white trees, white hills—the ordinary scenery of a country road.
“I could do with a bite,” yawned Kayama, one of the navvies.
“What about some noodles,” suggested Soroku. They had entered a little village that looked like an old post-town. They could get noodles at least here, he thought.
“Don’t be silly. D’ye think anything’s open at this hour of the morning?” answered the skilled worker, Torida.
Under the fire look-out was a stone statue of the children’s god, Jizo. Round the corner was a little bridge with grass growing on it.
The snow had stopped completely.
There was a noodles-shop and an eating-house. Squeezed in between a doubtful-looking “cafe” and a cake shop was a farmer’s thatched cottage. The door was still bolted and the fire seemed to have been just lighted.
In the eastern sky appeared a blue patch.
They were all tired out with walking. Since they’d been called up they’d worked on without anything to eat. Their bodies were almost frozen where the snow had worked its way in, but now a stickly sweat covered them.
How much further would they have to go?
Endlessly those wires, those cursed wires, would go on stretching to the gates of hell.
How much further was he going to walk them?
On they went, with heavy eyelids and running noses.
The front door of a little restaurant by the road-
