Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/148

138 The leaflet was urging the railway workers to come out in sympathy—weren’t they silly girls?

The next day, however, he was once more the earnest Young Man. He was convinced that someone was “behind the strikers.” He well knew that at present there was some deadly hidden force sweeping all over Japan.

He seemed to remember seeing a gleam of light on the opposite bank as his taxi crossed Asakusa Bridge. Then he remembered being dragged down a funny narrow lane for some reason or other. The next thing was the strong scent coming from a woman’s body, and her eyes and cheeks and lips close to his. He felt the smooth short hair of a girl who was lying in bed beside him. This was Tamanoi, but as yet he did not know the wretched fate that lay in wait for him there. Naturally he could not be in bed facing that short-haired girl—whoever she was—without beginning to tell her proudly of the strike. But when she heard she drew away from him and started up.

“Then, if our girls were to strike, would you bring your little sister here to fill our place? It’s the same thing.”

“Don’t be silly.”

All the same, those were disconcerting words. And the short-haired girl uttered many others, more disconcerting still.

She told him how the city authorities, having prearranged with the Right-Wing leaders that they