The area around the rear entrance of Tokyo Station was crowded as always. The air conditioning hardly seemed to be making any headway at all against the clammy heat that radiated from the flesh of the milling crowd, most of whom were bound for the seashore and mountains or else returning to their native places for the approaching Festival of the Dead.
Toshio Onodera looked around with a grimace of distaste as he wiped the sweat from his chin with the back of his hand. The spring rainy season had been cold, and the Weather Service had been forecasting a cool summer, but once the rain was gone, a fierce heat wave had struck. It had taken its toll in both Osaka and Tokyo, killing many of its victims. And then there was the usual summer water shortage.
Onodera had some six or seven minutes until his train pulled in. Since he had no desire at all to go into one of the packed and steaming station restaurants, he walked restlessly about, elbowing his way through the sweaty crowd. Each of the bodies mottled with sweat that slipped by on either side seemed to radiate heat like a foot-warmer—a short, thickset office worker in short sleeves, wearing his best suit and down-at-the-heels shoes; a middle-aged woman from the country in denim pants cut off at the knee, staggering along under a heavy load of baggage, her face red from the heat, her too-full breasts wrapped in a cheap striped blouse; a girl in her late teens, a stiff straw hat wound with a gaudy ribbon on her head and sweat dripping from the tip of her flat nose . . .
As he made his way through this assortment of people, the thought struck him that his own hot, sweat-drenched body was in no way different from theirs, that it, too, reeked. And perhaps the lingering odor of the gin that he had gulped down the night before mingled even now with that of his sweat. Onodera shivered with disgust.
Finding himself in front of a water fountain, he stooped to take a drink. But then, ignoring the trickle of cold water, he crouched, mouth half open, with his gaze riveted upon a spot just to the rear of the water fountain. A thin crack ran up the wall, zigzagging ever so little, so thin as to be almost imperceptible. The wall on one side of the crack seemed about an inch higher than on the other.
“Something wrong?”
He heard a somewhat irritated voice behind him. Unnerved, he took a quick gulp of water and moved back from the fountain.
“Excuse me. Go right ahead.”
So saying, he attempted to give place to the tall man behind him, but the latter moved to block his way. Taken aback, Onodera looked up into the man’s broad face.
“Hello!” the man said to Onodera, seizing his shoulder with a huge hand. White teeth flashed in his dark, sunburned face.
Onodera, at a total loss for a moment, suddenly grinned in return. “Goh! Not you?”
“A hangover, eh?” said Rokuro Goh, wrinkling up his nose. “Now I see. You looked like a carp there, gulping down that water.”
Paying no attention to Onodera’s denials, the towering Goh bent over and began to drink as though he intended to drain the cooler right then and there.
“Where are you headed?” Goh asked, wiping his wet mouth.
“Yaizu.”
“Still at it, eh?” Goh bent back the fingers of his right hand and made a dipping motion.
“Right. Where’re you going?”
“In the same direction. Hamamatsu.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“What’s in Hamamatsu? Work?” Onodera asked, as he sipped his beer in the train’s air-conditioned snack bar.
“Yes, the usual thing—construction.” Goh, already finishing his second beer, made a grimace that pulled taut his sunburned skin.
‘The Super Express?”
“Yes. There’s been one problem after another. The work on the roadbed is stalled.”
“What kind of problems?”
The train began to move. The view outside the window seemed to waver, catching Onodera’s attention. Just for a brief instant, how beautiful seemed the confused, dusty scene at the platform, the row of heat-oppressed faces. . . .
“What kind of problems, you say?” said Goh. Gripping his glass of beer tightly, he stared moodily at the dissolving froth. “All kinds. But it wouldn’t do to say anything about them yet. The newspapers might get on to it.”
Onodera did not press him further. He poured himself a second glass of beer.
“I don’t see how the survey could have been so far off,” Goh muttered as though talking to himself. “We have to practically start from scratch. The work’s in full swing, and then every thing blows up in our faces.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, I suppose. But take it from me, Onodera, Japan these days seems to be very, very shaky. Like a mass of jelly . . . Another beer? Or should we go back to our seats?” asked Goh, looking around the crowded dining car.
“What’s going on in Yaizu, by the way? A sunken ship or something? Great work for hot weather.”
“Not so great,” answered Onodera with a wry grin. “A Security Agency ship is taking us south. It’s a matter of doing some research using a deep-sea submarine—the Wadatsumi.”
“Where are you going?”
“Southeast of Torijima. There was an island there, and it seems that it disappeared.”
“Disappeared? Was there an eruption?”
“No, there wasn’t any eruption. It just sank—just like that.”