Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

Farmer Airlines

A typhoon started to blow soon after we left the capital. All trains and boats were delayed, forcing us to make unscheduled stops. It was the morning of the third day – the last morning of a three-day trip – when we finally set eyes on our destination: Tit Island.

“Ah. That explains the name.” My photographer Hatayama pointed a finger out across the sea. The island had a single, round mountain in its centre. To be more exact, the mountain was the island.

We were being ferried across in a fisherman’s boat, lurching in all directions with the movement of the waves.

“Is there some legend attached to the island?” I asked as the fisherman rowed on.

“What if there is,” he replied with a surly expression. “Look at the shape of it. There’s bound to be a story or two. Just like any other island. But we keep them to ourselves. If word got round about our legends, tourists would come pouring in. The place would be wrecked.”

So that was one thing less for me to write about. How disappointing.

“What an excellent policy!” said Hatayama with more than a hint of sarcasm. The fisherman grimaced and sniffed loudly. He’d been very reluctant to bring his boat out at all, saying another typhoon was on the way. But we’d managed to persuade him with bribery and a certain amount of grovelling. He was stubborn all the same, as he’d taken an instant dislike to us city types.

“Look! Terraced fields!” cried Hatayama in amazement. He was staring wide-eyed at the foot of the mountain. “I thought it was supposed to be uninhabited!”

“Oh yes! So there are!”

I had every reason to be dismayed. Our magazine had started its ‘Uninhabited Islands’ series in the previous month’s issue. If there were people living on the island, I’d have nothing to write about.

“Daah! No one lives there,” said the fisherman. “People from Shiokawa just go across in boats to farm beans and potatoes.”

Well, that was a relief.

Shiokawa was a small farming-fishing village on the mainland. We’d stayed there the night before, in the village’s single, shabby little inn.

That morning, I’d made a long-distance call from the inn to our Editor-in-Chief in Tokyo. I’d told him we’d be late in reaching the island because of the typhoon, and that our return would also be delayed by a couple of days. For no good reason he’d flown into a rage, accused me of taking it easy when everyone else was working hard, reminded me that ‘Uninhabited Islands’ was originally my idea, and said that I’d only submitted it because I wanted to skive off work. He’d ordered me to be back in the office by the following morning at the latest. If I wasn’t, I’d have my wages docked and the series would be pulled. That had brought me right down. I wondered if we really could return by the following morning. If another typhoon started up, there was no way we’d get back in time. I let out a gloomy sigh when I realized what a disastrous idea it had been.

“The Chief lacks ambition,” said Hatayama, intuiting the reason for my sigh. “If he can’t see you in front of his nose, he thinks you must be up to no good.”

“Yes, but that’s understandable for such a small company,” I argued.

This Hatayama was even more irresponsible than I am. He used to go around announcing his own grievances as if he’d heard them from someone else. As it happens, the Editor-in-Chief is quite sensitive to people bad-mouthing him. And he disliked me enough already as it was.

I did my best to stand up for him. “The Chief doesn’t have it easy, you know. If all five of the staff were away, he’d have to man the phones and receive visitors all by himself.”

Hatayama looked back towards the stern. “You’re sure to come for us after midday, aren’t you?” he said with some trepidation.

The old fisherman looked up at the ominously overcast sky. “Well, they say another typhoon’s coming.”

I had a rush of blood. “Come on! What are we going to do on an uninhabited island in the middle of a typhoon?! You’ve got to come back for us. We’d be in real trouble otherwise. Say you’ll come back, for pity’s sake!”

“Aah, you’ll be all right. There’s a hut where you can shelter from the rain. Besides, why else have you brought two lunch boxes each?”

“That’s just in case!”

Hatayama and I were on the verge of tears. We threw ourselves before him, our foreheads scraping the bottom of the heaving boat. “Please! Please!!” we begged.

“You like putting your lives at risk, don’t you,” he said grudgingly. He looked down at us with an expression of astonishment mixed with loathing. “All right, I’ll come. Unless something happens, that is.”

And that was about the best we could get out of him.

The fisherman headed for the beach opposite Shiokawa, and dropped us there. Then off he rowed briskly, back across the sea, where the waves were starting to swell. I stood with Hatayama at the shore’s edge, gazing forlornly at the boat as it receded into the distance.

“Right. Let’s give the place a quick once over,” I said at length. “We should be able to cover the island in two hours tops.”

It took three hours to cover the island. Contrary to our initial impression, it wasn’t completely surrounded by sandy beaches. On the far side facing out to sea, the shoreline mostly consisted of sheer precipices. To make matters worse, the wind picked up on our way round and it was starting to rain.

“I can’t take any more pictures in this,” announced Hatayama as he packed his camera back into its waterproof case.

We returned to the beach soon after midday, the appointed time. Just as we’d feared, there was no sign either of the fisherman or of his boat. The waves were even higher now. On the far shore, the white surf crashing on the rocks seemed to reach up into the ashen grey sky. Judging by the foul weather and the fisherman’s tone of voice earlier, there seemed little chance he would come. No, there was no way he would come. He must have heard the weather forecast, saying the typhoon would be severe. When things are going bad, they’re just bound to get worse. Or so we decided, as we weighed up our situation with pitiful faces.

“We’ll catch cold here,” I said, looking up at the terraced fields. “He said there was a hut up there, didn’t he. Let’s go and find it.”

“I’ve already caught a cold, mate,” said Hatayama. He let out an enormous sneeze, hurling nasal matter onto the ground as he did so.

We climbed for a while through fields planted with beans. Then, in the middle of the island’s mountainous terrain, we came across a long, thin strip of land that had been levelled over a length of several hundred yards. What was it for? At one end of it stood a tiny shack. Approaching the shack like bedraggled rats, we prised open the door, which was fashioned from logs tied together vertically. Then in we rushed.

There, on a raised platform at the back, we saw two farmers sitting face to face and drinking. One of them, a man in his forties, had horribly sticky eyes. The other was about thirty. The end of his nose was red – probably from an excess of alcohol.

“Sorry to intrude,” I said by way of apology. “Does this hut belong to you?”

“Ha! It don’t belong to no one,” answered the man with sticky eyes. “It’s for us folk from Shiokawa who farm the fields on the island. We use it to sleep in, or shelter from the rain.” He looked us up and down. “Have you got yourselves wet? Well, there’s some firewood over there. Why not light a fire and dry yourselves out.”

“Where are you from?” asked the red-nosed man as we made up a fire.

Hatayama and I took turns to tell our tale – that we were a writer and a photographer from an unfashionable monthly magazine for men, that we’d come to the island for a story but had orders to return to our office the next day, that we’d been held up by the typhoon and didn’t know what to do, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, we dried our sodden clothes by the fire.

“It looks as if another typhoon’s coming soon. How will you get back to Shiokawa?” I asked. “There’s not much chance of a boat coming out for you.”

“Ah. You came in Jimbei’s boat too, did you?” said the sticky-eyed man. “That’s how we usually get across. But sometimes, when the sea’s rough like today, the boat don’t come and we can’t get back. We came over yesterday afternoon, once the typhoon had died down. We’re picking beans, see, and stayed the night here. We saw you coming over, when we was in the fields. We’ve only just finished working, in fact.” With his chin, he indicated four big baskets full of beans in a corner of the earthen floor. “And while we wait, we have a drop of this liquor we brought over with us.”

So he wouldn’t answer my question. That irritated me. “But surely, you don’t mean to wait until the typhoon’s passed over, do you? Who knows when that’ll be?”

“True. Jimbei won’t bring his boat out if there’s any height to the waves, for safety’s sake,” mumbled Sticky Eye.

“Are there any other boats?” Hatayama asked expectantly.

Sticky Eye lifted his face and looked at us both in turn. “Do you really want to get back so soon? Are you really in that much trouble?”

“Yes. Of course!” I replied firmly.

Red Nose pulled a face as if to stop him. But he didn’t notice and just carried on. “Well, there is the aeroplane.”

“Aeroplane?!” In his surprise, Hatayama projected a missile of nasal matter onto the earthen floor. “An aeroplane from here to the mainland?”

Sticky Eye gazed at Hatayama’s nasal missile with intense interest. “Sheesh!” he cried. “What a trick! This one can blow his nose without using his hands.” He turned to Hatayama and laughed. “How do you do that?”

“I don’t remember seeing anything about an aeroplane on the timetable,” I said. “What airline is it?”

“The company’s called Air Shiokawa,” answered Red Nose, looking over at me. “They’re not on the timetable because they don’t do regular flights. They only fly when the weather’s bad and boats can’t get across, or when people are stuck on the island and want to get back to Shiokawa.”

“What? You mean there’s a flight just from here to Shiokawa?” exclaimed Hatayama. He bowed his head low. “Thank you very much! When and where will it arrive?”

Red Nose looked at his watch. “Well, if it’s coming at all, it’ll be any time now. You must have seen the runway outside. That’s where it lands.”

A bit short for a runway, I thought.

“Yes, but we can’t be sure it’ll come today,” said Sticky Eye. He shook his head with a smile, as if to tease us. “I hear Gorohachi was bitten by a viper yesterday.”

“Is Gorohachi the pilot, then?” I asked, overcome by a sense of foreboding. “Doesn’t he have a co-pilot?”

Red Nose and Sticky Eye looked at each other.

“Well, I suppose that would be Yoné.”

“No, she can’t be the co-pilot. You only ever see Goro flying the plane.”

“How much does it cost?” asked Hatayama guardedly. He was nothing if not stingy.

“Well, now,” answered Sticky Eye, thinking hard. “Us folk from Shiokawa have season tickets, so it’s cheaper for us. But when tourists absolutely insist on flying, I think they charge about three thousand yen for the round trip, yes.”

“Fifteen hundred yen each way? That’s a bit steep.” Hatayama wasn’t happy. “It must only take about ten minutes from here to Shiokawa.”

I poked him in the ribs and intervened quickly. “No, no. If we can get across for fifteen hundred yen it’ll be well worth it. But anyway, are you saying this Air Shiokawa only has one aeroplane, and that people who aren’t from Shiokawa and don’t have season tickets aren’t allowed to use it, unless they really insist?”

Sticky Eye was again unforthcoming. “Well. Yes. I suppose so.”

In my anxiety, I inadvertently raised my voice. “And does this airline company have a proper business licence?”

Red Nose gave me a sharp look. “Oy. If you want to get back to your office quickly, you’d best not ask that sort of question. And don’t go blabbing to others about it. You say you’re a writer, and I didn’t want you to know about the plane, because you might write about it. I only told you because you said you was desperate.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I proclaimed loudly, crumbling under the terrifying glare of Red Nose. “I won’t tell anyone, and I won’t write about it in the magazine.” There was no doubt – the aeroplane was privately owned, and operated without a licence.

“Anyway, don’t worry,” Sticky Eye called over to me with a smile. “Gorohachi’s a fine pilot, and he’s got a proper licence.”

Could anyone fly without a licence?

“All right, shall we take the plane back then?” Hatayama whispered to me with some apprehension.

“Of course we will!” I answered. “We’re the ones in a hurry. Something that convenient, we’d be daft not to take it.”

I was a bit worried about what sort of plane it would be. But the Chief’s temper was more worrying at the moment. I was in no position to be fussy.

“But he was bitten by a viper, was he not,” Sticky Eye continued.

“What? I heard he was treated at Shiokawa General. He’ll be all right,” said Red Nose. “They’ve got blood there, too.”

Now that our clothes were dry, Hatayama and I ate one of the lunch packs we’d brought. Still the plane didn’t arrive. The rain had eased somewhat, but the wind merely grew in intensity.

“It won’t come,” said Hatayama. “I bet it won’t.” He looked rather relieved at the idea. I could see what he was thinking. Of course he wasn’t looking forward to a tongue-lashing from the Chief. But that would be better than dying in a plane crash.

At that moment, there was a faint whirring sound in the distance, mixed with the sound of the wind.

“There he is now.” Red Nose and Sticky Eye got up.

We rushed out of the hut in front of them. We wouldn’t be happy until we could see this aeroplane with our own eyes.

A light plane, flying at low altitude from the Shiokawa direction, was making a sweeping circle above the bean fields. I didn’t know what type it was, but it had a stumpy fuselage with a propeller on each wing.

“Well, it’s more or less a proper aeroplane, isn’t it. We’ll be all right in that. Won’t we. Eh.” Hatayama was trying to convince himself.

“What else were you expecting, if not a proper aeroplane?” I countered, staring at him. “Don’t talk garbage.”

Pummelled by the wind, the plane shook violently as it turned and prepared for landing some distance from the runway. Then it came towards us, flapping its wings up and down. The wings weren’t flapping in alternation. They flapped up and down at the same time.

“Can aeroplanes flap their wings?” asked Hatayama in a frightened little voice.

“Of course they can’t,” I replied with irritation. “It’s just the wind doing that.”

“Wait a minute! The runway’s too short!” Hatayama shrieked. He stood transfixed as the aeroplane approached, wheels still retracted. How close would it come? Hatayama prepared to run.

When the wheels at last touched the ground, the plane bounced on the runway. I closed my eyes.

“No. It ain’t Gorohachi,” yelled Sticky Eye, standing behind us. “He’s better at it than that.”

Who was it, if not Gorohachi? I opened my eyes again to find out. The plane made a thunderous noise as it careered towards us on the runway. It was sure to plough straight into us.

“Nooooo! It’s going to hit the hut!” Hatayama was long gone. I followed him, diving headlong into the bean field beside us.

The aeroplane reversed the pitch of its propellers, and screeched to a halt just inches from the hut.

We looked at each other in the bean field. “We nearly died in a plane crash without even getting in!” said Hatayama. In his sheer terror, the pupils of his eyes had contracted to the size of pinheads.

We waited until the propellers had stopped before crawling out of the bean field. As we approached the plane, we saw how close it had come to destroying the farmers’ hut.

“Look at that! About five inches,” said Hatayama, measuring the gap with his fingers. He turned to me and added sarcastically, “Now that’s what I call service!”

I frowned. It was hardly a laughing matter.

Behind the plane lay a parallel trail of deep wheel ruts, two thick ones for the main wheels on either side of a thinner one for the front wheel – like gigantic mole tracks. They must have been made when the pilot had braked on the rain-softened runway.

The door of the plane opened and a wooden ladder was thrust out. Nothing as grand as an ‘air stair’ for these passengers, then. And onto that wooden ladder stepped a plump middle-aged woman, who clambered down shakily with a baby strapped to her back.

“Hello there, Yoné,” Sticky Eye called to her. “I thought it might be you. How’s old Goro doing, then?”

“Bah. There ain’t nothing wrong with him. Just that the doctor said he weren’t to move,” she laughed, showing a mouthful of blackened teeth. “Goro knew you was here, and was that worried, saying he’d come and get you, like. But seeing as the doctor told him to lie down, I had to come instead, see.”

“Well, it’s a long time since we flew with you, Yoné,” Red Nose said cheerily. “I see you haven’t forgotten how to do it.”

“As if I would!” replied the woman, throwing him a flirtatious look as she laughed. She was obviously Gorohachi’s wife. “It kept coming back to me as I went along.”

Hatayama poked me several times in the backside. “Hey! Hey!”

“What,” I groaned. I didn’t turn round – I knew what he was going to say.

“Er, you’re not planning to get on this plane, are you.”

So I did turn round. I looked hard into Hatayama’s eyes, which were now completely round with fear. “And why not?”

“You mean you are? You’re going to get in a plane flown by a fat farmer’s wife who’s carrying a baby on her back and hardly knows her wings from her ailerons? An aeroplane you get in and out of using a ladder?”

But he obviously realized that I had no intention at all of changing my mind. A sardonic half-smile came over his face as he continued. “All right, let’s do it, then! After all, it’ll be a rare experience, won’t it, flying in a plane like this in a raging typhoon!”

“Cut the sarcasm, will you? You’re getting on my nerves,” I said, turning away from him. Actually, I was only pretending to be strong. I needed him to get on that plane with me. But deep down, I was quivering with fear.

Sticky Eye had been talking to Gorohachi’s wife and occasionally glancing back at us. Then he nodded and called over to us with a laugh. “Hey, travellers! You’re in luck! She says she’ll take you!”

“Really?” I approached Gorohachi’s wife with a suitably grateful demeanour. We were entrusting our lives to her care, after all. We could do worse than ingratiate ourselves. “Thank you. Thank you very much!”

“It’ll cost you though,” she said. “Two thousand yen each.”

Sticky Eye intervened from the side, rather hurriedly.

“Actually, Yoné, I just told ’em it were fifteen hundred, one way.”

“Oh. All right, fifteen hundred then,” she said casually, without any sign of discomfort. “Well, come on then. Up you get.”

“Gorohachi’s wife seems like a good person,” I said to Hatayama as we walked across from the hut with our baggage.

He was shivering with fright. “That doesn’t mean she can fly a plane, does it,” he replied.

I pulled a face. But he just carried on, with his waterproof camera case slung over his shoulder. “Just now, they said this Gorohachi had a proper pilot’s licence. I heard them. But they haven’t said anything about the wife. Then again, we’re in no position to go round asking questions, are we.”

“Exactly,” I answered in exaggerated agreement. “So don’t.”

“Yes, well, we’re sure to get back to Shiokawa in one piece, aren’t we. Yes.” Hatayama laughed nervously, nodding to himself several times. “After all, she’s had some experience as a pilot, hasn’t she. Even if she doesn’t have a licence. And even if it is a long time since she last flew. Yes. And those two farmers aren’t at all nervous about flying with her, are they. Even if they are ignorant and totally insensitive to danger. That’s all OK, isn’t it.”

I said nothing. Otherwise, he might have started screaming his head off.

We climbed the ladder into the aircraft. Inside, there were ten half-dilapidated seats, five on either side of an aisle covered with straw matting. There was no partition between the passengers and the pilot; the controls were in full view. Hatayama and I sat in the front two seats, on either side of the aisle.

As soon as we’d sat down, Hatayama started up again. His hawklike eyes had spotted something in the roof of the cockpit, above the front window.

“Look at that!” he exclaimed. “It’s a miniature shrine.”

“So it is.”

“That’s for luck, I suppose.”

“So it is.”

“So that’s why this plane has stayed in one piece so far. Sheer luck!”

“Just shut up.” I glared at him again through narrowed eyes.

Hatayama ducked his head apologetically. “Do you have to get so angry at everything I say? Give me a break, will you?!”

The two farmers finished loading their baskets of beans and farming tools onto the plane. Then Gorohachi’s wife hoisted up the ladder and closed the door.

“Right then, let’s be off!”

She pushed back some loose strands of hair, then parked her sizeable rear on the pilot’s seat – all the while trying to calm the wriggling baby on her back. Once in position, she started fiddling with the switches, throttle lever and other controls, displaying a clumsy, heavy-handed touch. Hatayama and I held our breath as we stared in disbelief. The two farmers behind us, meanwhile, were calmly discussing the price of beans.

The aeroplane slowly started to move. It turned until its tail faced the hut, then started to travel along the runway. The plane shook and creaked noisily, making us jump up in our seats.

“We should have sat further back,” moaned Hatayama.

Not only were there no seat belts, but because we were sitting at the front, there was nothing for us to hold on to either.

“Be quiet! Or I’ll rip your bloody tongue out!” I shouted.

The plane bounced once, then picked up speed. The fuselage shook so violently that it seemed likely to fall apart at any moment. But still it continued to taxi along the runway.

“We can’t get off the ground,” said Hatayama, cowering in terror. “Oh no! We’re not going to make it!”

The runway ended at the top of a cliff looking out to sea. And the end was approaching fast. The plane bounced again, nearly sending us into the roof.

As it flew off the end of the runway, the plane was buffeted by a gust of wind and tilted to one side. We started to plummet towards the sea, the white crests of the waves rushing towards us through the front window. Hatayama let out a feeble cry. “We’re done for,” he whined. “We’re done for. I knew it.”

“Come on, you bugger!” Gorohachi’s wife cursed as she yanked the control stick upwards. The baby cried loudly.

The nose of the plane lifted, and we gradually returned to a more agreeable angle. Then we started to climb, swaying all the while. Hatayama and I both relaxed our shoulders and let out great sighs of relief at the same time.

“Oy, Yoné,” called Sticky Eye. “Is it just me, or were that a bit dangerous back there?”

“A bit’s not the word!” answered Gorohachi’s wife, cackling hysterically. “Normally, you’d have been saying your prayers!”

“Normally we’d have been saying our prayers,” Hatayama repeated to me.

“But I’ve got willpower, see,” she continued. “Not like Gorohachi. So it’s a good job I’m flying today.”

“She says this plane flies on willpower,” Hatayama called over to me in a tearful voice. “Did you hear? Willpower!”

“They’re just making fun of you because you’re such a baby,” I replied.

We were now surrounded by dark clouds. The aeroplane was creaking and shaking again. Drops of water started to drip down, from a join in the aluminium shell of the roof, onto the straw matting on the floor. Hatayama stared at me. Knowing he was about to start again, I pretended not to notice. So he brought his mouth right up to my ear.

“Er, did you know this plane’s leaking. The rain’s coming in,” he whispered.

“What about it.”

“Oh. Nothing.”

Suddenly, the plane took a huge dive.

“Oh no!” Hatayama wailed.

My tightly clenched palms were clammy with perspiration and cold sweat ran down my back.

Outside, a seagull was flying beside the aeroplane next to my window.

“That must be Jonathan Livingston,” Hatayama said loudly. “He’s the only seagull fast enough to keep up with an aeroplane.”

“Bah. It’s not him that’s fast. It’s us that’s slow,” said Gorohachi’s wife. “We’re flying into the wind, see.”

Hatayama was visibly frightened now. “But if we’re going that slow, we could stall, couldn’t we?!”

She laughed. “Ha! I suppose you mean we could do a nosedive. That hasn’t happened at all, recently.”

“You mean it happened before?!” Hatayama ejected a nasal projectile onto the floor.

“What a fantastic trick!” Sticky Eye was impressed again. “How do you do it?”

“We should be nearly there now,” I said. “Whereabouts are we?”

“Yes, whereabouts are we.” Gorohachi’s wife tilted her head. “We should have arrived long since. But I can’t see the ground for the clouds. I wonder if we’ve gone off course.”

“She wonders if we’ve gone off course,” Hatayama repeated to me with ever-widening eyes.

“Aw, shut your trap,” Gorohachi’s wife shouted as she hoisted the crying baby further up her back.

Thinking she meant him, Hatayama ducked his head again.

“Could someone take over for a mo? I need to feed the baby,” said Gorohachi’s wife.

“Right-o,” answered Red Nose, standing up nonchalantly.

Hatayama blew his nose again. “Let me out.” He started to cry. “I want to get out. Where are the parachutes?”

“There aren’t any. But there’s a broken old umbrella over there in the corner,” answered Sticky Eye, laughing heartily.

Gorohachi’s wife handed the controls to Red Nose and squatted down on one of the passenger seats. She opened the front of her overalls, slipped out a breast the size of a softball, and thrust a chocolate-brown nipple into her baby’s mouth.

“You’ll get mad again if I say anything now, won’t you,” Hatayama said to me with tears in his eyes.

“Too right,” I replied, staring him out before he could go on. “So don’t say it.”

“I can say what I like, can’t I?” He squirmed in his seat. “Why do you have to get so angry at everything I say? You’re worried about getting a rollicking from the Chief, aren’t you. You’re trying to forget your fear by thinking about that. Aren’t you.” He looked over at me with bloodshot eyes. “But really, you’re scared too, aren’t you. Just a bit.”

“What if I am?” I screeched. “Is that going to change anything?!”

“I’m more scared of losing my life than what the Chief will say. All right?!” he screeched back. “Because me, I’m just a photographer! See? If it came to that, I could earn my living freelance. What do I care if the Chief gets mad and fires me?! But not you. It’s not that you love your job, mind. You’re just scared of the Chief. You’re scared of him because you don’t want to lose your job.”

“Shut it!” I screamed, standing up. “One more word and I’ll punch your face in!”

Trembling under my fearsome gaze, Hatayama put his hand to his crotch.

“I need a wee,” he whimpered.

“Loo’s at the back,” said Gorohachi’s wife, still feeding her baby. “But it’s full of junk. We use it as a cupboard. So you can’t go in there.”

“Where can I go, then?!”

Sticky Eye stamped on the straw matting in the aisle. “There’s a gap in the floor under here,” he said. “Why not do it through that?”

Red Nose looked round from the pilot’s seat. “Hold on. We might be going over Fox Hill. You’d better wait. It’s bad luck to piss on the Fox.”

“I can’t hold it any longer!” cried Hatayama. He pulled back the straw matting and, lying face down, hastily thrust his member through a hole measuring a couple of inches in the floor. “Bad luck, Fox,” he groaned.

He meant bad luck for you, not the Fox, I thought.

The sound of the engine suddenly dropped. Then the whole plane lurched to one side, making a strange sputtering noise. I looked out of the window. The propeller on the left side had stopped moving.

I pointed to the propeller. “Augh. Augh.” No words would come out.

“Aw, has it stopped again?” asked Gorohachi’s wife. She’d finished her feeding, and hoisted the sleeping baby up onto her back again. Then she heaved herself out of her seat with a “Hey-oop” and returned to the controls. “Move yourself. I’ll take over,” she said to Red Nose.

“Has something happened?” asked Hatayama, still squatting there in the aisle.

“One of the propellers has stopped,” I replied as if it were nothing.

He started to laugh a dark, demonic laugh. “Heheheh. Hahahah. I told you. Didn’t I tell you? I told you.” Then he started to sing. “And now, the end is nigh…”

“Shall I thump the wing with that broom handle again?” asked Red Nose. “It worked last time.”

“You’d be wasting your breath,” answered Gorohachi’s wife. “We’re almost out of fuel.”

Hatayama sang louder. “We’re going to die, not in a shy way…”

“Oh, look,” said Gorohachi’s wife. “The wind’s blown the clouds away. I can see the ground now! Look how far we’ve come!”

South Korea, I wondered.

“Heaven, I hope,” muttered Hatayama through his sobbing.

“I must’ve got me bearings wrong. We’ve come out by the trunk road at Onuma,” said Gorohachi’s wife as she pushed the control stick downwards. “We’ll have to land there. There’s a petrol station down there, anyway.”

I jumped up. “You can’t land on a national highway! You’ll hit the cars!”

“Nah. We’ll be all right there,” said Sticky Eye. “They’re doing road works up at Sejiri, so there won’t be many cars. And seeing as there’s a typhoon today, nobody’ll be on the road anyway.”

“How can you possibly know that?” wailed Hatayama. “There’s a plane flying up here, isn’t there?”

“In any case, we’ve no choice. We’ll have to land here. There’s too many trees in the primary school yard,” said Gorohachi’s wife, turning the plane wildly.

The aeroplane made a loud creaking noise and appeared about to break up. The cabin shook violently. Hatayama cried aloud. The inside of my mouth was parched.

Then the grey asphalt of the highway appeared right beneath us. Just before the plane touched down, a car raced towards us from the opposite direction. It sped under our right wing, missing us by inches. The plane hit the ground, bounced, and bounced again.

Through the front window I could see a dump truck heading straight for us.

“We’re going to crash!” I yelled, bracing myself.

“Oh, he’ll swerve all right,” said Sticky Eye.

The truck driver panicked and careered into a vegetable field next to the road.

The plane came to a halt right in front of the petrol station. Maybe Gorohachi’s wife is actually an expert pilot, I thought for the briefest of moments.

As soon as we’d stopped, Hatayama made a bolt for the exit and opened the door. Ignoring the ladder, he jumped straight out onto the asphalt, where he lay face down for several seconds. Just as I was wondering how long he’d stay there, I noticed that he was actually kissing the ground in utter delirium.

I followed Gorohachi’s wife down the ladder. The road skirted the foot of a mountain, which rose abruptly behind the petrol station. On the other side of the road, I could see nothing but vegetable fields.

“We’ve run out of petrol!” Gorohachi’s wife called out laughing to the young pump attendant, who looked at us with eyes agog. “Fill her up, will you? We need to get to Shiokawa.”

“I’ve never filled an aeroplane before,” the attendant said as he pumped petrol into the fuel inlet on the wing, under instructions from Gorohachi’s wife.

Sticky Eye and Red Nose climbed down after us. “Ready for another ride?” asked Red Nose. They laughed contemptuously.

I looked at the map on my timetable. Onuma was about twenty miles east of Shiokawa.

“Not me,” replied Hatayama, glowering at me as he came back out of the plane with his camera case.

“But there isn’t a railway station near here,” I said sinuously. “How else can we get to Shiokawa? Even if someone gives us a lift, we’ll never be there in time for the train.”

Hatayama widened his eyes in disbelief again. “You mean you’re planning to get back in that?” he raged. “You’re out of your mind! You’re just doing it for pride! Well, if you want to die so much, go and die on your own! Leave me out! I’m waiting here till the typhoon passes!” He nodded vigorously in determination. “All right? I’m staying here!”

I gave up trying to persuade him. Actually, I wasn’t that keen on getting back in myself. But considering how things would be if I lost my job, I had to accept a certain amount of risk. “Please yourself. I’ll take the plane. I’ll be back in the office by tomorrow morning.”

“Or maybe you won’t,” said Hatayama with a trace of a smile.

I was on the verge of hitting him.

“I will,” I said. “I’ll get back. You’ll see.”

“We don’t need that,” Gorohachi’s wife announced to the pump attendant. He’d finished filling the tank and was clambering onto the nose of the plane to wipe the front window. “We’d better be off. I’d be in real trouble if the law found me parked here.”

“I hear the typhoon’s approaching southwest of here,” said the attendant with a look of concern.

Gorohachi’s wife laughed it off. “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right,” she said breezily.

Rain started to pour in torrents. I climbed back into the plane with the farmers, leaving Hatayama standing alone outside.

We started to taxi along the highway. As we did, several cars swerved into the vegetable field to avoid us. Soon we were airborne once more, and turned westwards.

It wasn’t until the following morning, during the Chief ’s tirade on my return to the office, that I heard what had happened. Just after we’d taken off, the side of the mountain had collapsed, burying the petrol station and killing Hatayama along with the pump attendant.

“Why the hell didn’t you get the film off him first?!” bellowed the Chief.