might mean, Haru could not guess. The older one, her bloodshot eyes fixed on the sky, kept mumbling about the wrath of the gods. She had suffered a collapse from the shock of the defeat, and since then had taken it into her head that the gods were sure to punish Japan for its unconditional surrender.
Mitsuyoshi had said that Taki was not there, but Haru decided to check anyway. Taki's house was just a block away on the other side of the street, and it would be only a matter of time before the fire reached it. Haru could already hear the rustle of sparks falling on the tops of the cedars, oaks, and chestnut trees above her.
Entering the house, she found the air unexpectedly cool. It was dark inside, and her eyes took some time to adjust. She called Taki's name any number of times from the entryway. The houses of all Shinto priests were big, intended as they were to provide accommodations for religious groups, but the Tendoh house was conspicuously larger than most, and Haru could not be sure that her voice would carry to every corner of it. It was no time for ceremony, and she did not bother to take off her shoes. Going to the back, she looked into the bedroom. Taki was not there. Haru called out at the top of her voice, then strained her ears for an answer. Finally, she heard a faint moaning.
Taki was in the garden at the back, crawling on the ground on all fours, her face smeared with mud.
"What are you doing, Taki?" scolded Haru.
"It's coming out... it's coming out..." Taki howled at the sky like a wolf, her hand pressed against her lower abdomen, as if she were trying to hold back a bowel movement. Her belt was undone and the front of her unlined kimono was dragging on the ground, her breasts and her gigantic belly half exposed.
"What's coming out, Taki? Do you mean the baby's being born?" asked Haru, rushing over and quickly tying Taki's belt.
"It's coming out, it's coming out," Taki kept on, bobbing her head up and down. Each time her head went down, her tears dripped onto the ground. Fear and pain were once again distracting this unfortunate girl.
Haru had to do something, but what? "Taki, you wait here. I'm going to get my mother." She started to go.
"Don't go! Oh, please, don't go," cried Taki desperately.
"But..." As Haru turned to look at her, Taki fell flat on her back, her legs toward Haru, and the bottom of her kimono fell open. Before Haru could avert her eyes from the embarrassing sight, what she saw made her gasp. From between Taki's spread thighs, a blood-smeared spherical mass was pushing its way out. It was unmistakably the baby's head. All over Taki's white thighs and buttocks were dribbles of slime that looked like the trails of slugs, and trickles of blood were running everywhere.
She would die like this, thought Haru, rushing into the house in a daze. She fumbled all over the place in the darkness until she had managed to find two cushions, a pair of scissors for cutting the umbilical cord, and some thread, then she went back to the garden.
The baby's shoulders were already visible. Taki's arms and legs were stiff, and she was groaning intermittently, apparently with the effort of trying to push the baby out. Haru placed the cushions under Taki's buttocks. The baby came out slowly above them. With an agility she would not have believed possible of herself, Haru took hold of it and laid it gently on the cushions.
In the distance, she heard the roar of the fire.
From the Rokumu Slope behind the Zenko Temple, the winding road up the mountain gained altitude steadily. Making a wide detour around Mount Omine, it came out all at once on the Iizuna Plateau, from which point it became a level road called the Birdline, with many straightaways, cutting through a forest of larches toward the Togakushi Mountains. Ahead of them, Togakushi West Peak was already showing its mysterious face.
Tachibana had heard that this "Birdline" had been constructed along practically all of the route once followed by the so-called Old Road, which had served as an approach for worshippers to the Togakushi Shrines, and he was now whizzing along comfortably in a car on the same route up which he had fled thirty-eight years ago. Since the fall of 1964, when the Birdline was completed, Togakushi had ceased to be isolated by the surrounding mountains.
"This is the first time you've been to Togakushi, isn't it, Professor Tachibana?" asked Shimizu, who was sitting next to him.
"Uh, I was here for just a little while many years ago."
"Were you really? As a matter of fact, I thought that was a look of fond reminiscence on your face. Well then, I don't need to tell you about the place, do I?"
With a rueful smile, Tachibana realized that he must indeed have been looking sentimental.
"Anyway, you certainly are a real life-saver, agreeing to come along like this," said Shimizu for the tenth time. "When Shiraishi told me he couldn't make it after all, I was really in a spot. A clumsy oaf like myself certainly wouldn't have been welcome there alone. You'll make a much better impression. This should get us a lot of good will. Should make the sponsors pretty happy, too."
"You make me sound like a male geisha," laughed Tachibana.
"Oh no, please don't take it like that. It's your reputation that I'm counting on. It was because of that that I asked you to join me. I'm not kidding you."
"I don't mind."
"Of course, like it or not, there come times when not only the administrators, but the professors as well do have to play male geisha." But it was obvious from Shimizu's smile that he didn't dislike it too much.
T—University, where Tomohiro Tachibana taught, was at the top of the second rank of private universities, but it had established affiliated high schools all over the country and put so much effort into seeing that they all had good baseball teams that the joke was going around that its high schools would soon be taking over the nationwide high school baseball tournaments. The university had become better known for baseball than for learning.
Shimizu, the university president, held a Doctor of Science degree from Imperial University and was a scientist of undisputed reputation, but he had found his true calling as an administrator. He showed great skill in negotiation with outside organizations, and when it came to getting his own professors to do something, he was an excellent persuader. There was something about the man that made it impossible to dislike him.
Having wanted to establish an affiliated high school in Nagano City for a long time, he had jumped at the chance to scratch the back of a member of the education subcommittee of the lower house of the Diet elected from the First District of Nagano, a man named Shishido. Hearing that Shishido wanted to build a golf course somewhere in the area, Shimizu had offered his cooperation in return for assistance in obtaining permission to build the school. Now he was hurriedly responding to Shishido's rush invitation to the first meeting of the organization to promote the golf project, a meeting which was actually a party to entertain local people of influence, from whom Shishido was expecting considerable opposition.
Tachibana had been dragged along in spite of his protest that he did not even play golf. "You can't know whether you might enjoy it or not unless you pick up a club and give it a try," Shimizu had said, unconcerned. "And anyway, the enemy should be satisfied if we just put in an appearance."
Shimizu had made it sound like a picnic, an invitation that would not bear refusal. But before they arrived, Tachibana had thought the meeting was to be held somewhere in Nagano City, and evidently Shimizu had made the same assumption. It was only in the car sent to meet them at Nagano Station that they learned they
