“Are you dying then? ARE YOU?” she screamed back. “Go on then, die! Then I might believe you!”
“H-how… h-h-how-” Her logic was so absurd that I could find no words in reply. “How could you say-” I could hardly breathe. A prickling pain pierced my heart.
“It’s the company that’s trying to kill you by sending you to this island! They want you to die. They’ve no intention of promoting you. Of course they haven’t.” She stamped her heels noisily on the deck.
“Stop… please st-stop.” I clutched my chest and sat on a bench. “My p-pills, please, my p-pills. In the c-cabin. In my bag. In my b-bag.”
She tutted, and peered down at me with a look of disgust on her face.
“Daddy not well again,” said my son.
“Come on, let’s leave him. Let’s go,” she said icily, without expression. She took our son’s hand and hurried off to the after-deck.
I was beside myself with rage. The palpitations started and I stopped breathing altogether.
“Uhhh… uhhh… uhhh…”
Moaning, clawing at the air with fingers bent rigid, I twisted and contorted my body until, at last, I reached the cabin. I opened my bag with fitful hands, took out the medicine bottle and swallowed three tablets without water. The doctor had instructed only two at a time, but two were no longer enough.
Once I’d regained my composure I peered at the bottom of the bottle. There were only four or five tablets left.
Suddenly struck by a feeling of unease, I rummaged around inside the bag. I wanted to make sure the package containing the eight months’ supply was still there.
It wasn’t.
I hastily tossed aside the suitcase and emptied the contents of my wife’s bag all over the cabin. But there was no sign of my medicine.
“Where’s my medicine?” My heart was starting to beat like a drum.
“What’s the matter with you?” my wife asked, looking at me coldly. I’d raced out of the cabin with my hair all over the place.
“My medicine!” I yelled. “The big package with my medicine in it. What have you done with it?”
“How should I know?” She gazed out across the sea. “It’s in your bag, isn’t it?”
“It’s not in my bag. It’s not in yours either. What have you done with it?” I screamed. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH IT?”
Frightened by my unusually savage appearance, my son clung tightly to his mother.
“Would you keep your voice down? Look, you’re scaring him. And you’re upsetting the other passengers.” Actually, a solitary old woman on the after-deck was the only other passenger.
“Never mind that. You were shouting yourself just now, weren’t you? Answer my question. Where have you put the package with my medicine in it? If I don’t have that medicine, it could hinder my chances of staying alive!”
“It could hin-der his chan-ces of staying a-live, he says,” she repeated to the boy with a snigger. “What grand expressions he uses. Answer his question, he says.” She turned to look at me with spiteful eyes. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“I’m sorry. I apologize,” I said more calmly, trying not to accept the provocation. “Could you please tell me what you did with the package?”
“What package.”
“It was about this big, wrapped in brown paper. It had eight months’ supply of medicine in it. I’ve only got four or five tablets left in my bottle. I need to refill it, you see.”
“There. Why couldn’t you have said it like that before,” she said like a schoolteacher. “That package. Yes. I put it in a trunk with our winter clothes and sent it by Daitsu.”
As Daitsu were the most reliable carriers in the country, I was somewhat relieved. But would the trunk arrive before my medicine ran out?
“You shouldn’t have done that without asking me,” I said in a plaintive voice. “I’ve only got four or five tablets left.”
“If they’re so important to you, why didn’t you look after them yourself?!”
“And when will Daitsu deliver the trunk to the island?”
“They said it would take four to five days. That was four days ago, so it should be there by tomorrow.”
I’d have to make sure I didn’t have an attack before the next day.
As we arrived on the island, an old man came to meet us on the ferry landing stage. He said he was the village headman, and took us to the observation point, where I would live and work for the next eight months. Near the coast about a mile out of the village, it stood on sandy ground below a cliff. It was made of wood, measured about thirty by thirty feet, and was of course newly built. It would probably be destroyed at the end of the observation period. Though crudely fashioned, it had a large carpeted room at the back, and looked much more comfortable than I’d expected.
“Well, we should be able to make do with this,” I said.
Standing in front of the village headman, my wife said nothing.
The observation equipment had already arrived. I started unpacking and assembling it as soon as the headman had left and my wife had started cleaning. It was well into the night by the time I was finished.
My wife came on to me that night.
With the uncertainty of a new environment, she probably need ed to immerse herself in an activity that involved monotonous repetition, something that felt familiar. I shared that feeling, but of course I didn’t make love to her. I might have suffered a spasm if I had. I reminded her that I only had four or five tablets left. But she just repeated the same old complaint as always.
The next day, I carried the observation instruments to the rocky beach and set them up at six points. It took a whole day.
There was no Daitsu delivery that day.
“It hasn’t arrived!” I complained to my wife.
“It’ll probably come tomor row,” she answered with her customary indifference.
“You’ve got the receipt from Daitsu, haven’t you.”
“I wonder. Did I bring it? Look in my handbag. If it’s not there, I’ll have left it at home.” As irresponsible as ever.
I hurriedly emptied the contents of her handbag onto the table, and hunted for the receipt. I was relieved to find it there, crumpled into a ball.
But there was no Daitsu delivery the following day either. After completing my observations I went down to the ferry landing stage to check. The ferry had already left, and there was no sign that it had brought any kind of baggage. This was driving me mad. I hurried back to the observation point and picked up the telephone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, yes? What can I do for you?” said an old woman’s voice at the other end.
I’d been told that the village headman’s wife operated the telephone exchange. The village headman himself was at least seventy. So the woman on the other end must have been his wife.
I took care to speak politely. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but may I make a call to the mainland?”
“The mainland, you say? Oh! Yes, the mainland.” For some reason, she sounded quite thrilled. “Yes, of course. What number?”
Reading from the receipt slip, I repeated the number of the Daitsu City Branch to the stupid woman several times.
“Oh yes, yes, I’ve got it now,” she said in great excitement. “Please replace your receiver and wait for me to call.”
I waited in a state of mounting irritation for about fifteen minutes, until the phone finally rang.
“Hello? Yes. Well, at last we have a connection,” the old woman said cheerfully.
“Daitsu.” The girl’s voice sounded awfully distant.
“Yes, hello? My name’s Suda. I gave you a trunk to ship on the 6th, but it hasn’t arrived yet.”
“One moment. I’ll put you through to the Dispatch Office.”
Next, a young man spoke. He sounded even more distant. “Hello?”
