Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/137

Rh land changed the whole aspect of the village, so that it seemed like a newly opened-up district.

A group of women and children, their yellow kimonos grimed with dirt, flocked round where the cinders were thrown out, rummaging and poking and putting something in their baskets. They were the coke-gatherers. When a cart came bringing a load of cinders, immediately, from all directions, like sparrows, they would collect. There they would chirrup and cry and poach on one another’s finds. This went on every day. Just when you thought they had scattered, back again would come the cart, and again from somewhere the sparrows had collected.

When the “ruffians” were sentenced, Uematsu, intending to appear magnanimous, had worn an expression of sorrow. He said that he hoped they would be treated as leniently as possible. … But once the “ruffians” were safely out of the village he gave a sigh of relief, and began to feel himself again. Now once more he was free to do as he pleased; everyone who might defy him had been removed.

One morning, as he was inspecting the factory, he discovered on the reclaimed land that the men had been raking the coal out of the furnaces before it was completely burned, and purposely making it into coke.

The muscles of his face contracted. His eyes hardened. With the cherry-wood stick he carried in his right hand he turned over the cinders and poked among them. He took it that the men were