed a woman carrying a washbasin, no doubt on her way home from the public bath. The lingering scent of hot water made him swivel his head, and he watched her white ankles receding into the distance.

He came to a cheap wooden apartment building, its cracked mortar wall aslant. The smell of broiled fish wafted on the breeze. Climbing the iron exterior staircase, his feet made a high-pitched noise. Washing machines and plastic garbage cans cluttered the hallway on the second floor. A cat curled in a basket attached to a bicycle watched him cautiously, its eyes sparkling in the darkness.

Mitsuo rapped his knuckles on a door. Someone moved inside, and he heard footsteps on tatami.

"Chii?" It was his father's voice.

"It's me." Mitsuo could sense his father gulp.

"Are you alone?"

"Yeah."

"Door's unlocked." Mitsuo stepped inside. His father, Matsuzo, had on a T-shirt and a cotton vest. Stubble covered his face. His eyes had a sharpness Mitsuo had not seen before.

"Whaddaya want?"

"Show some manners! I'm your son, remember? You could at least offer me a beer." Mitsuo brushed his way past his father and into the room. The bare light bulb made the tatami look yellowed and old. Playing cards were strewn on the floor. Apparently, his father had been divining his fortune. Mitsuo turned over a cushion and sat atop it cross-legged in the center of the room.

A reddish purple kimono hung on a wall. The six-mat room was tiny but orderly, displaying a woman's touch. The window frames glistened. Mitsuo supposed that Chii washed them every day.

Without offering a glass, Matsuzo set a bottle of beer on the mat in front of his son. Froth ran over the top of the bottle and down the sides, spilling on the mat.

Mitsuo went to the kitchen. It too was immaculate, and the stainless steel sink gleamed. He returned with two teacups. "This how you spend your time, huh, playing cards alone? You could at least buy yourself a TV."

"I like things quiet. Chii comes home at two. It's dawn before we get to bed."

Mitsuo gave his father a serious look. "Is there any money left in the account?" Matsuzo nodded, and Mitsuo continued, "Tetsuo wants three million yen. Says he's entitled to it cause he's the oldest. I think he's right."

"So you're here about money." His father squatted to rub his stubbly chin against his knee, making a scratching sound. Mitsuo gazed at his father's nearly bald pate.

"That bar's gonna go bust, you know," Mitsuo said. "Nobody comes in. That woman of yours just sits around, knitting a sweater. Says she wants to finish it by winter, but with all the time on her hands she'll have it done in no time."

"How's your mother?"

"Great. Working at a construction site. Young men around her all day. Hah, you should see how happy she looks. I think if you crawled back to her she'd probably throw you out."

The beer was almost completely froth. An unseen mouse was gnawing something in the room. A child cried in the distance. Mitsuo wondered if his father honestly didn't know how much trouble he was causing, or that he was being manipulated by a shrewd woman. Did he plan to let all the money they'd received trickle away like water?

He softened his voice as though to reason with a child. "Why don't you come back? I'll make things right at home, just leave it to me. The hothouse is doing great, and I could use your help."

"I'll help you in the afternoons. While your mother's away at work." He grinned and sipped his beer as though drinking hot tea.

"You old bastard! Stop screwing around! I'm trying to help you, don't you get it?" Mitsuo jumped to his feet, spilling the contents of his teacup in the process. The spilt beer formed a pool on the tatami and reflected the light from the bare bulb. Matsuzo got a rag from the kitchen, murmuring, "Chii isn't going to like this at all."

When he returned to Roman, Koji was gone. His car was still at the school, so Mitsuo assumed he went drinking somewhere else in the neighborhood. Mitsuo wasn't in the mood to drink anymore, so he took a taxi home. His mother was watching TV, waiting up for him. Granma had gone to bed.

As Mitsuo stood in the front hall, Tomiko called from the half-open mahogany door, "You've got a girlfriend? Do you? Tell me all about her. You don't have to hide it. You're getting to the age where you should think about marrying." Tomiko's eyes were bloodshot, the result of too much time in front of the TV, and her face shone with cold cream.

Mitsuo woke when someone slapped his cheeks. Prying his eyes open, he peered into Granma's wrinkled face hovering above his. Sunlight flooded the room like a flock of tiny birds gliding above his head. Granma kept repeating, "The co-op guy's here!"

Mitsuo clambered out of his futon bed and went downstairs, dressed only in his briefs. The man told him, "The price of tomatoes is going up. You need to ship them out in a few days. Why don't you get to work earlier?" He handed him a slip of paper and sped off on a motor scooter.

The paper was his account statement. At the co-op, tomatoes were delivered in standardized plastic containers, the fruit was judged and its quality recorded in the computers. After that, the tomatoes were shipped to market. The co-op paid the money into an account, from which it automatically deducted the costs of fertilizer and agricultural tools. Mitsuo had set up an account in his name alone after his father ran off with the family's savings.

Granma hollered at him from the kitchen, and Mitsuo shuffled in and slid into a seat at the table. The dried squid, peanuts, and cod roe were exactly where he had left them the previous night. The film on the roe had dried and the color had faded. Breakfast was cold, hard rice and mackerel, a repeat of the previous night's dinner.

Granma's bony hand trembled as she held a match to the gas range. The instant the flame took hold she recoiled as though her hand had been scorched. "I always feel I'm lighting a bomb when I use this damn thing. It's gonna kill me, I tell you. Ever since we got rid of the old stove I've been afraid this new contraption is gonna cause a fire. Yeah, we had the prayers said all right, but I'm still worried. Ah well, I've lived long enough; I'm ready to go whenever."

Mitsuo's only response was a few perfunctory grunts to show he was listening. It was too much trouble to actually say something, since he would have to shout to make himself heard. He nodded, and Granma went on with her soliloquy.

"There's nothing for us old folks to do but die. It's all for the best. Look at this: you send out tomatoes and what do you get? A piece of paper. What's the world coming to? And those brokers can't be trusted. Like with chestnuts, one of them brokers would always give your grandpa short weight, so he got angry and decided to fight back. You know what he did? He handed over the chestnuts in a smaller container, and made sure he stuck his thumb in the bag when they were being weighed. Yeah, your grandpa was a smart fellow, all right."

Mitsuo continued nodding and finished his bland breakfast. He scooped his work clothes out from the corner where he'd tossed them in a crumpled ball. Dried dirt cascaded to the floor. Offended that he'd stopped listening, Granma sullenly shuffled into the living room and turned on the TV. Mitsuo left the house to the roar of a newscast.

Smothering heat enveloped him the moment he pulled back the vinyl door of the hothouse. The air was stultifying. He rolled the vinyl up from the earth and opened the skylights. In winter he had to make sure the seedlings received enough heat, and in summer he had to be equally careful that the hothouse never became too hot, otherwise the ripened fruit would be tiny and worthless. He switched on the radio and pruned the tomatoes, which would be ready to eat in a few days. As the sweat ran over him, he felt the alcohol he had drunk the previous night seeping from every pore of his body.

The cilia of the young tomato plants reflected a silvery light, and the stem and backs of the leaves were covered with a silver film. Armed with a bed and a cylinder of propane gas, Mitsuo could very well live by himself in the hothouse. Family life was nothing but trouble.

He broke off those branches that had started to spread horizontally. This left a sappy smell under his fingernails. His mind went blank for a few minutes, hypnotized by the radio music.

Koji ran up, apologizing for being late. He wore a straw hat and rubber boots.

"What happened to your construction job?" Mitsuo asked, continuing his work.

"I overslept. My mother woke me up, but I couldn't get out of bed. Besides, I said I'd help you, didn't I?" Koji grabbed a pair of shears from their resting place on a hook attached to an overhanging iron pipe and began harvesting the tomatoes. Mitsuo watched him for a few minutes. Satisfied that Koji knew what he was doing, he returned to his own work.

From a distant part of the hothouse Koji called out, "I must have been smashed last night. I left the headlights on when I got home, and the battery was dead this morning. After we get done here, drive me back and give me a charge, OK?"

"One of these days the cops are gonna catch you, or you'll get in an accident, one of the two."

"Hate to tell you this, but that's one hell of a boring bar. That woman don't say nothin' at all, you know. Maybe she's got nothing to tell me, I don't know. She just stood there at the counter. Just as well, though, I guess, considering that voice of hers."

Mitsuo grunted. He didn't care if the bar went under. It was his father's problem, not his.

With his fingertips he wiped sap from the blades to restore their sharpness. He would have to water the plants in the afternoon, because they demanded extra moisture when the fruit bloomed. He felt he could almost hear the roots sucking up the water.

Koji bawled that he was hungry. His hangover had made him skip breakfast. Outside, the freshly paved asphalt glistened as though wet. Koji tossed a green tomato in his hand as he and Mitsuo walked along. Laundry hung from the balconies of the apartment complex. The sound of bedding being pounded free of dust echoed between the buildings. A pregnant woman sat sunning herself on a bench in the apartment's pebble-strewn park, her legs spread. Children darted about while groups of women stood chatting. A recycler of old newspapers made his rounds, a loud recorded message announcing his presence.

Mitsuo noticed the women's gaze. The only males to visit the complex during the afternoon were salesmen. One mother was teaching her child to ride a bike, which sparkled in the sunlight. Koji gnawed at the tomato, looking the women over one by one as though determining which one to choose. The complex was truly an island, an artificial one plopped in the middle of woods and paddies.

A row of shops faced the apartments. In front of a candy store a group of women and children stood licking ice cream cones. A candy wrapper crackled under Mitsuo's feet. He and Koji entered a coffee shop situated between a beauty parlor and a pharmacy. Soft music bounced around the empty booths. They seated themselves, and a woman wearing high-heeled sandals brought them water and hot towels.

"How good of you to drop in," she said to Mitsuo with spirit. It was the red-haired woman who had led the first group of tomato buyers to the hothouse. Her fingernails matched the color of her hair. She smiled and said, "What'll it be?"

Koji decided to make conversation. "Nice to meet you."

Mitsuo put an end to pleasantries by interjecting, "We're starving." He stared at the woman's face. She'd taken great care with her makeup, and she wore false eyelashes. Her blouse, partly unbuttoned, revealed much of her chest, upon which a gold necklace dangled. Mitsuo's persistent stare made her look away. "Give us a menu."

She pointed to the wall and the long, thin pieces of paper on which the menu was written.

Koji called out happily, "Curry and rice, with coffee."

Mitsuo raised two fingers. She smiled an acknowledgment, at the same time narrowing her eyes. This caused her dark blue eyeshadow to spread slightly. Mitsuo and Koji slid down in their seats, stretching their legs as they read manga while waiting for their food.

The redhead brought two deep bowls of curry and said, as she set them on the table, "We serve liquor at night, you know. Come in sometime and reserve a bottle of whiskey." The earrings hanging from her earlobes twitched each time she opened her mouth. Mitsuo shut his manga.

"So your husband's looking after the kids?"

She pretended to be angry. "How rude of you. Actually, I don't have a husband. I run this shop with a friend of mine. We exchange shifts so we can take turns with the child care."

Koji asked for seconds on the curry and shoveled it into his mouth when it arrived. Mitsuo, smoking a cigarette, continued to glance at the woman where she stood behind the counter. She encouraged them a number of times to come drinking at night, and they nodded in response.

A siren blared and they rushed out to see what was happening. Over by the apartment complex an ambulance screeched to a halt. Women with children in their arms ran to meet it. From a balcony overhead, a woman leaned over as though to jump. The hair of the women and children who milled about was made candescent by the red of the ambulance's flashing light. The paramedics tramped into one of the buildings. The women standing about seemed relieved.

"Say, it's the guy from the tomato hothouse," a voice said.

Mitsuo raised a hand and waved at nobody in particular. Koji grinned, moving his jaw back and forth as though chewing gum. A woman was brought out of the building on a stretcher, a dazzling white blanket wrapped around her head.

The red-haired woman appeared beside him. "You're not planning to run off without paying your bill, are you?"

Mitsuo placed his hand on her shoulder. "A murder?"

"More likely she's ready to give birth. Happens all the time."

Mitsuo would have been happier to hear it was a homicide. It seemed like too much fuss just for having a baby. He paid the redhead the amount she mentioned. The ambulance drove off, the siren at full blast. The onlookers scattered into smaller circles to gossip.

Across the grass field, steam rose from the hothouse and enveloped it in a rainbow. Mitsuo thought about how he would like to harvest as many of the tomatoes as possible to free up nutrients for the remainder and allow them to flourish. Suddenly he observed a shadow in the hothouse, and ran as fast as he could toward it. The figure drew toward the door, as though having heard the approaching footsteps. When he saw Mitsuo, he waved. It was his father, dressed in baggy new work clothes.

"If you came just to make a show, you can go on home right now."

His father's lips cracked a smile. "You said you needed help, so here I am." He caught sight of Koji. "Oh, long time no see! How's it going?"

"Not bad. Haven't been going at it as hard as you, though."

Mitsuo ignored the other two and began working. His father and Koji bantered a bit more, then went off to separate sections, each carrying a container. Mitsuo stripped off his shirt, hung it over a pipe and switched on the radio. He imagined he could hear the plants telling him to get on with the harvesting business. The smooth growth of the fruit gladdened his heart, and he worked without thinking.

At three o'clock, they took a break and sat in a circle on a piece of cardboard, smoking cigarettes. Nearby, a large pile of tomatoes testified to their hard work. Mitsuo felt they'd accomplished a lot. Since he couldn't be bothered to buy something to drink, he gulped lukewarm water straight from a kettle, and handed it to his father sitting next to him. Matsuzo drank, water dripping from the corners of his mouth. Mitsuo leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, and closed his eyes. A red light penetrated his eyelids. A metallic taste lingered in his mouth, and he stretched his jaw muscles.

He said, "You know, there must be a hundred carp in that muddy river in town. I'm thinking about doing some late-night fishing."

"Great idea," Matsuzo said. "I'm an expert at cooking carp. Soup, sashimi, I can make anything with that fish. We'll have drinks at my place. Yes, indeed, carp is great for the health."

Mitsuo heard his father's voice from close range and realized he, too, was lying down. The thought crossed his mind to tell his father to ditch the woman, but he kept his mouth closed. Seeing her face or hearing her voice would be enough to ruin the taste of any drink.

Koji blurted out, "But if I eat carp and get all that extra energy, I don't know what I'd do with it."

Mitsuo thought how he would like to maximize the day's harvest. He would ship the tomatoes to the co-op tomorrow. He noticed the sap around his fingertips had turned black. Some of the apartment women came to buy tomatoes, and Mitsuo let Koji handle them. Judging from the animated sound of their voices, Koji was giving them a sweet deal.

Darkness crept across the land outside the vinyl. Matsuzo laughed and said he felt good, having built up a sweat. He left to catch a bus at the complex, carrying as many tomatoes as he could hold.

Granma sat erect, her knees atop a chair in the kitchen, listening to Mitsuo's account of the ambulance and the pregnant woman. When he finished, she closed her eyes, held her head upright, and performed an incantation for the safe delivery of the child, intoning the syllables from deep within her gut. Mitsuo was familiar with the chant, for Granma had been the village midwife. Her chanting meant she was in a good mood.

She enacted the birthing process. Placing straw rice-bags beside and behind an imaginary mother, she used an equally imaginary rope to tie the woman's hair to a pillar to restrict her movements. Next she drew the woman up from behind and squatted under her, using her own knees to spread the mother's. Finally, she squeezed her arms about the woman's abdomen.

"Yes, I helped bring hundreds of babies into the world. I gave birth to your father all by myself. It happened in midsummer. I was weeding the fields and began to feel sick. I waddled as far as the back door of the house and collapsed. The shock of the fall sent me into labor.

"My next four children showed me great concern and came out quite easily. One was born as I lay next to a crying baby, I remember. Village women never had any problems; it was always the towngirls who screamed their lungs out."

She squatted up and down on her chair and stretched her arms, periodically stopping to sip lukewarm tea. Part of what she drank she spat onto the table while Mitsuo and Tomiko ate. Tomiko frowned, and when her mother-in-law looked away, revolved a finger around her head to convey to Mitsuo her opinion of the old woman's mental condition.

"A lot of the women had no afterbirth, you know," Granma continued. "It wouldn't do for them to fall asleep, so I made them chew rice to keep awake. Sometimes I just slapped them on the cheek. A midwife needs to be as strong as any man.

"Sometimes they kept me on to take care of the afterbirth. I always buried it in a closet, beneath the tatami. You had to keep it hidden from the gods. We all knew that a child would fear the first person to walk over its own afterbirth, so I always had the father step on that piece of tatami first."

Satisfied with her monologue, Granma slowly descended from her chair and ambled out of the kitchen. A moment later the sound of the TV blasted through the house. Tomiko sighed and began piling the dirty dishes. Then she ran her fingers through her hair and rested her chin on her fist.

Smiling, she asked Mitsuo, "Tell me now. You have a girlfriend, right?"

"Where did you get that idea?" he countered, in surprise and embarrassment. He blinked a number of times, feeling a strange sensation each time he did so.

"You have to get married some time. Go ahead, tell me about this girl you're going to marry. You shouldn't be hiding that sort of thing from your mother."

"There isn't anyone. That's the truth!"

"All right, all right." Tomiko's face flushed as though she had come straight out of the bath, and she smiled pleasantly. Her eyes, however, were all business. Her gold tooth glinting, she asked, "What would you say to omiai?"

Mitsuo squirmed. Omiai is a formal meeting between an eligible man and woman, arranged by a third party. He raised his eyes but found he couldn't bear his mother's gaze.

"She's the daughter of one of the men on the construction crew. She went to the same agricultural high school you did, and now she's working at a gas station. She's three years younger than you, and a real prize. She knows about this messy business your father is involved in, but she doesn't mind.

"She's heard you're a hard worker. She'll know for sure once she meets you. I told her father I'd give him your answer tomorrow. What do you say? Or are you thinking of enjoying the single life a while longer?" She spoke slowly and carefully, as though she were a doctor probing a tumor.

Mitsuo sniffed. "I guess it can't hurt to see what she looks like."

"In that case, I'll tell them it's on. You've got nothing to lose, you know. If you don't like her, that's the end of it. I'll back you up." She nodded and narrowed her eyes.

Mitsuo gazed at his mother's sunburnt lips. He picked up the earthenware teapot and poured some of the contents into a rice bowl. Brown bubbles frothed and dispersed. He rubbed his face with his palms, and the smell of tomatoes invaded his nostrils.

An idea occurred to him. He hesitated, but when he finally spoke it was with force. "How about helping me ship out the tomatoes?"

"Why are you asking me that? You know I've got the road construction job."

"The hell with that! You're a farmer, and farmers work the fields!" Mitsuo surprised even himself with the vehemence of his outburst. Tomiko shrank into her chair. "Koji came and helped me today, and he's not even family. Just come for two days, that's all. One call to your foreman and it's done."

"I've never worked in a hothouse. What do you do? Do you think I could do the work?" She nervously twisted and untwisted her fingers on the tabletop.

"Farm work is farm work. I figured the hothouse would bring in just a little money, but it'll make us ten times as much as working normal fields. You can't make anything waving flags on asphalt."

She nodded in agreement and slunk from the kitchen. A moment later Mitsuo heard her shout, and the volume on the TV quieted to a near-normal level. She picked up the phone, dialed a number, and said, "Yes, would you tell him I won't be able to make it tomorrow? Yes, and my son agreed to the omiai. Let's set it up. Right. Thank you. Good night." The phone clicked on the receiver. Mitsuo stood up.

He hadn't driven his Corolla for a week, but the engine started right up. He revved it repeatedly to spread the oil over all the moving parts. He released the clutch with his foot still on the gas, and the car lurched forward, snapping his head backward.

Soon he was at Koji's. The house was nearly identical to Mitsuo's, having been designed and built by the same architectural and construction firms. Mitsuo's father had spent a great deal extra on fine woods to distinguish his house from his neighbors, but they'd all ended up using the very same lumber. The construction firm had done well by the village. Once the boom ended, the company built a magnificent three-story structure for its own office.

Koji was in an old-fashioned, slanting barn. Just to stand in it made Mitsuo feel nostalgic. Koji was tying threads around the bottom of a bottle. He poured kerosene over the threads and lit them with a match, creating a ring of fire. Then he lowered the bottle into a bucket of water, bottom first. Steam rose and the bottom cracked away.

Koji snapped his fingers. "Know what I'm making?"

"Yeah, a bottomless drink." Mitsuo picked the separated bottom out of the bucket. The glass had rippled, rainbows spreading between each ripple.

"It's an invention of mine, made just for poaching carp. If we use a regular hook and line, they'll splash about so much we'll be discovered. But if we run the line through this bottle and pull 'em in, they won't be able to move at all. Great idea, huh?"

"You're really gonna give that a try?"

"Beats getting caught."

Mitsuo raised the hood of the Corolla. The reek of gasoline went straight to his brain. The hood of Koji's Skyline was muddy, and onions poked out from the grill, suggesting that Koji had rambled through an onion patch on his way home from town. Mitsuo attached jumper cables to the battery terminals of the two cars and waved to Koji, who sat in the drivers seat of the Skyline. Koji turned the key, and his engine roared into life.

Mitsuo stashed away the cables and said, "I'm feeling edgy, I don't know why. Let's have a race." Energy pulsed through him, and he needed to release it somehow. Koji waited for Mitsuo to place his hands on the steering wheel, then launched the Skyline out on the road. The two cars sped along the narrow lane, one right behind the other. Sparks flew from Koji's muffler. The outlines of the apartment complex rose faintly in the night sky. Every single room was illuminated.

Mitsuo dropped the Corolla into second and the engine screamed. He and Koji dueled on a straightaway, then split off at the apartments. They leaned on their horns to let the other know his own location. Windows opened, and residents stepped out onto their balconies. Mitsuo zigzagged triumphantly through the complex, still riding his horn. No doubt someone would be calling the police right now.

He steered toward the industrial park. The road was wide and the roadside dark. Both drivers floored the gas. The candy factory where Mitsuo had worked was fully lit. It operated round-the-clock in shifts. The glare from the windows flew behind them as they sped past. Mitsuo decided it was time to head back. He wasn't in the mood to try to outrun a patrol car.

Rain came down in sheets, and through it the apartments appeared distant and gray. A line of umbrellas waited in front of the bus stop. With the arrival of each bus, the umbrellas were folded and swallowed up as the passengers stepped aboard. The windows were entirely fogged, and Mitsuo knew that the riders inside would be suffocating. One bus had just left, but already another colorful line of umbrellas appeared at the stop. Raindrops splattered on the asphalt, reminding Mitsuo of flower petals.

Mitsuo loaded his tomatoes on a flatbed truck and dropped the load off at the co-op. Driving home, his arms and shoulders began to ache from the steering wheel vibrations. His rubber rain gear protected him from the elements but caused him to sweat profusely. As he passed the apartment playground, he saw it had been submerged by pools of water. The swings and concrete animals appeared to stand in a swamp. The water continued coming even though there was no longer any river to carry it away. As Mitsuo drove along, the water sprayed off to either side. He felt as though he were navigating a boat.

Turning into the hothouse, he quickly stripped off his rain gear and heaved a sigh of relief but shivered as his sweaty clothes met the air. The rain continued to pound on the vinyl. It was like being inside a drum.

Part of the vinyl had come loose and flapped in the wind. Tomiko hung Mitsuo's rain gear from one of the overhanging pipes. The drops of water made a tiny hole in the earth.

Tomiko said, "I was just telling Koji that I spend more time with him than you. In fact, I'm with young folks so much it makes me look all that much younger, I think."

Koji yelled from the back of the hothouse, "Or maybe it's the dirty stories you're always telling."

Mitsuo peeled off his clinging shirt and dried his chest and armpits with a towel. His mother wiped his back. He felt like taking a hot bath.

Mitsuo took the towel from his mother and ran it vigorously through his hair. "So that's why you like construction work so much, huh? Even though you could be such a big help to me here."

"You want me to be around that senile, hysterical old woman all day? If that wasn't bad enough, it's her own son who's causing us so much trouble. A person can only take so much. I've got half a mind to ship her out and make the fool take care of her in that miserable apartment of his. Think of it: it'd just be you and me. Wouldn't that be great?"

Mitsuo was tired of his mother's voice. He called out to Koji, "I'm doing omiai."

Koji came running up with a freshly cut tomato in hand. "You're kidding! With your face?" He pretended to land an uppercut to Mitsuo's chin. Mitsuo grabbed Koji's wrist and twisted it behind his back. Koji danced about in mock pain.

"Ah, how nice to be young," Tomiko sighed.

Mitsuo let go of Koji's wrist and shoved him in the back. Koji spun around and threw the tomato at Mitsuo, who caught it and said to his mother loudly, "Say, if I don't like her, we can always introduce her to Koji." Mitsuo then fled down one of the ridges.

Koji ran after him. Mitsuo slowed and glanced at the ground thermometer to make sure the temperature hadn't fallen too low. He looked up and saw a number of silver streaks running along the roof of the hothouse. Today's rain would bring him a good price for the tomatoes, he thought.

Just then a voice said, "Man, what a day. Had to take a taxi." A tense silence fell over the hothouse.

Mitsuo felt as though he had been caught directly in a downpour. Matsuzo continued complaining about the rain but suddenly gulped hard. The leaves of the tomato plants rippled in a draft.

Tomiko shattered the silence. "What happened? That woman's had enough with you, and now you're trying to make up with Michi?" Mitsuo's parents faced each other across the flatbed truck.

"I'm here because he needs help."

"You come sneaking up here like a prowler," Tomiko snorted. "Can't even come and go freely in your own home. Nope, can't come home no more."

Matsuzo sat in the driver's seat of the truck. He could take anything his wife might throw at him. He drew out a cigarette and tapped it lightly against the steering wheel. Striking a match, he lowered his head to conceal a smile. Mitsuo noticed that his father's face was paler than he remembered. Tomiko thrust out one leg and let her arms dangle at her sides. Mitsuo observed her sloping shoulders and large buttocks.

His father raised his head and asked, "How's Granma?"

Tomiko responded indirectly. "The family's real estate is now in Mitsuo's name, but you've left something of yours behind, you know. Your mother wants to live with you. She keeps crying and begging me to bring her to you."

Matsuzo had taken only two puffs on his cigarette, but he crushed it in his fingers. He turned to Mitsuo and blinked. "When are you gonna bring me the carp?"

"I don't know. Look, Koji's here, so let's not bring out all the family dirty laundry right now, OK?"

Saying "I'm leaving," Koji rushed out into the rain.

Mitsuo wanted to charge after him, but suddenly felt as though a pair of hands had reached up through the earth and latched on to his ankles. We're all no better than worms, he thought, here on earth just because we happened to be born. He felt the presence of worm-people spoiling the tomatoes he had lovingly raised since fall, the tomatoes which had responded so well to the water and fertilizer he had fed them.

Matsuzo climbed out of the driver's seat and positioned himself before his wife. With clenched hands he bowed deeply to her. "I've been very bad to you. Actually, I'm thinking of leaving her. She's so damn pushy. I'm fed up with it."

"Get the hell out of here!" Mitsuo yelled. Matsuzo drew back. "Don't show your face here again! You get your hands on a little money and look what an asshole you become!" Mitsuo's eyes stung with heat and began filling with droplets similar to the ones pounding on the vinyl outside. Again he ordered his father out. Matsuzo gave a hang-dog look and turned toward the door. Through the gashes in the vinyl, Mitsuo saw the rain soak his father's work clothes the instant he closed the door behind him. Matsuzo stood still for a moment, then headed in the direction of the apartments, stooping as he walked.

Lunchtime came but neither Mitsuo nor Tomiko stopped working. The rain continued as hard as ever, and water oozed through the hothouse soil, causing it to shimmer. Only through the succession of programs on the radio was Mitsuo aware of the passing of time. He realized he was famished and made a meal of three tomatoes, which he wiped on his shirt before eating. Tomatoes picked in sunshine somehow tasted much better. Back at work, he and his mother picked furiously, and it seemed he would have enough for another shipment tomorrow.

Toward evening the woman from the coffee shop came with two children. Though the rain had stopped, the wind was heavy with moisture. The woman caught sight of Tomiko, which seemed to dampen her spirits. She said, "Excuse me, but I'm a regular customer here."

Tomiko called out more loudly than necessary, "Michi, Michi, there's a woman here to see you."

Mitsuo picked a number of tomatoes close at hand and filled the woman's bag. Being a cool day, few of the tomatoes were red.

After making sure that Tomiko was out of earshot, the woman whispered, "When will you be coming for a drink? I'll be there tonight."

"I think my friend'll be there." Mitsuo handed the bag over without receiving the usual three hundred yen. He saw the two children peeping toward the back of the hothouse, and startled them by yelling and stamping his feet. They began to cry and buried their faces in the woman's skirt. She glared at Mitsuo, who only laughed like a fool. A moment later Tomiko ran up, pruning shears in hand.

"IALWAYS LIKED going into town, but it wasn't much fun actually visiting the stores. The shopowners always looked down on me because I was a farmer. One of em used to stay right where he was when I walked in. If I wanted something, he told me to take it from the shelf myself. If I got a little confused, he just laughed at me. And he never gave an inch on prices neither. But if someone from town walked in, he changed straight away and fell all over em. Tell the truth, I never went into town unless it was an open market day, when there'd be other farmers there selling their produce. They'd invite me to drink tea with them. We'd take it with red sugar, and I licked what was left off my palm. They'd always keep hot water steaming on the cooking stove. I tell you, it was great. I'd spend the entire day in town. There was a road that went straight there, but part of it passed through dark woods. We farmers often got robbed there. No, it certainly wasn't a trip for women and children to make by themselves."

Granma spoke to no one in particular as she folded a change of clothes, her nightwear, and some personal items into an old-style wrapping cloth. She sat with her knees upright on the tatami. Tiny and bent over, she resembled a potato bug.

To keep her in a good mood, Mitsuo called out as gently as possible, just loudly enough for her to hear, "The car'll get us there in a hurry. We'll be there before you know it. Pa is really looking forward to seeing you again."

She nodded. "That's good." Mitsuo stood right over her, which meant her nod was to his feet. "I'll be so much better off with someone who shares my blood. Look how badly my daughter-in-law treats me."

Knowing she'd hear nothing but recriminations if she helped her mother-in-law pack, Tomiko had remained in the kitchen, doing dishes.

"He's got a TV there, so you won't be lonely," Mitsuo said, picking up her wrapping cloth. Lifting Granma by the wrists, he found she was much lighter than he expected. The old bastard better buy her a TV at least, he thought. Granma was dressed in her best kimono, the last present she'd received from her late husband. Seven years earlier he had suffered a stroke while returning from the fields and died in the barn. Mitsuo had been a high school student. Hearing a thud, he rushed into the barn and saw his grandfather lying face down in the mud, dressed in his quilted work clothes. Death was swift.

In the front hallway, Granma slipped into the sandals that Tomiko had laid out for her. Mitsuo yelled toward the back of the house, "We're leaving now," but his mother did not respond. Granma's slender palm felt dry and cold against his.

She squatted in the back seat of the car in her accustomed manner. When Mitsuo yelled that it was dangerous to sit that way in a car, a cloud passed over her face.

Mitsuo started the Corolla. He switched on the interior lights and periodically looked back at Granma in the rear-view mirror. She pressed her forehead against the window, peering absent-mindedly into the surrounding darkness. Mitsuo controlled his urge to slam the accelerator to the floor. The regular rhythm of the tires on the pavement lulled him.

He drove to the end of the alley where his father lived. Leaving Granma in the car, Mitsuo ran up the stairs two at a time and flung open his father's door without knocking. Matsuzo, who had been divining his fortune again, backed away on his knees all the way to the window.

Mitsuo kicked the concrete floor of the hallway and said, "I've got something to give you. Come down and get it."

"If it's tomatoes, I don't need any."

Mitsuo caught the laugh in his throat before it came to his lips. Matsuzo slipped into sandals, griping that he had eaten nothing but tomatoes for two days and that there was still a pile of them in the bar.

When Matsuzo arrived at the car, he stopped and took a deep breath. Mitsuo said, "Look here, Granma. It's someone you haven't seen in a long time." He slipped the sandals on her feet and helped her out of the car. She giggled. Mitsuo dropped her bundle on the ground, tooted his horn, and backed out of the alley. It was narrow and left no margin for error. He stepped on the brake once, and saw his two relatives framed in the yellow glow of the headlights.

He didn't feel like going straight home, and he certainly wasn't in the mood for a drink at Roman. As he rounded a curve in the woods, a vista unexpectedly opened up before him, and he saw the sky, dim above the apartments.

"Ah! I'm so happy you've come!" the redhead said in her shrill voice when he entered the coffee shop. Empty beer bottles and dirty glasses littered the tables of the four booths. A layer of cigarette smoke floated just below the ceiling. Behind the counter, the woman splashed water on some glasses.

"Sorry about the mess. They just finished building the meeting hall over at the apartments, and the workers came in to whoop it up. What a loud group! Your friend stopped by, but the noise drove him off. I know, the place looks like a dump. I'll get it clean in a minute. You probably don't feel like drinking with all this crap lying around."

Mitsuo took a metal tray from the counter and cleared the tables. The ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts, and more butts lay crushed on the floor. The woman wiped the sweat from her forehead with a light touch of her rolled-up sleeve and thanked Mitsuo for his help. He saw her flush through her heavy makeup. He grabbed a rag and wiped the tables. He considered sweeping the floor, where he noticed a piece of tomato had fallen, but let it pass so she wouldn't think he was trying to make points.

She opened a beer and set it on the counter. "It's on the house. Enjoy," she said. With a wet hand she poured the beer into a glass. Mitsuo's stool was uncomfortable, and he moved to the next one, but it was no better. She washed the glasses in sudless water and rubbed them indifferently with a sponge. Her thin gold necklace swam in the sweat glistening just below her neck. She stood the empty bottles on the floor, then rested her hand on her cheek. A smile creased her face, and she said, "Well, I'm ready for another drink."

"I'll buy a bottle of whiskey for you to keep here for me."

"Wow, I've been raking in the money today!" She brought out a bottle of Suntory Old and handed it to Mitsuo along with a felt pen. He wrote "Tomato Man" on the bottle, and added a drawing of a tomato, but it came out looking more like a pumpkin. The woman assured him it looked just like a tomato, and she set out a small dish of peanuts.

Mitsuo recalled the sight of his father and grandmother bathed in the headlights and realized that only two people lived in his house now. That's how it is: humans come and go.

"I served all the tomatoes you gave me to the construction workers. All I had to do was slice them and sprinkle a little salt on top."

"Sounds like easy money."

"Yeah, about ten thousand yen."

"You can have all you want. How about going to pick some right now?"

She had her back to Mitsuo and was frying some sausages. He could see the strap of her bra through the transparent purple fabric of her blouse. Her hair was silhouetted against the light and appeared on fire.

Mitsuo popped a sausage into his mouth but, scalding hot, it danced upon his tongue. He hurriedly quenched the fire by downing some whiskey. The woman dropped some ice into her glass, and Mitsuo poured whiskey into it. He also started to add water, but she waved it off. She tipped the glass and took a long drink. She was clearly drunk, and her eyes glazed over. Mitsuo kept pace with her, and soon felt his nerves tingling and wiggling like worms. He wondered if the child who had likened the tomatoes to red lights belonged to her.

"You have two kids?"

"One. The other one with me today is my friend's. We're both divorced, so we help each other out. We're better off this way, but sometimes it's pretty tough."

"There are all kinds of folks in the apartments. You know, it used to be a paddy. No people, just frogs."

"You're kinda unique, aren't you? I've never met anyone like you."

"I'm a normal guy. I've lived here all my life. Maybe that's why I seem different to you."

"That hothouse of yours is sure neat."

"So's your whiskey. Feels like I'm drinking something really special."

The woman laughed flirtatiously, not bothering to cover her mouth with a hand. She slid out from behind the counter and sat next to Mitsuo, pressing her hip against his. Her scent, a combination of cosmetics and sweat, came as an assault. She intertwined pinkies with him, and Mitsuo had to restrain himself from pulling his hand away

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty-three."

"How old do you think I am?"

"Twenty-five," Mitsuo replied, thinking she was probably thirty.

She laughed happily. Her finger felt damp and cold to Mitsuo. She'd neglected drying her hands after washing the glasses.

"I envy you. You can do anything you like. I bet you feel you can use your power and energy to get whatever you want in life. A man in the prime of his life."

"You're wrong there. I can't do nothin', and there ain't nothin' to do."

"I'm in the mood for a tomato. A fresh-picked one, I mean. Go and get one for me, will you?" She gripped his finger firmly.

"You bet." He eased off the stool. He turned toward the door, but the woman latched on to the back of his shirt, which hung outside his trousers.

"I'll go with you." She wobbled to her feet. Mitsuo placed his hand on her waist to support her, but she brushed it away.

The apartments were completely dark. Sprinkled stars dotted the clean night sky, their brilliance piercing as needles. The playground, so recently covered in water, was now littered with silt, plastic objects, and vegetable remains. The woman overtook Mitsuo. He felt that the light from a street lamp was contaminated by the scent rising from her body.

She stopped and waved her hand. Mitsuo reached the door of the hothouse and unlocked it. When he stepped inside, it was like dipping into a lukewarm bath. The tomatoes and leaves shone in the moonlight. A silvery light played over the vinyl. He felt as though he were in an aluminum capsule. The woman skipped along a ridge, her skin covered in powdery silver light. She looked like a statue carved out of the moonlight and was, at last, beautiful. The tomatoes were just as the kid had said, red light bulbs, and now they illuminated the red-haired woman.

She continued to skip along, looking the tomatoes over curiously. Mitsuo hid behind some plants, the leaves of which were coated with moonlight. He sprang at her, and, as though she had been waiting for just that, she immediately took him into her arms. Their lips met. Her tongue thrust against Mitsuo's as though it were an independent creature. She rammed her chest and stomach against him and asked in her nasal tone whether there was a place they could lie down. While she looked on, Mitsuo broke down some cardboard fertilizer boxes and spread straw over them. The woman stood there, naked but for her thin necklace. Her body shimmered in the moonlight. She spread her arms and said, "Ooh, this feels wonderful," and began skipping about again. Her buttocks and the triangle of her pubic hair danced before Mitsuo's eyes. It was odd to see sandals on her feet.

Mitsuo woke to the sound of a washing machine. He found the outside temperature perfectly suited to his body's, and felt superb. He grasped his penis, clammy with semen and female secretions. Under the bed cover, it instantly became erect and hot. A fragrant blend of straw and cosmetics drifted over him.

"It was fantastic, the best!" The woman smiled, her eyes narrow slits. Her eyelashes and eyebrows glistened in the moonlight as though wet with dew. Mitsuo buried his face in her chest, which felt as hot as scorched stones. He was bursting with energy, and unsure how to use it.

He recalled the events of a few hours before. While they'd gone at it, she'd panted in a clear voice, "Don't come inside me. Do it on my belly. I don't need another brat." Then she'd tilted her head back and screamed at the top of her lungs, an embarrassment to Mitsuo. At that moment, bending backward, it seemed as though she would slide right off the straw.

Mitsuo licked the makeup on her eyelids and nose. Her hair smelled like cheese.

She broke off a tomato plant leaf and wiped her stomach with it. "There's nothing like a young stud. I hadn't made love for two years, since my divorce." She raised herself on one knee and gazed at Mitsuo passionately. Running her fingers through his hair, she said, "I want to come here again after work tomorrow. I'll close the shop early."

Mitsuo carefully picked pieces of straw from her body. He told her he would be waiting for her, but his voice was barely audible, so he repeated himself. He felt an anticipation similar to that of watching his tomatoes grow. He'd have her again. Next time he would prepare a better bed and lay aside something to drink.

As the woman buttoned her blouse, she asked Mitsuo for a five-minute head start. It wouldn't do for them to be seen together. As he listened to her, he thought of the water he had drunk from the hose last night, how good it had tasted as it squirted down his parched throat. He wanted to hold on to the present moment forever.

After she left, he grasped his penis again, and soon his palm was covered with semen. Then he lay motionless, waiting for the excitement to ebb from his body.

At length he went back to the house. As he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, he was startled by his mother's voice.

"Tetsuo called again last night. Says he desperately needs three million yen. The same old story: he's the eldest son, it's his birthright, and all that. I told him we haven't got any money, and he said that was bullshit."

"Let's handle him like Granma: dump him off at Pa's." Mitsuo carefully soaped between each finger.

"Speaking of that, did he say anything?"

"He was too shocked; couldn't get a word out." Mitsuo lifted an oil-stained newspaper off the kitchen table and found three pale, dried sardines on a plate underneath. Taking a heaping bowl of rice handed him by his mother, he glanced at the clock on the wall. "Hey Ma, you're taking another day off from work to help me?"

"Today's a holiday. It's Constitution Day."

Mitsuo realized that meant he couldn't ship his tomatoes. Tomiko sat in front of him and sighed. She stared at him, her face serious, and hesitated before speaking.

"I think he wants to come home." Tomiko rubbed her thumbs and stared at them before looking back at Mitsuo. "He didn't mention anything about that?"

"Nope. Living that way probably makes him think he's twenty years younger. He's just an old peasant, though. And that woman; no way she could ever attract someone else. Not to say she isn't honest. I don't think she's after the money She's like a flower in a drainage ditch." The words spilled from Mitsuo's mouth as he shoveled down rice. When he finished, he saw anger flash in his mother's eyes.

"You shouldn't speak that way about him! You're the only one he can count on. I'm just his wife, but you share his blood."

"Fine. Why don't we suggest he come back? That'll make it easier for him."

"If it'll help settle things down around here." Her voice grew softer. She rubbed her freckled face in her palms, as though trying to cleanse it.

Mitsuo poured water into his empty rice bowl and chased away the salty aftertaste of the sardines. He thought of the full day of work that lay ahead.

Tomiko pressed her knuckles to her temples. Having pulled herself together, she continued, "The omiai is set for this Sunday. Don't make other plans."

"I suppose I'll need to wear a suit. In spite of everything, it'd be better if Pa were there, too."

"We'll just say he's sick. They know the truth anyway. Of course, saying he's not well is completely true. I just hope he gets over it." She struggled to her feet. "I'll be at the hothouse after I finish hanging out the wash."

Mitsuo left the house carrying two old blankets his father had once used. Like paper cutouts, the mountains rose distinctly into the sky beyond the apartments. Round clouds floated aimlessly above them. He thought of inviting the red-haired woman to spend a weekend with him somewhere.

The door of the hothouse was open, and Mitsuo supposed he must have left it that way. He sensed the woman's fragrance drifting among the leaves and around the skylights, through which rainbows were visible. Intending to clean up the straw that had served as a bed, he turned the corner of the ridge and found Granma asleep in the same spot where he had lain a few hours before. She had on her best kimono, the same one she wore when Mitsuo dropped her off at his father's apartment. Sunlight poured over her blotched face. Her dentures hung half out of her mouth and fell to the straw when Mitsuo bent over and lifted her by the shoulders. Her gums resembled fresh meat.

"Granma, you'll catch a cold here. I'll take you back to the house." She blinked, not knowing where she was, and gave a great yawn. Tears welled in her mucus-filled eyes. Her sandals lay near her head. Her socks were caked with mud. Mitsuo placed his hands under her armpits and stood her up. She was light as air. "Did Pa bring you back last night?" Mitsuo wondered whether he'd been caught in the act.

Granma slowly shook her head. A hairpin hung from her disheveled hair. She picked up her dentures and popped them back in her mouth. "This morning. Matsuzo brought me back here by taxi. He said to go into the house, and then he'd be right back. But the front door was locked, so I waited for him here. I hardly slept a wink last night, and I guess I fell asleep in the straw." She pressed the back of her hand to her nose and sniveled.

Mitsuo stood in the front hall. "Ma!" he cried. Tomiko had bed covers in her arms, ready to hang outside. When she saw her mother-in-law, Tomiko's expression froze. The bed covers slipped from her arms.

Mitsuo left Granma there and went back to the hothouse. He had plenty to do. He began by clearing away the straw bed. Next he tied branches to cords hanging from the overhead pipes so the tomatoes would receive maximum sunlight. His mother didn't appear, no doubt busy arguing with Granma. Occasionally, he peeked through the vinyl at the house but couldn't hear a thing. The silence in the hothouse made his ears ring. Rainbows sparkled on the vinyl, and it seemed they would melt it.

He dissolved powdered fertilizer in water. He might have more tomatoes than he'd be able to harvest. It was almost as though he were fighting against a battalion.

Black specks appeared on the vinyl, and at first Mitsuo thought they were sparrows. But the specks rolled down the sides of the hothouse, and he realized that someone was throwing stones. He dashed outside and found a man dressed in gray slacks, a cardigan sweater, and clogs.

"What the hell are you doing, you asshole!" Mitsuo shouted. The man tossed rocks first with one hand, then the other, provoking Mitsuo even further. He was small and mean-looking, with bushy eyebrows. He grinned at Mitsuo, exposing his front teeth, and stepped toward him.

Mitsuo took an instinctive step backward, mud falling from his rubber boots. In the lowest and most restrained voice he could muster, he asked, "What's going on here?"

"Quite the comedian! That's exactly what I wanted to ask you. I've come to thank you for looking after my wife last night."

"Whaddaya mean, your wife? She's divorced."

"Afraid not." The man's front teeth poked out of his mouth even when it was closed. "Look, I know she led you on. She has a bad habit of saying she's divorced. Not that she could pass herself off as a maiden, always looking after the kid." He giggled, revealing discolored gums. "She came home in the middle of the night, her hair full of little pieces of straw. She's tied to a post right now. Fell asleep there, actually. A really sweet look on her face: you should see it. She cried and apologized till dawn, so you can imagine how tired she must be. I'm glad today's a holiday. I couldn't have gone to work leaving her tied up, so I'd've had to call in sick or something."

"What are you after? Money?" Mitsuo crouched, prepared to ward off any sudden attacks. If it came to punches, there was no way he would let himself come out only second best.

"No, just leave my wife alone, that's all. We had troubles in the last place we lived, and I don't want it happening again. I'll make her quit her job. If you pass her on the street, act like you don't know her."

The man turned and marched off. His clogs slanted out as he walked. Mitsuo stood and watched him, feeling a hint of disappointment. He recalled the woman's buttocks and pubic hair, the way she danced naked down the ridge.

From the apartments came a group of women carrying handbags, followed by a small herd of children. They passed Mitsuo's visitor on the way. Still at a distance, several of them yelled, "Hey, we're coming to buy tomatoes from you!"

As the contingent drew nearer, Mitsuo spotted a couple of husbands among the women, with babies in their arms. They were the perfect picture of office workers on holiday. Without waiting to be invited in, the group entered the hothouse and frolicked up and down the ridges, touching everything in sight.

After disposing of the customers, Mitsuo returned to the house for lunch. He found his mother sitting at the kitchen table, her arms crossed. "Why didn't you come help me?" Mitsuo asked, drinking water from a tea cup. On the table, he noticed a message scribbled in pencil on the back of a leaflet. It read:

Mrs. Tomiko Wada

I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused. I can't blame you for hating me, since I've been such a terrible husband.

There's something I'd like to say. I want to break off with Chii and come home. That's the honest truth.

I'm going to do what's necessary, and hope you will help me out.

Matsuzo Wada

There was no question it was his father's handwriting. He'd probably written with the paper pressed against tatami, since the characters had uneven light and dark spots, and the paper was pierced here and there.

"I found it wrapped in Granma's parcel." Tomiko waited tight-lipped for her son's reaction, doing her best to contain her pleasure.

"Thinks only of himself, don't he?"

"He must feel pretty ashamed, to write this sort of thing."

"Where's Granma?"

"Sleeping. She was exhausted." Tomiko took the letter from Mitsuo's hands and read it over again, word by word. "I should have heard him out the other day in the hothouse."

"Why not break into the apartment and carry him off?"

"Will you help me?"

"Sure, let's take a chance. It'll be exciting, if nothing else." Mitsuo dropped a stale piece of pickled radish into his mouth. "Come on, give me lunch. I've still got a lot to do."

Mitsuo worked until it was too dark to see. He went home for dinner and took a bath, then returned to the hothouse. By the light of the moon, he constructed a rectangular bed by laying straw neatly over some cardboard and covering it with a blanket. He sat cross-legged and looked at the moon which shone through the vinyl roof, its reflection cracked on the surface of the sake he poured into a teacup. He drank, and it was as though he were consuming the moon itself: he sensed moonlight flooding through his body. Gradually he became tipsy, as though a tide were washing over him. He supplemented his drink with bites of tomato.

All was still. Mitsuo looked toward the apartments, the direction from which he expected a visitor to approach. He stuffed straw under the top of the blanket to make a pillow. Covering himself with the second blanket, he lay down. The straw rustled beneath him each time he turned. Unable to see the sky or the ground outside, he felt trapped in a box.

Come to think of it, he thought, that's exactly right. Pa went and sold our land, and now I've got nothing left to farm but this little box. Then his father had made things worse by letting the money slip away from him. All that remained was the house, pretentious and dusty.

Lying atop the straw, more than once he mistook his own stirrings for footsteps outside, and caught his breath. He longed for the woman's warmth and the softness of her body.

Finally, worn out from his day's labor, he dropped off to sleep. Some time later, he was awakened by a noise. There was a rustling among the tomatoes.

"So you came. I'm right over here." His voice resonated, as though it were coming from someone else's throat. The footsteps stopped. Mitsuo turned on his flashlight, and the bright light poured over the leaves. Suddenly someone was running. Mitsuo thrust himself out of bed. Jamming on his shoes cost him time. When he made it outside, he spotted a slender, bowlegged man running full speed toward the apartments, clutching a bag of tomatoes.

Mitsuo ran after him, yelling, "Stop thief!" The tips of his shoes clacked against the pavement as he ran. The man appeared and disappeared from sight as he passed under the streetlamps.

By the time Mitsuo reached the apartments, the man had vanished, but a half-dozen tomatoes rolled about on the ground. In the streetlight, the shadows of the fruit stretched long like clubs. No lights burned in the commercial sector. A dog rummaged through an overturned garbage can in front of the coffee shop. The regular pattern of the apartment buildings made them resemble a row of tombstones, a maze sneaking through each of them. Mitsuo continued to stand in place, bathed in a milky light. His chest pounded, but gradually his breathing returned to normal.

Giving up hopes of catching the thief, Mitsuo scooped up the wayward tomatoes. All were bruised and unmarketable. He flung them down upon the ground, and juice splattered as high as his face.

Back at the hothouse, he discovered the slash in the vinyl through which the thief had entered. Mitsuo slipped through the hole and repaired it on both sides with tape. The vinyl wrinkled about the tape, and through the repaired section the moonlight no longer shone.

"What are your hobbies?"

Mitsuo was being questioned by a swarthy man with tobacco-stained teeth, someone obviously ill at ease in a suit. The man was a coworker of Tomiko's, and an awkward speaker. His wife was dressed well enough but appeared as small and dirty as a roadside statue.

Mitsuo would have liked to make some clever response, but he was too nervous to think of one. Sweat dripped around his throat, which was constricted by an unaccustomed necktie. "Driving and fishing." Having forced the words out, he finally looked over at his intended mate. She had sat with her eyes cast down upon the table, but when he spoke she looked up. As soon as her eyes met Mitsuo's, however, she looked down once more and only glanced at him occasionally. He decided she was expecting him to speak to her.

"What are your hobbies, Ayako?" The instant the words were out of his mouth he felt like a fool. Who cared what her hobbies were, anyway? He himself had none. He was lousy at singing and had no talent for entertaining others. He didn't need anything extra in his life, and a woman was certainly not an extra. A woman was someone to be with all day long. They would raise tomatoes in the hothouse, battling all the dangers that imperiled the fruit between planting and shipping. He would work hard and when he looked over, would find his wife right beside him, working just as hard. He would make a bed of straw in the hothouse and enjoy her there before falling asleep. He might even build a separate room inside the hothouse for privacy. He wanted a woman as plump as a tomato. That's all that was lacking in his life, a woman.

He didn't need a house. The two of them would build something from scratch. The things that fell apart around him would no longer bother him.

He wanted to drag the woman away from the stiff formality of the omiai, open his heart to her, and hear her side of things. That would be a much better way to decide upon a marriage than this kind of torture.

She smiled, but her eyes remained filled with tension. Mitsuo imagined the two of them talking face-to-face. "I like to cook," she whispered, barely moving her lips.

Her father's voice resounded through the tiny room. "No one makes stew like Ayako. She went to a cooking school, you know." The group sat at a round table set up for Chinese cuisine, so the absence of Mitsuo's father was not quite so obvious. Of course, Ayako's father was being delicate about the situation.

One by one the dishes appeared, but nobody ate. The serving containers piled up on the table. The juice became tepid, and the condensation on the glasses evaporated. Mitsuo was dying for a beer, but he had come by car and would have to drive home. Tomiko was wearing a formal kimono. The gloss of the silk set off her brown skin.

The conversation ground to a halt. Mitsuo decided to share a little of what he had been thinking earlier.

"I run a hothouse. It's about two thousand square meters now, but I plan on doubling the size. I'll alternate tomatoes and cucumbers to get the most from the soil, and I expect things'll go well. So I'd like to know if Ayako is up to doing farm work. I don't want a wife who's only interested in raising children. Beauty is great, but only for decoration."

In the middle of this speech, Tomiko reached under the table and tugged on the hem of his suit. The young woman in front of him certainly seemed strong enough for farm-work. He imagined how she would feel in his arms.

Her father leaned forward and said, "You mean you can actually make a living from a hothouse that size? The fact is, that's just about how much space we have left. We used to have just under thirty thousand square meters, but now it's nearly all industrial. Our house is right off the highway." He laughed, perhaps at the contrast between past and present.

Mitsuo nodded gravely, sipping his juice. He looked out the window. They were in a suburban, roadside restaurant. A tour bus had pulled up, and a large group of elderly people herded behind a travel guide carrying a flag. As they walked past, everyone peered inside the room where Mitsuo's party sat.

Ayako's father resumed, "If you can really make a go of it in that tiny bit of space, I'd think seriously about quitting my construction job and giving it a try."

"I'll be happy to tell you what I've learned. There are things you need to know about hormones, temperature, and so on. Once you get used to it, you can pull it off, believe me."

"That would be great. With a hothouse, you can time the shipping to get the very best prices."

"I grow tomatoes, you know, but right now there are too many for me to ship out. Things are so far behind, I'd be willing to have the wedding ceremony right now and have Ayako start working with me tomorrow." Mitsuo gave a deep laugh.

Ayako frowned. Her father put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Ayako, give him a hand with the tomatoes, starting tomorrow. You're lucky: it's inside work, so you won't get sunburned."

"Being in the sun is fine with me, even if I do get burned." Ayako glared at her father. "Anyway, maybe you've forgotten, but I've already got a job."

Tomiko helped herself to a piece of roast pork. She chewed carefully, her head bent toward the table. Mitsuo stared at Ayako. Her firm jaw made him believe she was tough. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were bigger than he preferred, but they were all well shaped. Her fleshy cheeks shone in the light, which glared off the asphalt outside and also revealed the powdery makeup she wore. He wanted a tough, sturdy wife. And it didn't hurt that the woman had huge breasts.

Ayako's father broke the tension by raising his arms and saying, "Come on everyone, the food's getting cold. Let's eat." Each person eagerly filled his and her tiny plate, as though competing to see who could pile on the most. Mitsuo ate a heaping portion of unfamiliar food, the names of which he didn't even know. One dish combined fried vegetables with shellfish, meat, and nuts. Another contained tofu mixed with minced meat and red peppers. Mitsuo washed the food down with his juice. The taste of the spices reached the tip of his nose and made his eyes water.

He thought he and Ayako would make a good couple. Working so hard in the hothouse, he didn't have much of a chance to meet women. Even if he and Ayako had different opinions, working together on the same soil would soon accustom them to each other. She looked at him, and Mitsuo was aware he'd made a good impression.

"You've got a good son there, Mrs. Wada. Why don't you quit your job with the construction company and help him out?" Ayako's father asked.

Tomiko swallowed her food and dabbed at her lips with her napkin. "To tell the truth, we don't often talk about things, so I didn't know how he felt."

"I think the youngsters should go for a drive or something. What do you say, Ayako?" Once again her father patted her on the shoulder, his rough and bony hand seemingly rooted there.

Ayako shook her shoulders. Mitsuo saw her cheeks flush beneath her makeup. He clasped his hands behind his head and smiled, then rose, pushing back his chair. He noticed an elaborate mosaic of a Chinese woman on a screen that hung on the wall facing him. Ayako's father urged his daughter to stand as well. She did, and Mitsuo found she was shorter than he had imagined. The glare from the asphalt formed a pool of light on the ceiling.

A warm, humid wind blew outside. Water splashing in a fountain sounded like the crackling of a fire. Mitsuo and Ayako waved to their parents through the window. From inside, their images were distorted in the glass.

A crowd of beribboned sightseers swarmed over a souvenir shop next to the restaurant. They took turns snapping each others' pictures in groups of threes or fours.

Mitsuo stopped walking, and Ayako did the same. He extended his hand, motioning for her to walk closer to him. She hesitated, but then drew nearer to him, trampling her shadow as she stepped. Mitsuo narrowed his eyes. He thought: This is my woman.

The car windows had been tightly closed, and they were greeted with a fiery blast of air when they opened the doors. The vinyl seats were blistering hot. The moment he drove out of the parking lot, Mitsuo jerked off his jacket and tie and tossed them on the back seat. Mountains rose through the windshield. As Mitsuo drove closer, the mountains became a massive wall of sunlight, waves of luminosity rolling down the slopes toward the car.

Ayako's perfume, unlike any other Mitsuo had ever smelled, pervaded the car. He imagined her scent soon spreading through the expanded hothouse he intended to build. He thought about the best way to bring it off. He didn't know whether he could make himself understood.

Flexing his shoulders, he said, "Finally I feel relaxed."

Ayako sat with her purse in her lap. She seemed to giggle, but when Mitsuo looked at her face he found it impassive.

"Why don't we just loosen up and be ourselves?" he suggested.

Ayako shifted in her seat, placed her purse beside her, and giggled softly.

Mitsuo set about getting what he wanted. As he spoke, he drove even faster. "I know you must be tired. I sure am, with all this trouble about being polite. Man, my shoulders are stiff." Judging from the squeak of the springs beneath her seat, Ayako was trying not to laugh.

"You were really staring at me."

"Of course. That's what omiai is all about."

"I figured you must like me, the way you couldn't keep your eyes off me. By the way, I'll be happy to come help you in the hothouse. I'd appreciate it if you pay me, though. An average part-time salary will be good enough. The truth is, I'm sick of working at the gas station."

Mitsuo felt her eyes upon his face. A straightforward woman, he thought, and the kind he wouldn't have to waste valuable time trying to win over. In his confusion over how to proceed next, he blurted out what he had intended to be his punch line.

"Let's go to a motel."

Silence dropped upon the car like an anchor. Mitsuo had expressed what had been on his mind from the moment he met her. The whine of the engine sounded like a roar in the dense quiet of the car. He repeated his proposal.

Ayako shifted toward her door as though she contemplated bailing out. Mitsuo pressed the accelerator still harder, and the car sped along at twenty kilometers over the speed limit. Ayako screamed, sounding ready to burst into tears. "No! Let me out! You're the crudest bastard I've ever met." She beat at Mitsuo's shoulder with her purse, and for a moment he lost control of the wheel.

"I'll marry you. I promise. There's no problem."

"You're proposing? Just like that? What about my feelings?"

"Come on. It's not like you're a virgin. I can tell. Big deal, I'm not either. We're the same kind of people. I'll marry you. Really, that's what I want."

Ayako calmed down a little. She shifted her purse back to her lap and said, "It seems to me you don't take marriage very seriously. You're probably thinking, 'I'll marry her and if things don't work out, I'll just get a divorce.' You need to think more carefully about it."

"A little time alone will be good for us. We can talk freely in a motel." Mitsuo maintained the car's speed. Pain spread over the shoulder which Ayako had pounded.

As he drove, he searched for a motel sign. A group of yellow-helmeted children streamed along the roadside beside the guardrail. Mitsuo drove through a village where paddies lay filled with water, ready to absorb rice seedlings. The surface of the water acted as a perfect mirror, reflecting the brilliant sky. At length Mitsuo spied a gaudy sign advertising a motel. He followed a lane bordered by weed-filled thickets to a fortresslike structure surrounded by a high concrete wall. Lining the wall were plastic tubes in the shape of lanterns, their color faded by the elements. Mitsuo glanced at them in the rearview mirror, and saw them sway in the rush of air that rose from the car as it passed by.

Pieces of glass jutted out along the top of the concrete wall. There was no sign of anyone at the entrance to the motel, which consisted of a row of small mortar buildings with attached garages. Mitsuo made a circuit of the rooms before selecting one at random. Ayako sat quietly, and made no effort to leave the car.

"Let's go inside and talk. It'd be embarrassing to come this far without going in. I'm sure someone's staring at us."

"All right, I'll go in. But just to talk." Ayako stepped carefully out of the car. Mitsuo congratulated himself on how well everything was going. Success was now assured. He drew a plastic curtain which hid the car from view. A door led from the garage into the attached room. The thin carpet was moist and smelled of mildew. Mitsuo hit every switch on the wall. A fan began to buzz.

Ayako stood in the doorway holding her purse in front of her with both hands. A light above her head cast a shadow across her face.

"I'll marry you," Mitsuo insisted.

"You really mean it? Don't play games with me."

"Don't worry. If it's a game, you'll enjoy it, too."

"All I want to know is if you'll marry me."

"How many times do I have to tell you?"

The phone rang with a low and gloomy tone. "Are you spending the night, or just resting?" a voice inquired.