Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/89

Rh became even more plain to her. Sometimes, when when [sic] there was much work at the union, Kudo did not return home for weeks on end. Then Oyoshi had to work alone. She did everything: helped to coal ships down at the dockside, and made sacks for potatoes and other vegetables. Sometimes she was lucky enough to find work in the canning factories, where she had to wash bones. Before she gave birth to her third child, she worked right up to the last moment as a coolie, carrying sacks of coal.

In Kudo’s room the wall-paper had long since peeled away. The wind blew freely in through the cracks. Oyoshi had no money to buy new wall-paper, so she went to the union and got a few old numbers of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Chronicle and the Proletarian News. These she pasted over the cracks in the door. The flaming announcements of the strike stretched the length and breadth of the door panels. Whenever Oyoshi had a few moments to spare, she would read the headings of the articles. Sometimes the children would point to different words and ask what they meant. She would read slowly out loud to them. She pasted old leaflets and proclamations all over the half-ruined walls. Once Kudo and Watari and Senzomoto came in and looked around at the walls with astonishment. Then they said: “This is indeed our house.” They were delighted with it.

Kudo got up and dressed himself.

How would his wife and family exist while he was in prison?