Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/233

Rh presume that you realize the position I now find myself in?”

A girl brought in tea. Toyama was sitting there limply, as if thoroughly worn out.

“No one will listen to me any more.” He was obviously fed up with everything and everybody. “But anyhow, in the first place, take the constitution of the committee—isn’t it a fact that the workers haven’t the faintest idea what it is to be?”

The vice-president was silent. Just as Toyama was ignorant of the union’s real intentions, so the vice-president had no idea what tactics the company would resort to in the event of the original draft being scrapped. That was known only to the president and the managing-director.

The two men realized that they were both drifting away from the main streams of the coming struggle. There was about as much hope of a coalition between them as between the two halves of a broken oyster shell.

Arrest, fighting, poverty, imprisonment, flight, sickness—Toyama was weary of them all. He wanted to live in peace, working away at the trade he had mastered in his apprentice days. … He passed out into the corridor, a nervous wreck, pressing his aching head.

As he passed down the corridor several young fellows turned round and looked at him. He pretended not to notice them. He was going to pass by when one of them knocked against him.

“What d’ye think you’re doing, Tomi-Ko?” Toyama turned and shouted at the smart-looking young fellow.