The 1,400-meter race on the turf track went on while Monoi was pondering this, and just as the pacemaker and the stalker neared the finish line side by side like conjoined dumplings, the favorite, Inter Mirage, came storming from the rear, causing the crowd in the stands to roar for a moment. However, as the frontrunner shot to the finish line, the clamor dissipated into a sigh that was soon engulfed by the sound of the rain thundering down on the roof.
Monoi folded the newspaper with the tenth race’s details in his lap and, looking up at the electronic scoreboard, which was visible from the second-floor seats, checked the ninth race’s placings out of amusement. Ever Smile, a horse he had seen win in his debut on the 14th last month, had placed fourth today, two and a half lengths back. Thinking that was probably as good as he could do, Monoi murmured to himself that Ever Smile was still a three-year-old colt after all. The horse wasn’t a particular favorite of his, but the day after the race last month was when his grandchild—his daughter’s son, who was about to turn twenty-two—had been killed in an accident on the Shuto Expressway, so it surfaced in his mind briefly. That same moment, large drops of rain started to pelt down on the racecourse again, distracting Monoi. An ever-widening pool of water had formed on the surface of the dirt track, visible beyond. The next race would be like running through a muddy rice paddy.
It would be impossible to decide on a horse for the tenth race without seeing the ones entered, up close in the paddock. The horses gathering now were used to a dirt track, but not a single one of them had a record of performing well in sloppy conditions like today. None of the horses had a marked difference in weight either. If it were to be a race among horses of similar standing and appearance, all the more reason why it would not do to pick one without seeing the nature of the horse just before the start. He reached this conclusion easily, but the truth of the matter was that he couldn’t be sure. Only the horses knew the answer.
As soon as Monoi decided to head over to the paddock, however, the stats of the horses competing in the eleventh race flashed across the projection screen in front of the finish line. He had yet to decide if he would bet on the eleventh race, but just in case, he took a minute or so to jot down the weights of the horses in the margin of his newspaper. Then, as he swiveled to his right on the bench, the wobbling head of the girl he had forgotten about there for the moment suddenly swung around and leaned toward him. The girl, slightly squinting up at Monoi, grunted, “Eennhh, eennhh.”
Perhaps the girl had said, “Wind.” When Monoi turned back to the racecourse, the rain draping over the grass was blowing at a diagonal. It looked as if someone had pulled an ink-black curtain across the ground.
“Oh, you’re right. The wind.”
Monoi gave a half-hearted response to the girl’s words and patted the small head he had grown accustomed to over the last six years. The smell of blood rose again. Monoi thought subconsciously, the scent of a mare’s urine.
Propelled by a slight, rootless irritation, Monoi called over the girl’s head to the man accompanying her. “Nunokawa-san. Are you going to bet next?”
The man he had called out to raised his head and turned his eyes toward the newspaper he had hardly glanced at even though he had been there since morning. He shook his head and responded, “Sixteen hundred in bad conditions? I don’t need that.”
“Inter Erimo will race. His first since he’s been upped in class.”
“Erimo’s too stiff. You like him, don’t you, Monoi? He’s not for me though.”
Nunokawa gave Monoi his trademark faint smile and held firm. He was a man who only bet on the main race and safely chose the first or second favorite, so he never won big but never lost a lot of money either. He demonstrated no partiality toward a particular horse, and anyway, he barely even looked at the newspaper racing columns. He came with his daughter to the same second-floor seats in front of the finish line every Sunday not so much for his own enjoyment but because his daughter liked horses. Once he had installed his charge in her seat, he usually nodded off or stared blankly at nothing.
Nunokawa was still a young man. He could not have been much past thirty, a fact that was obvious from the incomparable luster of his skin. When Monoi first met him six years ago, the sight of this tall figure—easily over six feet—slouching on the bench had instantly reminded Monoi, despite his rather paltry knowledge of art, of a Rodin sculpture. When Nunokawa told him he had served as a member of the First Airborne Brigade of the Self-Defense Force stationed at Narashino, Monoi thought it was no wonder, with such an impressive stature. Nunokawa had a melancholy look in his eyes, but Monoi made the clichéd assumption that being the parent of a disabled child must be quite difficult at such a young age. Nevertheless, Nunokawa’s crude and awkward manner of speaking and the honesty in his expression, which clouded over with frustration now and then, made Monoi feel a sense of affinity with and fondness for him. As far as affinity went, however, aside from the fact that Monoi himself had a disability in one eye and was also taciturn and awkward, they
