Since he could not actually expect anyone to hear his question, Ōura was merely talking to himself. He edged backward a little, then to one side as he studied the plants’ dimensions.
The plants had never reached such proportions last year. And what was more, toward the end of autumn, after the leaves had turned completely brown, Mrs. Ōura had cut the branches back almost all the way to the ground, leaving barely a stubble.
Perhaps that treatment had been good for them, however, for this year they had prospered spectacularly. Branches sprang up where none had existed before, arching tall and sweeping gently against the windowpanes in the breeze.
Of a day, if you happened to be alone in the sitting room when this happened, it could give you quite a start. The branches would move across the other side of the shoji screen like the shadow of an intruder passing by, and since that intruder looked like a veritable giant of a man (assuming, of course, that the intruder was male), young and old alike would feel their hearts skip a beat.
Perhaps the men and women of this house were simply too jumpy. Since this shadowy movement had never occurred when someone other than the family was in the sitting room alone, it was hard to know for sure. But Ōura felt quite certain that the motion would startle almost anyone—all the more if that anyone did not know about the bush clover or the way its branches stirred in the breeze.
At night, the sound of the branches brushing against the window screen produced exactly the same effect. You’d be watching baseball on TV, say, and suddenly you’d be startled by a noise and turn to look. It wasn’t as if you’d been watching the ball game with feelings of foreboding, but you couldn’t help jumping a little, wondering what might be lurking outside.
The Ōuras had transplanted the bush clover here from the nearby hillside two years ago. The plants had been puny little things then. The Ōuras’ older boy, Yasuo, had barely started fifth grade when he found them, yet none of the three plants even came up to his knees.
No one had imagined then that they would ever grow so tall.
That year, still only a year after the family had moved to their new home atop a ridge in the Tama Hills, Ōura’s foremost concern was to plant trees around the house for a windbreak as quickly as possible. Besides the bush clover, they had transplanted an occasional wild lily or oriental orchid they’d found on their mountain, but for the most part, smaller plants of that kind had had to remain a low priority.
By building their new home on the crest of a tall hill, they had gained spectacular views. But they had also placed themselves directly in the path of powerful winds. Being able to gaze out over a panorama of 360 degrees meant at the same time that their house took the full brunt of the wind no matter which way it blew—north, south, east, or west. There was simply no place to hide.
A single glance at the nearby farm houses, the oldest homes in the area, made it instantly clear what kind of place was best suited to human habitation. You could search far and wide and never find a single such house built on top of a ridge. Instead, their thatched roofs nestled placidly in the folds of the hills or among stands of trees set back from the road where they need never fear the wrath of the wind.
The builders of these farmhouses had probably selected such sites because their ancestors had been doing the same since time immemorial; they had drawn on a kind of instinctive wisdom the ancients had always possessed. Surely none of them had dithered for a second over whether to build on the summit of a hill or at its foot.
But these insights came to Ōura only after the house was completed, and after his family of five had moved in and lived there awhile. By that time, it was too late to pick up and go someplace else. They hadn’t come there on a camping trip; they couldn’t simply switch to a new spot when they discovered problems with the first site they had chosen.
Ōura felt sorely deflated to realize that he lacked the wisdom even the ancients had possessed. He knew less than the ancients had known. But it would do him no good to dwell on this humiliation. Somehow, he had to make certain that the house would not be blown away by a strong wind; he had to devise a means of self-defense.
Of course, when he said “a strong wind” here, what he actually meant was “typhoon”; he merely called it “a strong wind” to keep from picturing too vividly what could happen if a full-blown typhoon were to hit.
So long as it was only a “strong wind,” he could envision his whole house lifted intact into the sky with him and his pajama-clad family inside.
“We got blown away!” they’d cry out.
A typhoon, on the other hand, could hardly be taken so lightly.
The Ōuras had moved in April, so the season for new plantings was already well under way. If they dillydallied, it would soon be too hot. Then they’d have to wait until fall; they’d have to face the dreaded typhoon season without a single wind-absorbing tree in place.
But when a family moves to a new home in an entirely new locale, all manner of pressing needs demand attention right away. Ōura had to take care of a myriad other chores one by one before he could get to the trees.
It didn’t help that things they had all taken for granted at the old house no longer held true. And to make matters worse, their new location was not very conveniently situated. Ōura claimed it was only a twenty-minute walk from the train station, but that applied to persons with his own constitution and vigor. For Mrs. Ōura it took much longer.
“It seems like I walk forever and ever and I still don’t see the house,” was more the way she felt about it.
In fact, the very first time the two of them came to look at the lot, Ōura had marched ahead at his own pace while his wife fell farther and farther behind, until eventually they drew as far apart as the leader of a marathon and the also-rans who had given up any hope of placing.
Having built a new house on this hilltop with the intention of living here permanently and not merely camping out for a while, they now had to start from scratch to get everything put in proper order. They couldn’t simply decide to skip one thing or another because it was too much trouble. Sometimes that meant Ōura got back from a trip to the station only to have to run right back down the mountain for something else.
It really is true, Ōura concluded as he dashed up and down the mountain on these endless errands. If at all possible, a person should live his whole life in a single place, staying put in that place decade after decade and never thinking of moving anywhere else as long as he lives. That’s the ideal.
When you carry on in the same place, your efforts to make your life there as comfortable as it can be are spread out naturally over the course of many months and years. And although anything that doesn’t go according to wish really stands out, you tend not to notice all the other things that keep running along smoothly without a hitch. These other, smooth-running things didn’t get that way in a day; they grew into place slowly, the way tree roots reach around rocks that block their path or thread their way between the roots of neighboring trees to somehow find the water and nutrients needed by the branches overhead. You never realize how tightly intertwined they have become until you go to dig them up.
Moving to a new place was like having one’s entire root system ripped apart, and that was what made it so difficult.
But it did no good to fret. The Ōuras had moved here, after all, because other considerations had made it the right thing to do—and wasn’t that the same as saying the move was meant to be? In that case, instead of worrying about the old roots they had severed, they needed to concentrate on putting down strong new roots just as quickly as they possibly could.
If Ōura was in a perpetual flurry, so too were his wife and three children.