On the phone, Hayatsu himself had responded positively to Asakawa’s request, promising to meet him at the jetty. Since they’d never met, Asakawa had described himself and said he was traveling with a friend.
Now he heard a voice from behind. “Excuse me, are you Mr Asakawa?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Hayatsu, the Oshima correspondent.” He held out umbrellas and smiled good-naturedly.
“Sorry to impose on you so suddenly like this. We really appreciate your help.”
As they hurried to Hayatsu’s car, Asakawa introduced Ryuji. The wind was so loud they could hardly speak over it until they’d climbed inside the vehicle. It was a compact, but surprisingly spacious inside. Asakawa rode in front, Ryuji in the back.
“Shall we go straight to Takashi Yamamura’s house?” asked Hayatsu, both hands on the steering wheel. He was over sixty, and had a full head of hair, though much of it was gray.
“So, you’ve already found Sadako Yamamura’s family?” Asakawa had already told Hayatsu on the phone that they were coming to investigate someone by that name.
“It’s a small town. Once you said it was a Yamamura from Sashikiji, I knew right away who it was. There’s only one family by that name here. Yamamura’s a fisherman who runs his house as a bed-and-breakfast in the summertime. What do you think? We could have him put you up there tonight. Of course you’re welcome at my place, too, but it’s a little small and rundown. I’m sure having you stay there would be an imposition on you.” Hayatsu laughed. He and his wife lived alone, but he wasn’t exaggerating: they really didn’t have room to sleep two guests.
Asakawa looked back at Ryuji.
“I’m fine with that.”
Hayatsu’s little car sped toward the Sashikiji district, on the southern tip of the island. Sped as much as it could, that is: the Oshima Ring Road circling the island was too narrow and winding to go very fast on. The vast majority of the cars they passed were also compacts. At times their field of vision opened up to their right, to reveal the ocean, and when it did the sound of the wind would change. The sea was dark, reflecting the deep leaden color of the sky, and it heaved violently, throwing up whitecaps. If it hadn’t been for those brief flashes of white, it would have been difficult to tell where the sky stopped and the sea began, or where the sea stopped and the land began. The longer they gazed at it the more depressing it seemed. The radio blared a typhoon alert, and their surroundings became even darker. They veered right at a fork in the road and immediately entered a tunnel of camellias. They could see bare roots beneath the camellias, tangled and wizened; long years of exposure to wind and rain had eroded some of the plants’ soil. Now they were wet and slick with rain—it looked to Asakawa like they were speeding through the intestines of a huge monster.
“Sashikiji is dead ahead,” said Hayatsu. “But I don’t think this Sadako Yamamura woman is here anymore. You can get the details from Takashi Yamamura. From what I hear he’s a cousin of her mother’s.”
“How old would this Sadako be now?” asked Asakawa. For some time now Ryuji had been scrunched down in the back seat, uttering not a word.
“Hmm. I’ve never actually met her, you know. But if she’s still alive, she must be forty-two, forty-three, maybe?”
If she’s still alive? Asakawa wondered why Hayatsu had used that expression. Maybe she was missing? Suddenly he was filled with misgivings. What if they’d come all this way to Oshima only to find no one knew if she was dead or alive? What if this was a dead end?
Finally the car pulled up in front of a two-story house bearing the sign Yamamura Manor. It stood on a gentle slope with a commanding view of the ocean. No doubt in good weather the scenery was splendid. In the offing they could make out the triangular shape of an island. That was Toshima.
“When the weather is nice, you can see Nijima, Shikinejima and even Kozushima from here,” said Hayatsu proudly, pointing south over the sea.
“Investigate? What is it exactly I should investigate about this woman?”
She joined the troupe in ’65? You’ve got to be kidding—that’s twenty-five years ago. Yoshino was ranting to himself. It’s hard enough to trace a criminal’s steps a year after the fact. But twenty-five?
“We need anything and everything you can find out. We want to know what kind of life this woman’s led, what she’s doing right now, what she wants.”
Yoshino could only sigh. He wedged the receiver between his ear and his shoulder and pulled a notepad over from the edge of the desk.
“… And how old was she at the time?”
“Eighteen. She graduated from high school on Oshima and went straight to Tokyo, where she joined a theater group called Theater Group Soaring.”
“Oshima?” Yoshino stopped writing and frowned. “Hey, where are you calling from, anyway?”
“From a place called Sashikiji, on Izu Oshima Island.”
“And when do you plan on coming back?”
“As soon as I can.”
“You realize there’s a typhoon heading your way?”
Of course there was no way Asakawa could be ignorant of it, being right there in the middle of it, but to Yoshino the whole thing had taken on an unreal quality that he had begun to find amusing. The “deadline” was the night after next, and yet Asakawa himself was holed up on Oshima, possibly unable to escape.
“Have you heard any travel advisories?” Asakawa still didn’t know many details.
“Well, I’m not sure, but the way it looks now, I imagine they’ll be grounding all flights and suspending ocean transport.”
Asakawa had been too busy chasing down Sadako Yamamura to pick up any reliable information about the typhoon. He’d had a bad feeling ever since stepping onto the Oshima pier, but now that the possibility of being stranded here had been voiced, he suddenly felt a sense of urgency. Receiver still in hand, he fell silent.
“Hey, hey, don’t worry. They haven’t cancelled anything yet.” Yoshino tried to sound positive. Then he changed the subject. “So, this woman … Sadako Yamamura. You’ve checked her history out up to the age of eighteen?”
“More or less,” Asakawa answered, conscious of the sound of the wind and waves outside the phone booth.
“This isn’t your only lead, right? You’ve got to have something besides this Theater Group Soaring.”
“Nope, that’s it. Sadako Yamamura, born in Sashikiji on Izu Oshima Island in 1947 to Shizuko Yamamura … hey, make a note of that name. Shizuko Yamamura. She was twenty-two in ’47. She left her new baby, Sadako, with her grandmother and ran off to Tokyo.”
“Why did she leave the baby on the island?”
“There was a man. Make a note of this, too: Heihachiro Ikuma. At the time he was Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. He was Shizuko Yamamura’s lover.”
“So does that mean Sadako is Shizuko and Ikuma’s child?”
“I haven’t been able to find proof, but I think it’s safe to assume that.”
“And they weren’t married, right?”
“Exactly. Heihachiro Ikuma already had a family.”
So it had been an illicit affair. Yoshino licked the tip of his pencil.
“Okay, I’m with you. Go on.”
“Early in 1950 Shizuko suddenly revisits her hometown for the first