Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) (7 page)

I pointed to the propeller. “Augh. Augh.” No words would come out.

“Aw, has it stopped again?” asked Gorohachi’s wife. She’d finished her feeding, and hoisted the sleeping baby up onto her back again. Then she heaved herself out of her seat with a “Hey-oop” and returned to the controls. “Move yourself. I’ll take over,” she said to Red Nose.

“Has something happened?” asked Hatayama, still squatting there in the aisle.

“One of the propellers has stopped,” I replied as if it were nothing.

He started to laugh a dark, demonic laugh. “Heheheh. Hahahah. I told you. Didn’t I tell you? I told you.” Then he started to sing. “And now, the end is nigh…”

“Shall I thump the wing with that broom handle again?” asked Red Nose. “It worked last time.”

“You’d be wasting your breath,” answered Gorohachi’s wife. “We’re almost out of fuel.”

Hatayama sang louder. “We’re going to die, not in a shy way…”

“Oh, look,” said Gorohachi’s wife. “The wind’s blown the clouds away. I can see the ground now! Look how far we’ve come!”

South Korea
, I wondered.

“Heaven, I hope,” muttered Hatayama through his sobbing.

“I must’ve got me bearings wrong. We’ve come out by the trunk road at Onuma,” said Gorohachi’s wife as she pushed the control stick downwards. “We’ll have to land there. There’s a petrol station down there, anyway.”

I jumped up. “You can’t land on a national highway! You’ll hit the cars!”

“Nah. We’ll be all right there,” said Sticky Eye. “They’re doing road works up at Sejiri, so there won’t be many cars. And seeing as there’s a typhoon today, nobody’ll be on the road anyway.”

“How can you possibly know that?” wailed Hatayama. “There’s a plane flying up
here
, isn’t there?”

“In any case, we’ve no choice. We’ll have to land here. There’s too many trees in the primary school yard,” said Gorohachi’s wife, turning the plane wildly.

The aeroplane made a loud creaking noise and appeared about to break up. The cabin shook violently. Hatayama cried aloud. The inside of my mouth was parched.

Then the grey asphalt of the highway appeared right beneath us. Just before the plane touched down, a car raced towards us from the opposite direction. It sped under our right wing, missing us by inches. The plane hit the ground, bounced, and bounced again.

Through the front window I could see a dump truck heading straight for us.

“We’re going to crash!” I yelled, bracing myself.

“Oh, he’ll swerve all right,” said Sticky Eye.

The truck driver panicked and careered into a vegetable field next to the road.

The plane came to a halt right in front of the petrol station.
Maybe Gorohachi’s wife is actually an expert pilot
, I thought for the briefest of moments.

As soon as we’d stopped, Hatayama made a bolt for the exit and
opened the door. Ignoring the ladder, he jumped straight out onto the asphalt, where he lay face down for several seconds. Just as I was wondering how long he’d stay there, I noticed that he was actually kissing the ground in utter delirium.

I followed Gorohachi’s wife down the ladder. The road skirted the foot of a mountain, which rose abruptly behind the petrol station. On the other side of the road, I could see nothing but vegetable fields.

“We’ve run out of petrol!” Gorohachi’s wife called out laughing to the young pump attendant, who looked at us with eyes agog. “Fill her up, will you? We need to get to Shiokawa.”

“I’ve never filled an aeroplane before,” the attendant said as he pumped petrol into the fuel inlet on the wing, under instructions from Gorohachi’s wife.

Sticky Eye and Red Nose climbed down after us. “Ready for another ride?” asked Red Nose. They laughed contemptuously.

I looked at the map on my timetable. Onuma was about twenty miles east of Shiokawa.

“Not me,” replied Hatayama, glowering at me as he came back out of the plane with his camera case.

“But there isn’t a railway station near here,” I said sinuously. “How else can we get to Shiokawa? Even if someone gives us a lift, we’ll never be there in time for the train.”

Hatayama widened his eyes in disbelief again. “You mean you’re planning to get back in
that
?” he raged. “You’re out of your mind! You’re just doing it for pride! Well, if you want to die so much, go and die on your own! Leave me out! I’m waiting here till the typhoon passes!” He nodded vigorously in determination. “All right? I’m staying here!”

I gave up trying to persuade him. Actually, I wasn’t that keen on getting back in myself. But considering how things would be if I lost my job, I had to accept a certain amount of risk. “Please yourself. I’ll take the plane. I’ll be back in the office by tomorrow morning.”

“Or maybe you won’t,” said Hatayama with a trace of a smile.

I was on the verge of hitting him.

“I will,” I said. “I’ll get back. You’ll see.”

“We don’t need that,” Gorohachi’s wife announced to the pump attendant. He’d finished filling the tank and was clambering onto the nose of the plane to wipe the front window. “We’d better be off. I’d be in real trouble if the law found me parked here.”

“I hear the typhoon’s approaching southwest of here,” said the attendant with a look of concern.

Gorohachi’s wife laughed it off. “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right,” she said breezily.

Rain started to pour in torrents. I climbed back into the plane with the farmers, leaving Hatayama standing alone outside.

We started to taxi along the highway. As we did, several cars swerved into the vegetable field to avoid us. Soon we were airborne once more, and turned westwards.

It wasn’t until the following morning, during the Chief ’s tirade on my return to the office, that I heard what had happened. Just after we’d taken off, the side of the mountain had collapsed, burying the petrol station and killing Hatayama along with the pump attendant.

“Why the hell didn’t you get the film off him first?!” bellowed the Chief.

We were just a few minutes from Boar’s Wood Station.

“Where are you headed?” asked a thickly bearded man sitting opposite me.

“Four Bends,” I replied.

I’d heard they made good buckwheat noodles in the little town of Four Bends. So I planned to go there and eat my fill, then buy as much as I could to take home with me. That’s why I was travelling on the Hairybeast Line. You see, I’m quite mad about buckwheat noodles. If I hear of a place that’s famous for them, I have to go there and try some for myself – no matter how remote it is.

“What, you mean you’re going to stay on this train, all the way round Hairybeast, till you get to Four Bends?”

The bearded man looked at me with eyes agog. With his close-cropped hair and a towel hanging from his belt, he looked like some kind of mountain lumberjack.

“Why, yes,” I replied. “That’s the only way, isn’t it?”

“Ah well, you could get off at Boar’s Wood and change onto a train going to Deer’s Wood from there. That’s only one stop from Four Bends,” said the bearded man. “At Boar’s Wood, you change onto the Bear’s Wood Main Line. It’s only a single track, mind. But it’ll get you to Four Bends four hours quicker than going all the way round Hairybeast.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t know that!” I said, staring at him in surprise. “I really didn’t know that.”

“I’m going to Bear’s Wood myself,” said the bearded man, looking out at the night sky.

A clear, star-filled sky stretched out over the forest on either side of the tracks. It was already half-past eleven. There weren’t many passengers on this train as it journeyed deep into the mountains. In our carriage there were only twelve or thirteen, including the bearded man and myself.

“I get it. It’s called the Bear’s Wood Main Line because it goes through Bear’s Wood, right? Yes, of course. But if it’s only a single track and it’s so short, why’s it called a main line?” I asked. I took out some cigarettes and offered one to the bearded man. He pulled a strip of matches from his shirt pocket and lit up, took a deep puff and slowly started to explain.

“In olden times, the Bear’s Wood Main Line was the only railway in these parts. That was before Hairybeast got so big. In those days, this line we’re on now was also part of the Bear’s Wood Main Line. It went up into the mountains from Boar’s Wood, passed through Bear’s Wood and Deer’s Wood, and ended up in Four Bends. When was it, now? Well, when the railway to Hairybeast was built, going the long way round to Four Bends, people began to think of that as the main line. So they started calling this the Hairybeast Line. But us people who live round here, we still call it the Bear’s Wood Main Line. Just the bit between Boar’s Wood and Deer’s Wood, mind. The Main Line, we call it.”

Yes, I vaguely remembered reading about it in a magazine some years back. The local railway line that runs through the mountains to Deer’s Wood.

“Right, I’ll change onto that then,” I said.

The bearded man nodded vigorously. “That’d be best,” he said.

Boar’s Wood was a tiny station in the middle of the forest. Only two passengers got out – me and the bearded man.

At the end of the platform was another, smaller platform set at right angles to it. It was the terminus of the Bear’s Wood Main Line. A train was already waiting there. Actually, it was more a single carriage than a train. I’d imagined the train would be pulled by a branch-line locomotive, but there was nothing of the sort. It just moved by itself. A single-carriage, self-powered train.

As we got in, I noticed that the carriage had rows of double seats
facing the front, on one side only. There were no other passengers – just me and the bearded man.

“Here you are at last!” said a voice. It was the driver, coming up beside us. He looked exactly the same as the bearded man.
They must be brothers
, I thought,
or cousins
.

“It was so sudden, I was that shocked. I came back as soon as I got the letter,” the bearded man said to the driver. Then he pointed to me. “This gent wants to get from Deer’s Wood to Four Bends,” he said.

“Well, we’d best get going, then,” said the driver, returning to his seat.

The train started its gentle climb up the mountain, into the gloomy depths of the forest. Chilly mountain air flowed around the carriage through an open window.

“By the way, what about the connection at Deer’s Wood?” I asked the bearded man, who seemed lost in thought.

He blinked. “Connection? What connection?”

“I mean, how long will I have to wait for the train to Four Bends?”

“Ah. Well, at this time of night…” He looked at his watch and thought for a moment. Then he suddenly slapped his thigh. “What a great fool am I! I’ve done you wrong, I have. Truth is, you’ll have to wait four hours and a bit at Deer’s Wood.”

“What?! Four hours?” I said in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“That’s right. You’ll have to wait for that train we just got off. How much of a fool am I? I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought you’d be able to catch the one before it.”

I forced a smile as he continued to apologize.

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said. “After all, I got the chance to ride in this most unusual train, didn’t I.”

The bearded man grinned as I looked the carriage up and down. “Yes, it is unusual, isn’t it,” he said. “Soon you’ll see why it is, too.”

“And the driver, is he your brother?”

“Well, how shall I put it?” He thought hard, but then seemed to give up. “Let’s just say we’re related,” he concluded.

I imagined his whole family living with him there in Bear’s Wood. And just as I thought that, the bearded man started to explain – as if he’d been reading my mind.

“Yes, come to think of it, nearly everyone who lives in Bear’s Wood is a relative of mine. And this morning, one of them passed away. I was working in the mountains, and I only heard the news this afternoon. So I’m going back for the wake tonight.”

“Oh dear. I am sorry to hear about that.”

For the next few minutes, I looked out of the windows on either side of the carriage. “This is quite a long stretch, isn’t it,” I said at length. “Are there any other stations on this line, besides Bear’s Wood?”

“No,” replied the bearded man. “Boar’s Wood at one end. Deer’s Wood at the other. And Bear’s Wood in between.”

“Really? So this train is more or less exclusively used by your family, is it?”

“Well, yes, I suppose it is,” he replied, quite earnestly. “In olden days, there were three hamlets in these parts – Boar’s Wood, Bear’s Wood and Deer’s Wood. The senior member of my clan, in Bear’s Wood, used to be the Village Elder of all three hamlets. These days, Boar’s Wood and Deer’s Wood have been opened up, like. So the only hamlet that’s still unspoilt is Bear’s Wood. The Village Elder in Bear’s Wood is much respected by everyone round here. If ever anything happens, people get in this train and come up to Bear’s Wood for advice. Yes, that must be why we call it the Main Line.”

The train slowed and came to a gentle halt.

“Oh! We’ve stopped,” I said, poking my head out of the window to survey the scene. “Is this Bear’s Wood?”

The bearded man shook his head. “No, this isn’t Bear’s Wood. We’re still at the bottom of Bear’s Wood Mountain. The station’s at the top.”

We were still surrounded by mountains. All I could see around us was dense forest and undergrowth. And a little hut standing beside the track. Looking down, I noticed we’d been joined by a second track running alongside us. The rails shone brightly in the moonlight.

“It’s a double track here,” I said vacantly.

“That’s right. From here, the train changes into a cable car. That’s why it’s a double track.”

“You mean – this is a cable car?!” I was surprised again. But now I understood the strange appearance of the carriage.

The driver got out and went into the little hut. Through the open door, I could just see something that looked like electrical equipment inside. Eventually, he emerged from the hut and, after doing something at the front of the train for about ten minutes, returned to his seat. He’d probably been attaching the carriage to a cable.

The little hut began to vibrate, making a loud humming noise like a motor. With that, the cable car slowly started to climb the steep incline of the mountain. I supposed there must be some kind of winch at the top of the mountain, which could also be operated from the bottom.

I gazed out of the window as my body was forced back into the seat. Suddenly, I remembered the whole of the article I’d read in that magazine a few years back. I jumped up. “That’s it! Now I remember!”

“What is it you remember?” The bearded man, sitting next to me, gave me a sideways look.

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if should I go on. But then I turned to him and let it out: “Didn’t they close this line down four years ago, because it was too expensive to run and there weren’t enough passengers?”

The bearded man seemed unperturbed, and just smiled. “You do have a good memory! That is absolutely right,” he answered slowly. I sat there dumbfounded as he continued. “But, you see, if they closed this line down, we in Bear’s Wood would be in trouble. People in the other hamlets would be in trouble, too. Not only would they be unable to get to Bear’s Wood any more, but people in Boar’s Wood would have to go all the way round Hairybeast just to get to Deer’s Wood. And take four hours and a bit doing it, too. So we got the railway company to sell us the line. On condition that the Bear’s Wood residents take care of the operation
and maintenance, mind. As you saw, my relative from Bear’s Wood works full-time as the driver. But only when there are passengers wanting to use it.”

“Is that right,” I said with a sigh.

The other carriage passed us silently on its way down the mountain. The train must have been operating on a counterweight system, with no stops in between. The other carriage had no lights on, and was completely dark inside. Of course, there was nobody in it.

“We have to balance out the weights, you see. So we fill that one with buckets of water,” the bearded man explained.

A few more minutes went by.

“So all the people in Bear’s Wood must be quite rich, then?” I asked casually.

The bearded man said nothing.

“After all,” I argued, “you’d have to be pretty well-off to buy a whole railway line. And it would cost a lot to maintain, too.”

He smiled meaningfully.

So that was it – they hadn’t bought the line at all. The railway company thought they’d closed the line down, but all the people living in the area had colluded to keep using the carriages, and the electricity – which they were using illegally – as well as all the other equipment and what have you, without the permission of the railway company. That must be it. The station staff at Boar’s Wood and Deer’s Wood were related to the people in Bear’s Wood, so they turned a blind eye to it all. And the money they needed to maintain the line was being raised through some kind of subterfuge. After all, where would people in a poor mountain hamlet find the money to buy up a whole branch line? It just wouldn’t happen.

The incline grew steeper as we approached the top of the mountain. I put my head out of the window and looked at the summit. There, I could see a very large thatched house. The cables and rails were heading straight towards the ground floor.

“That’s where the Bear’s Wood clan lives,” said the bearded man.

There was nothing else resembling a house anywhere near the top of the mountain. So I guessed the whole clan must live in that massive house.

Eventually, our carriage moved into the ground floor of the house, as if being sucked into it. The rails continued into an earth-floored room on the ground floor, and there the cable car terminated. On our right was a cooking area, including a hearth, water jugs, pails and other requisites. On the left was a raised wooden floor that must have measured about forty square yards. As the cable car came to a halt, the far end of this wooden floor formed a kind of platform.

On the wooden floor, about thirty people, including elders and children, had gathered to hold a wake. They knelt on floor cushions, eating, drinking and talking as others paid their respects.

The cable-winching machinery was fixed high in the ceiling of the earth-floored room. Looking up, I could see two large pulley wheels wound with cables. The wheels were attached to thick beams and crossbeams, from which families of bats were hanging. The ceiling over the earth-floored room was so high and dark that I couldn’t even see it.

A man of about fifty, his face red from drinking, got up and climbed into our carriage through the open door.

“Well, that were quick, Sasuke,” he said.

“Yea, I came back as soon as I got the letter,” the bearded man said, then pointed to me. “This gentleman wanted to go to Four Bends, so I advised him to take the Main Line,” he explained to the red-faced man.

The red-faced man stared at me in wonderment. “What? But if he goes to Deer’s Wood now, he’ll be waiting four hours and a bit before the train to Four Bends arrives!”

“I know, I know,” said the bearded man apologetically. “I just weren’t thinking straight. I thought he’d be able to catch the one before it. What a great fool I am.”

“Well, seeing as you’re here now, why not join us for a while?” the red-faced man said to me. “You must have a drink before you go.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t!” I replied, shaking my head. “I’d be disturbing the wake.”

“Nonsense. You’d be welcome. You’ve four hours to kill, haven’t you? We’ll make sure the driver gets you to Deer’s Wood in time for your train.”

Now the bearded man joined him in coaxing me out of the cable car. I could hardly refuse their kindness, so I got out of the carriage and took my place on the wooden floor.

“Have you brought someone from your travels?” asked a white-whiskered old man sitting in the place of honour at the head of the coffin. I assumed he must be the Village Elder.

“This gentleman was going to Four Bends, so I advised him to take the Main Line,” explained the bearded man.

“That’s good,” answered the old man with a smile.