heart. I can’t stand this any longer. I’m going to be unfaithful tomorrow. I’ll have it off with all five of them, that’ll show you!”
“Please don’t! Please don’t!” I pulled the sheets over my head and sobbed in sheer misery. My heart was already starting to palpitate after all that strenuous exercise and aggravation. I couldn’t even shout at my wife as I would usually have done. “I think I’m going to die. I’m dying. I think I’m dying. Yes, I’m dying.”
The trunk still hadn’t arrived by the next day. Work was out of the question.
I telephoned Murai at the City Branch again. “It’s Mr Suda from Pomegranate Island.”
“Well, hello! Hahaha. Has your trunk arrived, then?”
“Of course not. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
“My medicine has at last run out.”
“Medicine? What medicine?”
“The medicine for my heart problem.”
“Really.”
“The next time I have an attack, there won’t be any medicine.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Do you know where my trunk is?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Did you try to find out?”
“Really.”
“Did you try to find out?”
“Find out what?”
“Where the trunk has gone.”
“Who?”
I gave a great sigh. “All right, I’ll do it. Please give me the numbers of the Yabuki and Itagaki Branches.”
I wrote the numbers down and phoned both branches. Neither of them had my trunk.
I asked for another long-distance call, this time to the Kawashita Clinic.
A nurse answered. “Kawashita Clinic?”
“Hello, my name’s Suda. I’m one of your patients.”
“Sorry? We have a bad line here.”
“May I speak to Dr Kawashita?”
“I’m afraid he’s not here.”
“Oh dear. Could you tell me where he is?”
“He’s away at a conference.”
“Oh. A conference. Do you know where it is?”
“Sapporo.”
“Sapporo?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, actually, you see, Dr Kawashita gave me some medicine, but it’s been lost, you see, and I wonder if perhaps you could urgently send me some more, please?”
“You’re breaking up. I can’t hear you. Hello? Hello?”
“Hello? Yes. I would like you to send me some serpentina alkaloid urgently, please.”
“Celluloid?”
“No, no. Serpentina alkaloid. That’s the name of the medicine.”
“Medicine? What about medicine?”
“I want you to send it urgently, you see.”
“I can’t issue medicine without the doctor’s instructions.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Pardon? What did you say?”
“Er, hello? I wonder if you could tell me where Dr Kawashita is staying in Sapporo?”
“Wear what?”
“What hotel is he staying in?”
“What to tell?”
“No, what hotel?”
“This isn’t a hotel. This is the Kawashita Clinic. A hospital.”
“Yes, yes. I know that. But Dr Kawashita, where is Dr Kawashita staying in Sapporo?”
“Ah, I see. Yes. Just a minute. Er, it’s the Queen Hotel.”
“Do you know the telephone number?”
I wrote down the number, then asked for another long-distance call to Sapporo. I’d been talking so loud that I was out of breath and sweating profusely.
I was connected to the Queen Hotel in Sapporo. The line sounded even more distant, so I had to shout at the top of my voice. At last, I was put through to reception.
“Oh, you mean
“The police? Why’s he with the police?”
“Haven’t you seen the papers? A woman was horribly murdered here last night. Three doctors who were attending the conference, including Dr Kawashita, are helping the police as key witnesses. So I can’t really say when they’ll be coming back, I’m afraid.”
Without access to television or newspapers, I was completely unaware that such an incident had happened. If the doctor was being questioned by the police, this would be no time to discuss medicines, even if I did make contact. I abandoned the idea and replaced the receiver.
There was no sign of my trunk the following day either. Or the day after that. Ten days had passed since the trunk was sent. That day, the village headman’s wife called to inform me, in a roundabout way, that the whole village was starting to notice my wife’s immodest behaviour with the students.
Another five days passed. I was completely neglecting my work, spending whole days making long-distance phone calls here and there. Having finally lost patience with me and my complaining, whining and moaning, my wife took our child and returned to the mainland. Together with the five students. On the ferry.
Each time I argued violently with this person or that on the telephone, I thought I was going to die. I had palpitations eight times and stopped breathing four times. On three occasions, I was attacked by an intense heart pain that nearly made me lose consciousness. Each time, I fell and writhed on the floor in fear of imminent death.
At last, on the seventeenth day, there was a call from the Shimizu Branch to say the trunk had arrived. I’d asked them to call me as soon as it turned up.
“So, will it be here today?”
“Today’s ferry has already left, hasn’t it. So it’ll be on tomorrow’s,” said the gravelly voice.
“Why has it taken so long?”
“Because it came by road.”
“Why wasn’t it sent by rail?”
“How should I know,” he said, hanging up abruptly again.
The next day, I was waiting at the ferry landing stage a good hour before the ferry was due to arrive. A typhoon had passed from Kyushu to the Korean Peninsula, and the seas were rough. It wasn’t raining, but the wind continued to gather force as I waited.
At last, some thirty minutes behind schedule, the ferry came into view.
“It’s here!” I danced for joy at the end of the jetty. “That’s the one! That’s the boat that’s carrying my medicine!”
“But he can’t possibly berth here!” said the village headman, who’d come to stand behind me with several other villagers in their concern over the stormy weather.
“W-why’s that?” I asked in surprise.
