insanity.”
“Do you think they sell whisky at the village liquor store, Taka?” I asked, driven by the instinct of self-preservation.
“Mitsu’s trying to spoil my resolution to stay sober, Taka.”
“No, I’m not. I want a drink myself. You can join Taka’s sober bodyguard.”
“The only thing worrying me at the moment,” she said, “is whether I can sleep without a drink. It’s not as if I’ve been drinking every night lately just for the sake of getting drunk. What about Hoshi—didn’t he show signs of insomnia after he gave it up?”
“It’s not certain, you know, that he ever was such a great drinker,” said Takashi. “All that talk of his may mean that he’s never touched a drop in his life. He’s at the age when one wants to boast of one’s heroic past even if there’s nothing yet to back it up. There’s no telling how much of it may be lies. You should hear him lecturing Momoko about sex—it would make you laugh. He’s the type who likes to talk big, like an expert, even though he’s had absolutely no sexual experience himself.” He laughed.
“Well then, I’ll have to practice sobriety alone and unaided,” said my wife with unconcealed disappointment. Her remark had too frankly pitiful a ring to invite any further objection.
The sky, trapped between the great trees whose upper branches the wind had trained to lean in the same direction, was steadily developing a blackish red tinge that reminded me of scorched flesh. Wisps of mist moved low over the trail. A miasma welling up from the depths of the undergrowth hemming in the road, it crept along slowly at the level of the jeep’s wheels. We would have to get out of the forest before it rose to eye level. Takashi accelerated cautiously. Eventuallythe jeep left the trees and emerged, unexpectedly and with a sudden widening of the field of vision, onto a small plateau. We parked the jeep and gazed out over the spindle-shaped hollow encircled by dense forest that stretched as far as the eye could see in uniform, deep brown shadow beneath a somber red sky. The trail along which we had driven the jeep made a right-angled turn at the plateau, then descended in a straight line following the slope of the forest to the neck of the valley; here it encountered the junction between the graveled road that crossed the bridge and plunged into the valley, and the asphalt road that followed the river rising in the hollow as it rounded the foot of the plateau and flowed on down to the coast. Seen from our vantage point, the valley road seemed to climb up the hollow only to disappear abruptly, like a river running onto sand, on the far edge where the forest began. From the plateau, the cluster of human dwellings and the fields and paddies surrounding them looked small enough to be clutched in one hand, such was the power of the dense, deep forest to distort the perception of size. Our hollow, as the crazy hermit had rightly observed, was a feeble presence pitting itself against the eroding power of the forest. It was more natural, in fact, to see the spindle-shaped hollow not as a presence in its own right but as an absence of the massed trees that were elsewhere. As one grew used to the idea that the surrounding forest was the only unequivocal reality, one could almost see a vast lid of oblivion closing in on the hollow.
Mist was rising from the river at the bottom of the valley, cleaving the center of the hollow, and the village by now lay in its depths. Our family home stood on a small hill, but all about it was blurred and vague, so that the white of the long stone wall was all that the eye could detect. I wanted to point out to my wife where our house lay, but the dull ache in my eye was too bad to let me go on gazing at the spot for long.
“I think I’ll see if I can find a bottle of whisky, Mitsu,” she said in a timid, conciliating tone.
Taka looked round at us with profound interest.
“Why don’t you try some water instead?” I
“Do you think they sell whisky at the village liquor store, Taka?” I asked, driven by the instinct of self-preservation.
“Mitsu’s trying to spoil my resolution to stay sober, Taka.”
“No, I’m not. I want a drink myself. You can join Taka’s sober bodyguard.”
“The only thing worrying me at the moment,” she said, “is whether I can sleep without a drink. It’s not as if I’ve been drinking every night lately just for the sake of getting drunk. What about Hoshi—didn’t he show signs of insomnia after he gave it up?”
“It’s not certain, you know, that he ever was such a great drinker,” said Takashi. “All that talk of his may mean that he’s never touched a drop in his life. He’s at the age when one wants to boast of one’s heroic past even if there’s nothing yet to back it up. There’s no telling how much of it may be lies. You should hear him lecturing Momoko about sex—it would make you laugh. He’s the type who likes to talk big, like an expert, even though he’s had absolutely no sexual experience himself.” He laughed.
“Well then, I’ll have to practice sobriety alone and unaided,” said my wife with unconcealed disappointment. Her remark had too frankly pitiful a ring to invite any further objection.
The sky, trapped between the great trees whose upper branches the wind had trained to lean in the same direction, was steadily developing a blackish red tinge that reminded me of scorched flesh. Wisps of mist moved low over the trail. A miasma welling up from the depths of the undergrowth hemming in the road, it crept along slowly at the level of the jeep’s wheels. We would have to get out of the forest before it rose to eye level. Takashi accelerated cautiously. Eventuallythe jeep left the trees and emerged, unexpectedly and with a sudden widening of the field of vision, onto a small plateau. We parked the jeep and gazed out over the spindle-shaped hollow encircled by dense forest that stretched as far as the eye could see in uniform, deep brown shadow beneath a somber red sky. The trail along which we had driven the jeep made a right-angled turn at the plateau, then descended in a straight line following the slope of the forest to the neck of the valley; here it encountered the junction between the graveled road that crossed the bridge and plunged into the valley, and the asphalt road that followed the river rising in the hollow as it rounded the foot of the plateau and flowed on down to the coast. Seen from our vantage point, the valley road seemed to climb up the hollow only to disappear abruptly, like a river running onto sand, on the far edge where the forest began. From the plateau, the cluster of human dwellings and the fields and paddies surrounding them looked small enough to be clutched in one hand, such was the power of the dense, deep forest to distort the perception of size. Our hollow, as the crazy hermit had rightly observed, was a feeble presence pitting itself against the eroding power of the forest. It was more natural, in fact, to see the spindle-shaped hollow not as a presence in its own right but as an absence of the massed trees that were elsewhere. As one grew used to the idea that the surrounding forest was the only unequivocal reality, one could almost see a vast lid of oblivion closing in on the hollow.
Mist was rising from the river at the bottom of the valley, cleaving the center of the hollow, and the village by now lay in its depths. Our family home stood on a small hill, but all about it was blurred and vague, so that the white of the long stone wall was all that the eye could detect. I wanted to point out to my wife where our house lay, but the dull ache in my eye was too bad to let me go on gazing at the spot for long.
“I think I’ll see if I can find a bottle of whisky, Mitsu,” she said in a timid, conciliating tone.
Taka looked round at us with profound interest.
“Why don’t you try some water instead?” I
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