Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/118

108 Formerly everyone in the village kowtowed to Uematsu, hoping to gain his favour.

How Handa, in his youth, had cherished the hope of becoming like Uematsu’s son! To wear Western clothes, and go to a town school; to be free to play all day!

But now he was proud of the fact he hadn’t been to school.

The songs they sang as they stirred the pulp, monotonous plaintive songs; the sound of hammering the hoops on the barrels with wooden mallets; the smell of the yeast which had made him want to be sick … all these memories of childhood were still vivid in Handa’s mind. The people of the village led hopeless, servile lives of misery. His father used to work from sunrise to sunset, and even then could not make enough to feed them all. When the boss wasn’t looking he used to scoop out some rice from the bin, wrap it up in a towel and bring it home. Handa’s mother and grandmother and sisters would eat every grain up hungrily.

On such land as was not taken up by the factories, they grew rice and other crops. That was the work of the women and the old men who could not work in the factory. The buildings blocked out the sun and the ground was salt, so the oats and rice were stunted, their leaves shrivelled, and the yield was only half. Beans were affected by the poisonous smoke and could not be grown at all.

Still the farmers, loath to lose the lands inherited from their fathers, clung to them as a drowning man clings to a sinking ship.