enough, but when he imagined what they must think of him in his working clothes, Mitsuo found it hard to strike up a conversation.
"A group of us talked it over, and we're here as representatives. Or as a suicide squad, considering how scary everyone thinks you are."
The same woman who had spoken first stood directly in front of Mitsuo. Her hair was tinted a light red. The color spread through it unevenly; no doubt it had once been dyed an even darker shade. The child she held by the wrist struggled to get free.
"This ain't a tourist spot, you know," Mitsuo felt it necessary to remind her.
"Give us a discount. We're neighbors, after all."
"Neighbors, huh?" The hose twisted about his feet. He turned off the faucet, wiped his hands with the towel slung from his waist and jerked his chin at the women. "All right, I'll sell you some. You bring anything to carry em with?"
"Doing us a favor, huh? Well, we'll play along."
The other women timidly held out shopping bags in Mitsuo's direction. They stood as though prepared to flee if necessary.
The red-haired woman said, "We'll give them a try if you sell them for three hundred yen." The outline of her figure was plainly visible through the material of her cheap house-dress. Mitsuo pulled pruning shears from his waist pocket and snipped four of the red fruit from vines close at hand. The woman took the tomatoes in both hands and sniffed them. Mitsuo cut off one more and handed it to her. She shrugged her shoulders and placed the tomatoes in a bag which her child held open for her. Mitsuo did the same for the other two women, and soon felt nine one-hundred yen pieces warming his palm.
The visitors receded into the distance, their shadows shimmering through the moist vinyl. Gazing through it, Mitsuo focused on their figures as they marched across the grass. Heat rose hazily from the roofs of the four-story buildings. The concrete seemed on the verge of melting. Far in the distance, snow-peaked mountains glistened in the sun. The hothouse sparkled in seeming union with the hills.
Everything changes; only the mountains remain. Two years before, the land now occupied by the apartment complex had been a swatch of paddies, chestnut groves, and trees of all kinds, teeming with plant and animal life. A lattice of fields had spread over the tree-surrounded valley, cut through by the river. The neat, attractive fields had been lovingly cultivated through the generations. The rice harvest was always plentiful. Mitsuo used to work all day with his parents to plow, weed, plant, and harvest the fields, the villagers hollering gossip to each other when they came within shouting distance. In the evenings, Mitsuo set fish traps in the water channels and by morning would have a netful of tiny crucian carp and loach. Sometimes, carp weighing a full kilogram would somehow wedge themselves inside the traps.
Then the prefecture decided to locate an apartment complex and a manufacturing center there. Offered fistfuls of money, the villagers rushed to sell their land. The family conferred with Mitsuo's older brother Tetsuo, a banker in Tokyo, who indifferently advised them to sell if the offer were high enough. With everyone else selling, they could hardly continue farming by themselves. The others would assume they were selfishly holding out for a better deal.
The bulldozers came in waves, uprooting the trees, carving the land, and burying the fields. The chestnut groves were destroyed, the river diverted, the land flattened. Buildings rose from the earth like piles of timber. Trucks came loaded with goods, and new residents followed. The builders widened the old country lanes and paved them with asphalt. Soon they were covered by an endless stream of cars. Supermarkets, sushi bars, and night clubs suddenly materialized. The transformation was utterly astonishing.
As part of the bargain, Mitsuo and his parents were given jobs in the new candy plant. His brother the banker said that since they had money coming in they should leave their savings untouched. Mitsuo drove a van, delivering the candy to wholesalers in town, while his parents supervised the cleaning crew. But with plenty of cash at hand, the family soon saw no reason to endure the grind. The three of them quit at the same time. The other former villagers did the same. Mitsuo built a hothouse on the tiny plot of land that his family still owned. He wasn't particular about what he grew: tomatoes, celery, flowers, anything would be fine. He just wanted to farm again.
"Wow! Hey, everybody, over here! Come on, there's nothing to be scared of." Following the voice, a stream of women with shopping bags flowed into the hothouse. There were ten of them in all. Mitsuo shut off the radio. Charging along the furrows were half a dozen kids, sounding like a river of falling pebbles.
"They're fresh, but they don't come cheap," said a short, plump woman, smiling. The women stroked the tomatoes as though petting a dog's belly.
"Don't touch! You'll damage em and they'll rot." The women's eyes narrowed at Mitsuo's rebuke. The plump woman maintained her smile, which wrinkled up about her eyes, and stepped toward Mitsuo.
"Watch your kids," Mitsuo said. "I've got pesticides over there. Your darlings get covered with em and they're dead." A hubbub erupted, the women screaming out the names of their own children as they ran toward them. This ain't a field trip, he thought.
The plump woman dragged her wriggling child up to Mitsuo and said, out of breath, "We heard you were very nice. Handsome, too." Sweat ran over her makeup, and her lipstick was starting to cake. Her daughter thrashed about in her arms, and Mitsuo could see past the child's red skirt and up her fleshy legs to her panties. The other women came up with their own kids.
"Three hundred yen. You'll never find a better price. Just stand right here and open your bags." Mitsuo waved his arms, forming the women into a line, then cut five ripe tomatoes for each, choosing ones similar in size. The women all looked Mitsuo straight in the face as they held the bags open to receive the fruit. Mitsuo wondered for a moment if the women truly found him handsome but decided they were only schemers out for a lower price. Warning the children to wash the fruit before eating, he presented one small, overripe tomato to each.
Darkness began to fall over the tomato plants. A cool breeze whispered upon Mitsuo's skin. He rolled down the vinyl and the undulating leaves immediately fell motionless. He washed the spade and locked the hothouse door. He didn't know why he bothered locking it; anybody who wanted to get inside could just cut through the vinyl. He stepped outside to the powerful scent of grass. His body was sunburnt, and his blood pulsed like froth on a wave. Headlights of a car bringing someone home from work danced before his eyes, blinding him momentarily.
The asphalt road, spreading like a black belt, passed straight through the garden and divided his family's remaining land into two sections. The main building of his home stood on the other side of the road, tiled roofs looming large against the twilight sky. Light was visible only from the living room, where Mitsuo's grandmother lay on the sofa watching television. Gaudy colors streamed from the set. The family had poured a fortune into the house, still less than a year old. The results were truly magnificent, but with the rest of the neighborhood equally parvenu, the house in no way stood out. The engineering firm had egged the former villagers on, everyone competing to build the most gorgeous residence. Rosewood went to make the pillars of the ornamental alcove, pressed cedar the floors, and Taiwanese marble the living room mantlepiece. They had also had a chandelier installed. Switching on the lights created a rainbow effect. One consultant had advised them that a truly splendid house demands top-grade material through and through, even in places one doesn't ordinarily look. Accordingly, not one sheet of plywood was used in the construction. Since the family rarely entertained, everyone had a private room. To prevent yellowing of the tatami and to inhibit mold from growing on the mats and the walls, the sliding doors of most of the rooms were always kept shut.
The rag Mitsuo had spread out to dry by the front door that morning was clean and stiff. He rinsed it at the hand pump by the storage shed, wiped his feet,
