He’s fat and smiling, his chin drawn down against his neck. I feel slightly nauseous looking at him, so I close my eyes again. There are flies on my sweaty thighs and calves. They keep lifting off and resettling, sipping at the perspiration.
It was thanks to Yoshi-nī that Mr. Yoshida got through the teacher selection process. Mr. Yoshida’s mother was Yoshi-nī’s cousin.
“My university was a second-rate private place in Tokyo,” Mr. Yoshida said, turning over the ignition. “I’d never have landed a teaching job right away without his help.” The engine snarled—a deep, heavy growl that sent leaves and dust swirling through the air. “He had a word with a member of the prefectural assembly. He told me that as long as I got through the first written test, I’d be okay.”
Mr. Yoshida’s car was also thanks to Yoshi-nī. His mother had asked for a loan on her son’s behalf and Yoshi-nī had agreed just like that. There’s no way Mr. Yoshida, fresh out of college, could have bought a Nissan Skyline GTR otherwise. After we left the plant, he’d always drive me up to the little beach at the tip of the promontory.
Until that year, the only person from the village on the local assembly had been Yoshi-nī. But then Hachi-nī suddenly decided to run too. Hachi-nī had always supported Yoshi-nī before, but nobody seemed surprised by his change of heart. They’d been classmates through elementary and junior high schools, and had been friends, but deep down there’d always been a rivalry.
“Giant Baba and Antonio Hinoki,” said Hidaka, comparing them to characters in the world of Japanese wrestling. Hidaka didn’t say much, but the general consensus was that when he did, he was worth listening to. He, Iwaya, Hashimoto, and Someya were all in the police office together, drinking.
“Nah,” said Someya flatly. “More like Butcher and Singh.” Someya talked a lot, but people didn’t often think much of what he said. This time, though, he seemed to have hit the mark.
The fat-faced Yoshi-nī was Abdullah the Butcher. Unlike the Butcher he did have a few strands of hair, though. Whenever these fell across his forehead, he’d look up, cross-eyed, and contort his mouth to blow them away.
Like Tiger Jeet Singh, Hachi-nī had a mustache, and his face was sallow and sharp. Singh often brought a saber into the ring with him, and Hachi-nī—whose hobby was collecting western weaponry—often stood in his garden gazing up at a saber held over his head.
The people of the village couldn’t tell on the surface whether Yoshi-nī and Hachi-nī got along or not. But they were certainly reminiscent of the famous tag team.
But Yoshi-nī and his sister, Hatsue—Hachi-nī’s wife—didn’t get along at all. So, everybody saw the election as a kind of family feud.
Hatsue, who was the deputy chair of the local women’s association, came by our house one evening. She stood at the back door, moaning about her brother. Mom looked a bit uncomfortable—it was no business of hers. “He stashes away loads of money for himself, and he bought a car for his cousin’s son, but he won’t lend us nothing at all. He knows construction’s going through a rough patch, and that things’re hard for us, but he’s so greedy! And he’s always got this grudge ’bout something that happened years ago. Can’t hardly believe he’s my brother!”
I could hear her angry voice from the kitchen.
Mom didn’t know what to do. She just kept nodding and saying, “Oh dear!” Keiji was hanging around her, whining as he did every evening.
“It’s not fair! Mitsugu Azamui will be here soon and I won’t be able to watch TV. He’s coming, right? He always does. It’s not fair!”
His defeated, fretful voice was all but drowned out by the campaign cars as they drove around the village blaring out their messages. They kept at it all day every day, right up until 8 p.m., when they had to stop.
Votes were being bought in the village, but that wasn’t the real problem. Nearly every candidate in the district was doing that. The only one who didn’t was Mr. Kawano. The villagers said it wasn’t so much a question of him not buying them, but of not being able to buy them. They looked at him as though he were from some primitive tribe that had no concept of money. “I’m following communist ideals,” was what Mr. Kawano had to say on the subject.
Though he was neither a teacher nor a doctor, the villagers always called my dad “sensei,” or rather, “shenshei” in the local pronunciation. When the summer Bon festival came around, and at the end of the year too, he was showered with gifts—so many they didn’t fit in the living room.
“It won’t look too good, but there’s nowhere else for them to go,” he said, taking the gifts into the police office, which was attached to the house.
Of course, it wasn’t just things that arrived. More frequent than the gifts were the endless visits by the people who gave them. I don’t know what issues they came to discuss, but once they were inside, they did exactly the same as Mitsugu Azamui—they drank. But unlike Mitsugu, they didn’t simply sit silently drinking only what they were offered. When the bottle was nearly empty, they calmly got up and went through to the police office to get another.
“Shenshei,” they’d say, “that bottle of White Wave I gave you—it’s next door, isn’t it?” And they’d go get it and then keep on drinking.
“It’s like I’m keeping their bottles for them,” said Dad, clutching his stomach in drunken laughter.
Of course, it wasn’t all like that. Sometimes fishermen came around with something from their catch, or women brought potatoes and radishes from their fields. Hatsue sometimes came with dishes the women’s association had made on a cooking day, and people often brought Dad a portion of the special food that had been prepared for a family wake or memorial service.
“Always nice to have a bit of free grub!” Dad said.
Mom glared.
“What a thing to say in front of the children!” she exclaimed.
Being the only policeman in the area, Dad always got a special invitation to school field days, and on such occasions, he would sit with the members of the district assembly. The assemblymen were, for the most part, the chairmen or directors of fishing or farming cooperatives, or heads of local construction companies.
They liked to be seen. When there was a meeting with just office staff present, they often excused themselves, citing business commitments. But they never missed an opportunity to parade in front of the public. There was only one hotel in the area with a wedding venue—the Hayasu. Every time there was a wedding, they’d be there, in VIP seating. At the district baseball tournament, there they’d be again, in the row that afforded the clearest view of the game. The same went for judo and kendo tournaments. Had there been a soccer tournament, they’d have expected the same treatment then. But sadly, with only one club in the district, there was no tournament. The absence of this priority-seating opportunity led to passionate exchanges in the assembly chamber about the importance of promoting soccer. When it came to funerals, they couldn’t very well have special seating, so instead there was always a row of floral wreaths from the assemblymen, all the same size.
It was very awkward for a little village like ours to have multiple candidates in the election. It led to the opposing sides getting embroiled in a battle of accusations.
Someya was a Hachi-nī supporter. He came to the police office one day to tell Dad that Yoshi-nī was buying votes for 5,000 yen each. Hashimoto,
