Wager in Mid-air 183
Chō and the little man became friends and I often saw them together. One evening as I was calling for Chō on my way back from work, I found him standing outside his shop talking to the little man. They both nodded to me. The man had a map in his hands. “Here it is,” he said, pointing to a small corner of land sticking out into the blue northern sea, “here’s Nikolaevsk. That’s where I’ll be heading now. A friend of mine’s working up there and he’s asked me to join him.” He looked up at the deep blue sky. “When I decided to leave the mines,” he continued, “I first thought I’d try my luck somewhere really far away—Sakhalin, Kamchatka or somewhere. But then I thought if I came to Tokyo, I’d meet a lot of interesting people, people I could talk to, people who felt like I did about things. I’ve always been a great talker, you know, ever since I was a youngster. Well, I’ve got to like a lot of you fellows, but I’m not really your type. So now I’m pushing on. I won’t be going straight to Nikolaevsk. I’ll spend the winter working in Hokkaidō and try crossing over to the mainland next spring.” He paused for a while. “I suppose the fact is I’m just a born wanderer,” he added, laughing. We said good-bye, and Chō and I stood watching him walk away in the distance.
“He asked me if I wanted to go with him,” said Chō. “And I would have too, except for my old mother. She’d be lost without me.”
We started walking along slowly. A few sprigs of wilted morning-glory stood in a black, unglazed vase in a window opposite the shop. It was really amazing how blue the sky was. Under this deep, weird, silent blue, the black-tiled roofs of the houses seemed to roll sadly into the distance like the dunes along the sea shore.
None of us ever saw the little man again. We heard that he found a job in a factory at Ōi. No doubt he made his way to Hokkaidō and perhaps he even reached Nikolaevsk. Whereever he may be, I am sure he is heatedly expounding his theories.
