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