Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/187

Rh Outside the wind tore at his coat and the snow beat against his face. It was a bad storm. There was nothing to do, however, but plod on through it. The head electrician lived about half a mile away. He arrived at the house at last and banged on the gate.

“A message from Tokyo Central.”

It took a lot of knocking, but at last he appeared, this Communications Department electrician who drew a Grade 5 salary of eighty yen a month. He was thinking that his wife as she stood there, having dragged herself out of bed to see him off, didn’t look very prepossessing, but once outside his expression changed. “It means an emergency rally. Hurry up and call them all up,” sourly he ordered Soroku. Already his pet toothbrush moustache was powdered white with snow.

Is it because the great mass of the people would be inconvenienced with the telephones and telegraphs out of order that there is all this fuss, officials shouting and workers being forced out into the snowstorm? If every single one of them was blocked for a whole day what loss would it be to the workers? But, for all that, it was proletarian linesmen who had to lose their sleep to go rushing round all over the place in the storm. If they dawdled, they’d their day’s wages docked.

From the centre of the network of wires which