Because of Feeney’s quip about Greenwood Timber’s habit of paying its oxen better than its men, Harris made a point to offer him an initial salary double that of Baumgartner’s. “I’ll never publish another poem again in my life,” Feeney said after they inked the agreement. Yet now Harris worries that he’s overestimated the man’s value.
Feeney laughs. “Fine, keep your knickers on!” he says. “I must say I’ve never been paid to be a poet. Which is a tremendous sacrilege in itself, I might add. But I’ll have a go.”
Harris waits in anticipation, and overtop of the steamer’s great chuffing he hears his describer draw a breath. “Fog seeps between the brindle stalks,” Feeney begins, “and the sun, hooded with seaborne mist, burns among the striving arms of branches…”
In Harris’s mind a vivid panorama assembles, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of relaxation. Of goodness, rightness, and exactness. For the remainder of their voyage to Japan, Harris has Feeney conjure more of these seascape descriptions—“my postcards,” Feeney calls them—at set intervals throughout the day. Though the poet’s usage is at times a touch overblown, Harris enjoys himself all the same.
It’s six days to Yokohama, then another day to Tokyo, during which they’re driven below deck by a sleet-smattering gale. They pass the time with readings of Wordsworth and Yeats—both Feeney’s suggestions. Harris prefers poetry above all else, for how it sets like concrete in his mind, as opposed to the short-acting fireworks of the novel, long, agonizing yarns concerning people and families he’ll never know.
From the Tokyo wharf, they’re escorted by a profusely apologetic government agent to what he says are merely their temporary accommodations while their proper accommodations are readied. Feeney describes the guesthouse as a low-lying house that sits next to a bog. A curious supper of sea creatures is served along with much bell-ringing and burning of acrid incense.
Harris wakes in the middle of the night to the stirring of the paper walls by the breeze. He can hear Baumgartner’s grizzly bear–like snoring somewhere nearby, but also Feeney’s soft inhalations in the room immediately adjacent. With some shock and revulsion, Harris realizes that they’re all separated, essentially, by nothing.
There once was a pair of swampers employed at one of his logging camps who were discovered one morning naked and whiskeyed-up in each other’s arms beneath an overturned skiff. The other loggers beat them with the butts of their axes and trampled their naked flesh with spiked boots. With some glee, Baumgartner had informed Harris that the bodies were dumped out in the cuts, while the Mounties were told that the men had gotten drunk and wandered off. Though the event revolted him, Harris knew better than to interfere with logging camp justice.
But here in Japan, Harris reminds himself, this thin sheet of paper is defined as a wall, legally speaking. And no one could possibly deem it indecent for one man to hear another man breathing in his sleep through a wall. Relieved, Harris puts his pillow over his head and rolls over.
In the morning, Harris, Baumgartner, and Feeney are brought to the Imperial Palace, where they wait in the garden. It’s here they learn that the meeting isn’t with a private railway company at all, but rather the Japanese High Command. After an hour of idling, Harris’s mounting frustration quelled only by Feeney’s detailed account of the garden’s exotic birds, they’re led to the negotiating room. Feeney describes a vaulted chamber of clear beams, all fit without nails. It’s Harris’s experience that the Japs know timber better than anyone. He sold them boatloads after their earthquake in ’23, and they’re always first to snap up his best quarter-sawn logs. A translator introduces twelve uniformed men as the Railway Command Group, and they all kneel at a low table, which Feeney says has a sword placed at its centre.
“What kind of sword?” Harris says from the side of his mouth.
“Ceremonial,” Feeney replies. “Blunt as a tin can.”
“I should’ve brought my ceremonial rifle,” Baumgartner grunts as he squats uncomfortably on his bad knee. Though he’s never cared for international travel, Baumgartner is particularly ornery this morning, and has been since they left Vancouver.
“Do they seem ready to give us their money?” Harris whispers to Feeney.
Feeney puts his mouth near Harris’s ear, which electrocutes something in his stomach: “Not quite.”
There’s much introduction and ceremony, including recurring talk of the “Emperor’s will” and more bell ringing and tea that tastes of sodden pine.