The Commutation

Ichiro opened his eyes. It was about six-thirty in the morning. The cicadas were already louder than the traffic noise, and the summer sun was slicing through the gaps in his thin curtains. He pushed aside the towel he used as a top sheet and sat up at the edge of his bedding. In ten minutes, the radio would turn itself on. He reached out and switched on his fan. It was on a night timer, and had turned itself off some time before. He sat in front of the fan, waiting for the radio. Finally, the radio began to shout out international news and overpowered the cicadas.

He got up, went to the bath and splashed water on himself, dressed, and forgot to shave. Ichiro had two sets of work clothes. One, which he had worn the day before, was drying in the sun outside his window. The other, which he had taken inside the night before, he picked up from the floor. There was a pair of light green cotton trousers, a light green cotton shirt, and a darker green sleeveless vest with a mesh back and pockets on the front. He pulled on the trousers, draped the shirt and vest over the back of his chair, and turned to the kitchen.

As the radio murmured baseball scores, the rhythm of cicadas followed ostinato. Ichiro drew water for the kettle, and switched on the gas. He pulled a packet of instant noodles from the cupboard, rinsed his cup, wiped his bowl, and shook instant coffee into the cup. He opened his refrigerator, and took out an egg and a packet of sliced ham and a jar of chilli sauce. The noodles went into the bowl first, followed by the sliced ham and a spoonful of chilli sauce. With the cicadas diminuendo, the radio repeated the weather report, and turned to popular songs and jokes. The water boiled. Ichiro filled his cup, poured water over the noodles, cracked the egg over the bowl, and covered the bowl with a saucepan lid. He stirred his coffee, listened to a joke about overseas vacations, and watched the clock on the radio. About three minutes later, he removed the lid, carried the bowl to his table, and ate breakfast.

There was a controversy on the radio about air conditioning. A man’s voice complained that women always turned down the air conditioning whenever they entered a room. A woman’s voice complained that men always turned up the air conditioning whenever they entered a room. Ichiro listened to the cicadas and finished his coffee. He put on his work shirt, picked up the empty breakfast dishes, and went to the kitchen sink. The cicadas ostinato, the man and woman on the radio da capo. Ichiro ran water over the dishes and left them in the sink. He brushed his teeth. He noticed in the washbasin mirror that he had forgotten to shave, and ran the electric razor over his face. The man and woman approached a resolution of the theme, the radio turned itself off, and a distant power saw reinforced the cicadas. Ichiro sniffed at his work vest, and began to put things in the pockets. His tool belt was draped over a plastic box near the door.

Ichiro was on his bicycle by seven o’clock. His helmet and tool belt were in a basket over the front wheel. As he rode away from home, he could hear the man and woman from the radio continuing their conversation in a different flat. It was cooler outside than it had been in his room, and there was still a trace of dew-scent on the air. A slight breeze turned the leaves of the camphor trees on the hill, and they appeared to be shaking off the morning sun. Cicadas mezzo forte in the bushes and trees, on the wall of the block of flats, on the roof of the shop next door. Ichiro rode slowly until the corner, where he stopped, and bought a bottle of water from the machine by the tobacconist. Last year, he also bought cigarettes. He put the bottle in the basket under his helmet, and rode away toward the main road.

Turning from his street to the main road, he passed an old shop, its windows and doors blocked by sliding wooden shutters and roughly nailed boards. There were two cats fighting somewhere inside. Ichiro paused at the corner to wait for the light to change. Cicadas mezzo piano, the sound of traffic and the howling cats dominant. Ten or fifteen years ago, and twenty or more years ago, this was an ice shop. In the summer they served ice cakes flavoured with sweet beans or milk or coloured syrup, wrapped in butcher’s paper and kept in a freezer case. They put stools in the front of the shop, and children sat in the cool dimness, eating their ices too quickly, and howling in exaggerated pain. Something crashed to the ground inside the shop. Ichiro glanced to the side, and saw an old sign reading ‘ice’ half covered by a loose board and a waving mass of ivy. The light turned, and he pushed off, riding to the harbour side of the main road. He turned left, and followed the sidewalk, feeling the sun on his head and shoulders.

There was a line of gingko trees at the edge of the sidewalk, but it was the wrong time of day for them to cast shadows to the right of the road. Ichiro pedalled legato, his wheels squeaking with every turn. Last year he had pedalled quickly, standing up in the saddle and pushing against the slope where the main road turned toward the harbour. His leg began to throb, and his head felt the force of the sun. The cicadas in the trees accompanied the engine sounds, rising as the diesel motors fell, diminishing as the trucks changed gears to climb the hill. Short of breath, and choking a bit from the exhaust fumes, Ichiro walked his bicycle up the hill, lento. A few months ago, he had been limping, a bandage wrapped around his lower leg. Spring then, and the cicadas were in the ground, and there had been a slight fragrance of plum blossom rising through the inland breeze when the trucks were quiet. He paused at the top of the slope, and thought about his bottle of water. The road continued flat from here, straight across the old dockside neighbourhood to the shipyards.

Between the top of the slope and the beginning of the yards, the road was lined on both sides with mature plane trees, which had survived the firebombing at the end of the war. There was shade here. Ichiro got back on his bicycle, and pedalled moderato. Cicadas crescendo in the avenue of trees, above the oldest earth in the harbour, the tree trunks dotted with empty nymph shells. Ichiro paused again at the end of the street, and waited for the light to turn. The harbour expressway rose overhead, and trucks ground around the corner to the entrance ramp and disappeared behind the toll gates and sound baffles. He watched the leaves quivering on the trees across the road, and was not aware that he was rubbing his leg above the knee. Behind him, there was a small bar in an old whitewashed building. They had forgotten to take in their sign and lantern the night before, the sign now incongruous in daylight, the lantern turning in the breeze. When the light turned, the lantern knocked against the sign, and Ichiro noticed it in the corner of his eye as he pushed away from the kerb. He remembered the bar well. He had seen the lantern knock against the sign before. He recalled the taste of their grilled chicken skin, of their spicy sausages, of their cold beer. He remembered crawling from the door, pulling himself up, supporting himself on the sign, the lantern knocking against his head, after he discovered the effect of putting his weight on his bandaged leg.

Ships navigated basso cantante in the harbour, the fishing fleet putting up after market, the junk ships setting out for Russia, the Korean ferry indeterminate at dock. The old seawall followed the road to the left and right, curling around the base of a hill on the one side, and extending out along the curve of the bay to the other. There were short, steep slopes wherever the roads went out past the old wall to the reclaimed land of the new harbour and the shipyard. Ichiro pedalled along the seawall road, facing the hill. From time to time, he passed points where the water had been left to its former channels, and still lapped pianissimo at the old seawall. Long fingers of ocean reached through the reclaimed land to the original coastline. There were men fishing, and Ichiro stopped his bicycle, and watched them tugging at their fishing lines, or reaching down to bait their hooks. Someone had a radio, and he heard the man and woman talking to a popular singer about the heat. Ichiro stood beside his bicycle, looking back along the wall to the groups of men. They were in groups of two or three, or sometimes alone with other men. One of the men looked like Ichiro’s father. Perhaps the radio was his.

Ichiro got back on his bicycle and started to ride toward the dry-dock. The breeze quickened, and cloud shadows swam across the road, and dropped into the darker water. He turned a corner, and rode across the causeway to the main part of the shipyard. Ichiro rode into the shadow of the ship that was not yet a ship, and he felt the breeze through the mesh of his vest and through the shirt on his back. This time it was a freighter. He remembered that last year it had been a car ferry. The ship was a vast wedge of naked, rust-red steel thrust up from the new land around it. Ocean water pooled on the concrete beneath it, and the young metal groaned along its new joints when the wind blew. A few shower-points of sparks appeared high above the dock, and a moment later, he heard the crackle of the welder’s small lightning. The smell of ozone and engine grease, and cicadas diminuendo. Ichiro saw men in green work clothes moving along the edge of the ship, climbing ladders on the gantry cranes, carrying bags of tools and pieces of metal along the dock below the shadow of the prow. He thought about calling out to the men, but they did not seem to see him. Ichiro felt that he should know them, that they should know him. Already last year, he had worked in the shipyard longer than most of the other men. He wasn’t sure, but he might have worked there longer than his father. Ichiro remembered a whitewashed building, where the family lived upstairs, and had their own private kitchen behind the bar. His father fanning coals in the grill, deft, folding the fan with his one hand, slipping it into his apron, turning the skewers one at a time, greeting the men from the docks by name as they came into the bar.

The wind changed direction, and Ichiro caught the smell of the ocean on the breeze. He stood at the edge of the yard, holding his bicycle by the handlebars, looking up at the men on the ship, and breathing deeply. The smell of salt water, of clean dampness, of living fish. It was the same as yesterday. Ichiro was confused. The men didn’t see him any more. How many years had it been? Ichiro had taken up tools when his childhood friends were studying for entrance examinations. He spent his first day in a banana boat, carrying bags of dirt and construction debris up from the bottom of the hold, moving as fast as he could up the narrow stairs. From the top of the stairs to the bottom of the hold there was nothing but blackness, empty space, and invisible clouds of metallic dust. Ichiro wondered about his work clothes. Would they need a wash again tonight, after the dust and sweat of the road? He looked back at the men by the old seawall. One of them stood up suddenly, and knocked over his stool, as he jerked his rod and pulled at his line. The other men looked down at the water. It was dark and gentle on the surface, with a few ripples coming in from the ocean. Small circles expanded against the ripples where the man’s line twisted in the water. Ichiro recalled that he used to go fishing with his father. He wondered where they had gone, because he knew they had not fished around here, so close to the shipyard. It had been somewhere else, somewhere beyond the docks, a bit farther along the coast.

Ichiro walked his bicycle back along the causeway, back along the dock road, and pushed it up the slope to the old seawall. He looked at his watch. It was not yet eight o’clock, but it was already hot in the sun. He thought about wearing his helmet to keep the sun off his head, but it was too heavy, and it would be too hot. Some years ago, the men on the ships had worn cotton work caps instead of helmets. Or was that in his father’s time? When they didn’t have their own helmets, and they wore cotton caps on their way to and from the docks. Every morning the men filed in, took a helmet from the rack, collected a bag of tools, and climbed up into their ships. Only the welders used the same helmets and tools every day. Ichiro had a cotton work cap at home. He took off his vest, folded it, and put it in the basket beside his tool belt. He mounted his bicycle and rode away from the shipyard, back along the seawall, toward the main road. The bar was on his route, but this time the light was with him, and he passed by quickly. Riding prestissimo along the avenue of plane trees. Cicadas fortissimo, louder in his ears than the traffic, louder than the sign collapsing under his weight. He returned to the road he had travelled before. Ichiro’s brakes squeaked as he went downhill. The smell of road dust and hot tar came to him in waves on the breeze.

There was a fork in the main road at the base of the hill. The light was red, and Ichiro paused next to a small truck. Its windows were open, and he could hear the radio inside. The man had gone somewhere, and the woman was talking about summer vacations. Long ago, before the port, this hill was an island for a few hours every day at high tide. There was a river on the far side, and ocean sands and mountain soil blended in its mouth, and filled in the low-lying land around the hill. People helped the work along, building the seawall on one side, and pushing docks out into the shallows. They covered the channel on the landward side, beat it down to a path, and resurfaced it again and again until it became this road. The light turned, and Ichiro waited for the truck to turn the corner before he rode across the street. He could see the hospital up to his right, partway up the hill. Whatever the season, there were always whispering breezes through the broadleaf evergreens planted around the hospital. He had heard them up there last year, just like he had heard them with his father. Ichiro felt the pressure in his leg as he crossed the bridge over the river. It was a small, slow river, and the hill and the hospital rose high above it. There was a smell of old fish and still water. Ichiro wondered what became of arms and legs once they were detached from the body. He recalled that they were burned in the hospital, that he used to look up at the hospital chimney and shiver at the sight of smoke.

He road along the riverbank to the coast, allegro. The wind carried the cool smell of closely-packed trees across the river from the old hill. Cicadas forte, ma non troppo. There were boats in the river below, lashed to slippery stakes just out from the embankment. Ichiro watched the ocean fishermen come and go every day, but he could not recall seeing a river fisher in one of these boats. They always seemed to be just as they were at that moment, bobbing in the tension between tide and river current. Here and there barnacle-encrusted wrecks protruded from the water. Some had been boats, but others were impossible to identify. They looked like ruins from a far-away summer, before Ichiro left school, when he might have come this way with his father. He never saw men in these boats, because he had always been here at the wrong time, because he always worked on the far side of the hill. The road ended at a sagging wooden fence. This was the end of the city, and the beginning of the windbreak of pine trees planted along the beach. Ichiro pushed through a gap in the fence and left his bicycle in the shade, propped up against the trunk of a tree.

The windbreak was about twenty metres deep, and extended far off into the distance. When Ichiro first pushed through the fence and left his bicycle, he turned to look back at the river. He was close to the riverside, but it was difficult to make out the embankment even here, because the trees were closely packed on that side. All around him, pine trees of varying ages, some barely saplings and some very old, were twisting up and back, up to the sun, away from the ocean wind. The oldest trees were contorted in savage shapes, as though they were still twisting in a typhoon wind. The smell of pine, and the feeling of needles poking his bare feet and sticking to his leg. He could see that the windbreak was overgrown in most directions, that there were only a few passable paths leading through it. The boughs above and behind him stirred in the wind, and suddenly he felt that he was very far away, or that he was neglecting something. He turned back for a moment, and collected the contents of his basket. The sun was rising in the sky. With every gust of wind, the pine boughs scattered flashes of direct sunlight on the creeping vines and litter covering the ground between the open paths.

Ichiro walked through the pines moderato. He followed a path that turned anti-clockwise from his bicycle, then crept right, and left, and right again. He made no effort to find his own route through the pines, but he was confident that this was the right path. Sounds occasionally reached through the trees from behind, decrescendo. First cicadas, then traffic, ships, and a radio. A man’s voice, and then a woman’s, but he could not tell what they were saying any more. Somewhere along the beach, there were outdoor restaurants, open for the summer, where people came to drink beer, eat fish, and look at the ocean. Ichiro had gone there once with the men from the docks. Everyone sat together, and laughed, and Ichiro’s father was there, too. When he looked up at the men, he was surprised to see how young they all were. His father was pointing at something and smiling. Ichiro could not remember where the restaurants were, but he did recall a hot, stuffy bus ride there, and another bus full of sleeping men on the way home. The trees closed in on him, and he lost the path. He ducked down, and pushed through the low branches, vaguely aware that he should take care and watch out for snakes. A moment later he emerged from the windbreak and found himself at the edge of the beach. The smell of hot sand all around him.

Even the cicadas were quiet on this side of the trees. There was no sound except for the surf. Ichiro sat down on a piece of driftwood to catch his breath, the air around him restless and damp with surf, sharp with the smell of ocean water. It was hard to see at first, after the darkness of the pine trees. Ichiro raised his hand and shielded his eyes. He looked out at the ocean, and did not see any ships. There was nothing from the city there. Only waves, and sky, and distant haze, and a few early clouds forming far out over the sea. Ichiro forgot the main road to the docks, and the avenue of plane trees, and the lantern knocking against the sign. He forgot the boards on the ice shop, and forgot the weight of his work clothes, and forgot the smell of the ships and of the hospital. He felt the strength of the sun on his head and shoulders, and it pleased him. It was summer. He knew from the position of the sun in the sky that it was mid-morning. He did not have a watch.

A scent of burning reached him on the wind, of burning leaves, or perhaps it was burning sea-litter. Ichiro jumped to his feet. He stepped away from the edge of the windbreak and moved onto the beach. Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to what he was seeing. At the far end of the beach, he saw a boy digging for clams. The boy was using a stick to vigorously scrape at the sand, chasing something that retreated down into the sand as he dug. Then he dropped the stick, and reached down into the hole with the same hand. The boy bent down, and groped in the hole, and turned in Ichiro’s direction. He caught hold of something, and pulled it out. The boy raised his arm above his head, and waved what he had found for Ichiro to see. Ichiro began to walk across the sand, lento, espressivo.

Ichiro paused when he was half-way across the beach, because he felt something on his leg. He assumed it to be pine needles, looked down, and thought to brush the needles from his leg and foot. He noticed that he was wearing short pants. There was a boyish smell, slightly soft, slightly sour.

He started to walk again, adagio across the hot sand. Waves dolce at the edge of the water. He could smell sea grasses and shells. Ichiro was a child again, and the boy on the beach was calling out to him by name.

Ichiro had arrived where he was meant to be. There was an indistinct cooking smell on the breeze. It could have come from behind him, or it could have come from the direction of the other boy. He carried his fishing rod, his tin pail, and his lunch bag down to the tide line. He dropped them on the sand and offered the other boy a drink from his bottle of water.