Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/265



I see cocoons I am reminded of Yasuo Sakai. Of late I have become so completely a city-dweller that it is only by the patterns of autumn grasses on fabrics in the shop-windows that I know the autumn has come. No longer can I wander along country lanes where migrant crows drop seeds as they fly, the baskets of live cocoons swaying on the carts as if they would topple off at any minute.

Sakai and I were bosom pals in the middle school. We shared a room and with our two little desks, side by side, were as inseparable as Siamese twins.

At the back of the school rose hills covered with low pines; whenever summer drew near wild­ flowers blossomed round the roots of these trees.

“Funny little guys; beauties, aren’t they?” I remember him remarking solemnly one day as we watched a little snake, all its scales shining in the sunlight, disappear noiselessly under a bush.

There was a tinge of bitterness in his words. He himself was always called “the dirty guy” by the bullies of the class, as he was always in rags. Were he a spineless chap, that nickname alone would have been enough to humiliate him. Their scorn, however, probably contained a strain of