Nagoyan was already awake when I opened my eyes. We were again parked in a rest area.
“Had a rough night,” he remarked. “Couldn’t sleep.”
To me, the morning seemed rather promising. The night before, though it had been too dark for us to recognize anything, we had at some point made our way into the Aso region. Dark-green clumps were scattered about, but elsewhere was the color of bright, burgeoning grass. Amidst it all was nestled the soft form of the mountains.
“Let’s go t’ Daikan Peak.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s there ye have the best view of Aso. Ye don’ wanna miss it!”
I had added that in any case it was “on the way,” though I hadn’t the foggiest as to where we were on our way to.
In the parking lot, we nonchalantly wedged the Luce in among the variously colored cars and, mingling with family groups on holiday, briskly headed from the somma rim to the observation platform jutting out like a promontory.
From the tip, one looks down the plain stretching out below or directly across, to the five peaks towering into the sky. Then there is the three hundred and sixty-degree view of the somma. An immense sight, indeed.
“Woooooh! Is this all Aso?”
Nagoyan raised his voice in excitement. Such a reaction to seeing Mt. Aso seemed only natural. It occurred to me that if those peaks had their own voices, they too would resound with “wooooh” and “aaaaah”… The meaning of this escaped me, the mind of the mountains being quite beyond my comprehension.
“There in th’ distance… Can ye make it out? The somma goes that far… The entire mountain ring there erupted to form the caldera.”
“The somma really goes all around?”
“Indeed it does.”
“How big is it?”
“I dunno. Even seein’ it, I still can’t quite get my head ’round it.”
“The inside is flat, I see.”
On the enclosed plain were neatly delineated rice and vegetable fields, with towns stretching out here and there, as though someone had drawn fine lines on a blueprint with hard pencil lead. Over the rice fields lay bands of shadows cast by the clouds, and the peaks were wreathed in belching smoke. The eye extended as far as the southern somma, where time too seemed to stop.
All was placid and peaceful.
The tourists all around us likewise wore happy and pleasant expressions. There was no hint of urban discord. Glancing to one side, I saw an otherwise dicey-looking skinhead type holding hands with his brassy babe, a smile on his face.
“My sense of scale seems to have gone quite out of kilter,” remarked Nagoyan.
Seeing it all, one couldn’t help feeling very small indeed.
“That’s whit Mt. Aso does t’ ye.”
“Where’s the crater?”
“Prob’ly over there. That’s the central peak.”
“Let’s go to take a look then,” Nagoyan remarked with uncharacteristic resolve.
“It’s not a pretty sight, ye know.”
“Doesn‘t matter. I’d like to see it.”
I love standing on Daikan Peak and gazing into the distance at Mt. Aso, but the fact is that ever since my childhood, there’s been an element of fear about the place. And that’s because whenever I went on kiddie club or youth group outings, I would hear stories about the monster cats that haunt their namesake mountain, Nekodake. As a result, I often had nightmares of finding myself about to be killed and devoured by a huge feline beast. Being directly at the crater itself would intensify my anxiety, but now that I was a full-fledged adult, it would hardly do to explain any of this to a first-timer to the area. After all, compared to the horror of mental illness, the crater would be a piece of cake.
As we were coming down from the peak, we spotted a patrol car. Nagoyan gasped.
“We won’t be arousin’ suspicion, as long as we jus’ act normal.”
It passed us by without pausing.
The road ended at Daikan Peak. What had they come for, if not to catch us? Just for the trip?
“Whit are we to do at the crater?” I asked, taking advantage of the opportunity to pose the question once more.
“I just want to go there.”
“But it’s a dead-end road. If the cops come by, we’ll be sittin’ ducks.”
“No problem. That patrol car was just idling by. It had no interest in us.”
Nagoyan was obviously of the “danger past, God forgotten” variety.
“Look! Cows!” said Nagoyan cheerily. “Black ones too.” And with that he nonchalantly sped off.
“What a splendid prairie this is! Say, how about stopping for a bite to eat?”
We never knew when a cop might show up, but nonetheless he pulled into the Kusasenri rest house.
I was full of trepidation, but then I spotted a sign advertising ikinari dango, and now anxiety was quite replaced by a sense of nostalgia. The last time I had been here, I had missed the chance. I felt that now I had seen them I wouldn’t let them go for anything. Those precious dumplings were like a beau from whom I had been parted before I could say that I loved him.
I gushed and blabbered on in that vein, but Nagoyan looked totally blank, as could only be expected. The only way to know ’em is to try ’em.
“What are they?”
“Instant bean-jam buns, with sliced batatas in the filling too. Sweet on th’ inside, slightly salty on th’ outside. Makes ye feel that ye’ve never eaten anythin’ like it afore. It’s one o’ the local specialties, like karashi-renkon, ’cept that if ye’ve come to Kumamoto, it’s one ye simply can’t pass up!”
I was much too eager to eat than to bother with descriptions. I bought five at a hundred yen apiece.
“So what’s with the ‘instant’ part of it?” Nagoyan asked with an air of suspicion.
“Dunno, but I s’pose it means that when batatas suddenly appear, it’s a sign that one’s about to have a happy encounter with something really delicious… Let’s eat ’em on top o’ the mountain. They’re still too hot now.”
“What is all this? First it’s dumplings in broth, then instant dumplings. And none of them are real dumplings at all!”
“Hereabouts, everythin’s called a dumplin’.”
“Are they good?”
“Scrumptious! Not whit ye’d call haute cuisine, but something that’s near an’ dear to the heart.”
I was oblivious to all else as we returned to the car. Nagoyan grudgingly followed, muttering, “and what about a meal?” Yet the speed at which he drove to the summit seemed to belie his mood.
As we got out of the car, our nostrils were assailed by the smell of sulfur. The green landscape we had just had before us was gone, and now we were looking at a harsh and austere world of bare rock and gravel, brownish-red and grey.
“It’s like the Grand Canyon.”
“The Grand Canyon wouldn’t ’ave smoke spewin’ out.”
The people forming a semicircle along the edge of the cone-shaped crater resembled a distant funeral procession, their figures no larger than grains of rice. From their side, thick, white smoke was spouting forth. There was an eerily howling wind but otherwise no sound. It was all quite overwhelming.
“What’s that?”
“They’re called tochka. That’s where ye run to when there’s an eruption.”
There was something indeed quite scary about these round, concrete bunkers. It was terrifying even to contemplate having to take refuge in such a place from molten lava and volcanic smoke. And the word itself, with all its military connotations, somehow suggested a state of emergency. Curious, Nagoyan went off to look at them, only to report that there was nothing there. I replied that they were something like air-raid shelters and nothing more, though, in fact, I had never seen inside one myself.
We trudged over to where we could see the crater. It occurred to me that if we blended into the crowds, we’d be safe from capture. After all, wasn’t that what regular crooks did?
The direction of the smoke changed with the shifting of the wind. Far, far below, beneath a slope of scattered boulders and gravel, was the pond-like crater, nestled in level rock. The brimming, moss-green liquid was boiling and bubbling. Could there also be green lava? It lay so far below the point where we stood that all sense of distance was lost, along with any comprehension of the crater’s real size.
“I once thought of coming here and throwing myself in,” said Nagoyan, his eyes fixed on the sight below.
“What? Where did ye get that idea ’n when?”
“Recently.”
Flabbergasted, I stared Nagoyan in the face, but he said nothing.
“Waddya mean by ‘recently’? Since we’ve run away?”
My heart was pounding. All this time – from when we first left the parking lot at Takamiya, to when we were driving along the old Route 3, to when I lay awake, unable to sleep, as we camped along the road – Nagoyan was thinking of suicide. And then I had told him to drop dead. I had been so horribly cruel to him!
“But now,” he added with a beaming smile, “I see that it’s impossible to jump from here. I thought that there would be a moment of pain, but that then it would be over. In fact, it would obviously be quite excruciating. By the time you got to the bottom, you’d have hurt yourself badly and be all bloody.”
Human beings want death at a bargain, and I include myself among those who quite detest the thought of going out with any sort of discomfort.
“Ye’d be sure to get yerself stuck along the way ’n then scream fer help.”
“I don’t ‘scream’.”
“Oh, but there’s not a day that ye don’t!”
Nagoyan again gazed pensively down into the crater.
“Unbelievable. I had no idea.”
“The world’s only.”
I had forgotten just what it was the world’s only, but I was bursting with pride.
We came full circle and found ourselves standing in front of a sign describing the legendary gods of Aso.
“How absurd!” Nagoyan exclaimed. “The usual story has the gods throwing fireballs and creating mountains. But here they come down and act like pioneers, becoming the ancestors of the people who live here now. So who created the heavens and the earth anyway?”
I didn’t know what to do with that sort of big question, so I reached into my tote bag, took out the dumplings, and held them out for him.
“So are ye in a better mood now?”
He said nothing, but grabbed one and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Ugh!” he grunted, looking up.
“No way!” I replied. I ate my own, unable to restrain my eagerness for the soft, crumbly taste I so fondly remembered.
“First of all, it’s miserably shaped, and then all that’s in it is sweet potato.”
“But still better than nagoyan.”
“For someone who’s never had that, you’re some authority! It’s quite the contrary!”
“Ah,” I replied laughing, “yer such a fierce defender of your beloved nagoyan!”
“All right then,” he grumped, “from now on I’ll call you ‘Ikinari’.”
He wolfed down the remaining dumplings and then, looking out over the crater, shouted, “All things considered, it’s just ridiculous!”
His laughter made me laugh as well.
“That… that is a Porsche! It’s a Carrera 4. Isn’t it chic?”
We had returned to the parking lot. Nagoyan pointed with his chin to a black vehicle sporting Chikuho plates.
“Whit a frog face it’s got!”
“You have no idea.”
I plopped myself down in the driver’s seat and started the car, quite forgetting that the wheels of the parked Luce were sharply turned and that I needed to put in the clutch. We lurched forward. Nagoyan screamed, and simultaneously there was a startlingly loud crunch. The engine stalled, and there we were, smack up against the black Porsche. In a mindless panic, I turned the key again and put my foot to the accelerator. Again, a tremendous thud. I turned the wheels in the opposite direction, put the car in second gear, and looked to my right. There was a huge dent in the Porsche’s door, and the side-view mirror was hanging from a wire. I had somehow managed to do all of that.
“Come on, Hana-chan!” Nagoyan shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”
Without even nodding, I hastily drove the car out of the parking lot and headed down the hill. When we came to the fork in the road, I turned in the opposite direction of where we had come from. Lickety-split we were fleeing the scene, the car picking up speed on the slope and veering wildly around each curve in the road. The peril was palpable, like the grip of pitch-black, throbbing mania.
“Hey, it looks like I’d better take charge,” said Nagoyan, unable to watch me drive. With his able hands now again at the wheel, we had a smoother path of escape. There were few cars coming towards us from the other lane, and there was no one ahead or behind.
“Remember that gangster-looking type back at the crater? I’m sure that was his car. That is bad! If he had caught us, he’d have beaten us to a pulp… And then maybe stuffed us into gasoline drums, set us in concrete, and heaved us into Beppu Bay.”
Nagoyan went on grumbling, but I was still petrified. My heart was pounding, my arms and legs were cold, and I was drenched in sweat. In that terrible state, I could hear The Peas cheerfully singing.
Let’s stay together
And take that extra mile,
With happiness at last.
Forget the fretting;
Forget the carping.
It’s time to lighten up!
“Nagoyan, I’m sorry.”
“Huh?”
“I’m no good as a driver, and now I’ve smushed yer car.”
“My Mercedes? No problem. A dent or a scratch on it is a badge of honor. Besides,” he added, “it’s not that you’re ‘no good as a driver’; you’re something below that: an unlicensed driver.”
“An’ now I’m aw the more afraid o’ getting’ caught by the police.”
“No need for that.”
I had fallen into a kind of funk. In southern Aso, there might not be any car with Chikuho plates coming our way. No, not at all. The hoodlum, his face grim as death, would be scouring Fukuoka and Kumamoto.
I didn’t know what lay south of southern Aso. Perhaps there was nothing. South was our only direction.
I was in a state of exhaustion. What little strength I had still had before I faded into oblivion was already dissipating, and I was agonizingly expending it on escape. The alternative was to go back and expiate my sins, bombarded with questions from everyone around and reprimanded by the doctors. But I sensed that to endure hospital life, with its nutcases and all its loathsome realities, was quite beyond my power.
Nagoyan slowed, as we passed over a minor crossing.
“I wonder where the trains along this line go,” he asked in a blurry voice.
“To nowhere, pr’aps?”
It seemed unlikely that there would be any train connections south of Aso. In a small, forgotten hamlet were snug clumps of houses, each resting on a low, stone foundation, with red and yellow canna lilies blooming in the corners of the lots, breaking and scattering the light. At the end of a narrow road, we could see a summerhouse.
“I wonder if it’s a park.”
“Hmmm…”
We parked the car along the roadside nearby. At the base of the summerhouse was a fountain, set in square-forming rock. There were stepping stones, and as we stood in the middle, we could see neatly aligned aquatic plants swaying with the flow of the water. A dipper was hanging from the ceiling.
“This is a spring,” said Nagoyan.
“So it must be awright to take a drink.”
The cold water, as though penetrating to the recesses of our clavicles, was wonderfully delicious. As we each emptied the dipper, we both smiled.