Wager in Mid-air 185
“No,” said Chō. “By the way, Kicki, where were you last night?”
“Last night? Oh yes, after work I went down to the river at Ryōgoku to cool off.” He sat down on Chō’s work-bench and began fanning himself.
“Look, Chō,” said Kichikō after a while. “What about you and me climbing that chimney over there by the spinning mill? We’d get quite a view.”
“In this heat?” said Chō. “How high do you suppose it is?
“Come on, don’t be a coward,” said Kichikō laughing. “It’s two hundred and fifty feet.”
“Heights don’t bother me,” said Chō. “I was always climbing trees when I was a kid.”
“Well then, let’s go.”
“What about you?” said Chō looking in my direction.
I remembered how I had once peered out of the window from the fourth floor of an office building. The pavement below had looked white and dry in the glaring sun and the heat seemed to be flashing from the hard surface. Suddenly I had imagined how my blood would redden those burnt, white stones if I fell out of the window.
I glanced at Chō but did not answer.
Just then Kichikō looked at me. “Come on,” he said. “You can have a go at painting the top of the chimney. It’ll be more fun than those hoardings of yours!”
I was too much of a coward to admit that I was frightened of heights. “All right. I’ll come along,” I said, even simulating a certain enthusiasm.
The three of us left Chō’s shop. On our way we stopped at an ice-cream parlour and each had a glass of iced water. Then we set out for the spinning mill. It was on a huge dusty plain at the edge of the city. As we trudged along, the shriek of the crickets reverberated in my ears like the sound of a boiling kettle. The perspiration was streaming down my forehead. We were all looking ahead at the chimney which reared itself before us under the blue, cloud-speckled sky. It had only
