Before this, when the two older children dragged themselves from bed early because of school and sat bleary-eyed at the breakfast table sipping their miso soup, the youngest could declare it no concern of his and stay blissfully in bed. But now, with the new school year beginning this April, even Shōjirō had to get up to go to kindergarten. Gone were the days when he could stick his head out from under the blankets on a cold winter morning, remind himself that there was no rush to get up, and snuggle back into the warmth of his bed for another cozy snooze. Life did not permit him to remain a carefree child forever.
Once he started to kindergarten, grade school came next whether he liked it or not, and soon he would be longing for the good old days when he could play from morning to night at home without having to go anywhere at all.
At any event, with the entire family hurrying and scurrying about, April and May flew right by and gave way to steamy June. Not a day went by without trees for a windbreak weighing on Ōura’s mind, but the days simply outran him. After all, he also had his livelihood as a writer to make. The season for planting passed in a flash, and the new house remained surrounded by hillside as naked as the day they first moved in.
“Naked” was perhaps an overstatement. They did have some crinums, two Chinese tallow trees, and a white magnolia they’d loaded at the back of the truck and brought with them from the house that had been their home for the previous eight years.
Ōura had chosen to bring along these particular plants because they had not yet grown very big. In fact, worried as he was that their household goods might not all fit into the truck, he had at first hesitated to dig up even these relatively small plants.
The persimmon and peach trees he had planted at the old house both produced wonderfully sweet fruit, but he reluctantly left them behind.
“It’d be too much trouble to try to take these, too,” he had had to concede.
He left in place, as well, a lilac bush that his older brother bought and planted for them as a housewarming gift the first time he came to visit from Osaka. Their old yard had had many other trees and shrubs as well, but the persimmon and peach and lilac came to mind first because those were the ones Ōura missed most.
“We should have at least brought those along,” he had kicked himself over and over in regret.
Unfortunately, the crinums and tallow trees and magnolia that had made it onto the truck with their belongings failed to thrive after being transplanted. They had difficulty getting established because they were always being buffeted by the wind (that was Ōura’s reasoning at the time, anyway). The two tallow trees gradually withered over the course of the spring and died at the beginning of summer; the magnolia put out a few leaves but then seemed to have stopped growing as it jostled constantly in the wind.
This is not looking good, Ōura thought.
All this time he had still been trying to decide what to do about trees for a windbreak. Most of the old farmhouses in the area seemed to be surrounded by live oaks, so perhaps that was what he should choose. But mightn’t chinquapins be better? Or was there yet another species he should consider—a tree that was particularly sturdy and quick to grow?
Not a day went by without Ōura pondering these questions. Yet now the tallow trees had died, and the magnolia looked touch-and-go as well.
Their hilltop location certainly got more than enough sunshine. Stands of cedar and pine grew only a short distance away. Some of the larger red pines looked like they must be a hundred years old. And there were some sawtooth oaks as well. Since all these trees grew on the same mountain, it could hardly be the fault of poor soil. It had to be the wind.
In the morning, Ōura would note happily that the day was calm, but then a wind would rise in the afternoon. The entire Tokyo area was notoriously windy in the spring. Gusting winds could throw up clouds of dust thick enough to obscure the sky. Even with the storm shutters closed tight, dust filtered into the house and settled everywhere. Ōura had grown quite accustomed to this at their former home.
But the winds there had never been so utterly relentless, day after day, the way they were here. On their new mountaintop it was as if a high-wind advisory needed to remain permanently in effect. Once, when Ōura stepped outside, a powerful gust took hold of the front door and slammed it against the wall so hard it wrenched it out of shape. That was the kind of wind they had to contend with.
Ōura wondered if other areas around Tokyo might also be experiencing unusually high winds, but nowhere in the paper did he find any such reports. No storefront signboards had blown off or hit unfortunate passersby in the head.
When the dry cleaner or the butcher’s apprentice came by with their deliveries, they gave no sign that anything was out of the ordinary, so even right here in their own little town it apparently wasn’t particularly windy in the business district down by the train station.
At this rate, regardless of what kind of tree Ōura chose, before he could plant trees to make a windbreak for the house, he’d need to make a windbreak for the windbreak. Otherwise, the trees might never be able to establish themselves; the constant jostling of the wind would keep the new roots from ever being able to grab hold of the soil.
Perhaps a spell of several quiet days in a row would let a few new roots begin to take hold, but then as soon as the wind came up again the thin strands would get torn right off. With this cycle repeating itself over and over, soon even the most determined tree would have to give up.
But who had ever heard of planting trees to make a windbreak for the trees you wanted to plant for a windbreak? Ōura would simply have to do what he could to help the first trees he planted take root. He could secure the trees firmly in place by tying bamboo poles sideways across the row of trunks, or he could prop up each of the trees separately with its own set of supports. Even on the flat lowlands, people had been using such methods for centuries in order to help their trees grow healthy and strong.
Before Ōura had planted a single tree to tame the wind, as he was still fretting about what exactly he should do, he received a special-delivery letter from his brother in Osaka one day:
“I had meant to send you something to celebrate your move long before this, but the days just kept slipping by. Today I finally got out to the rose gardens at Hirakata and arranged to have five kinds of bush roses and five kinds of climbing roses shipped to you. You should get them in no more than a week, so you need to start the following preparations as soon as you receive this letter.
“First, choose a well-ventilated spot with plenty of sunshine and dig holes one meter across by fifty centimeters or more deep (the deeper the better), at least one meter apart for the bush roses and two meters apart for the climbing kind.
“Next, fill the holes to half their depth with a well-blended mixture of oil cake or chicken manure and humus from under the fallen leaves in the woods. But make sure the roots of the roses won’t actually come in contact with these soil amendments when you plant them.”
Off to one side Ōura’s brother had sketched a simple diagram illustrating the dimensions.
As soon as he finished reading the letter, Ōura went to get his shovel and headed for the yard. If he didn’t get to work right away, the holes might not be ready by the time the roses arrived.
In recent weeks, Ōura had been thinking only of planting a windbreak. His mind was filled with pictures of trees that would grow rapidly to maturity and hide the entire house from view. Putting in roses could hardly have been farther from his thoughts, for his heart was consumed by something quite removed from ornamental interests.
His brother, however, knew nothing about any of that. When they moved into their previous home, he had bought them a lilac bush; this time he was sending roses. This brother was