the complex has been rebuilt since the war, and all the signs are in Braille. I consider pissing into a trashcan, but I am afraid of the headlines – ‘Local Boy Miyake Forgets Toilet Training’ – and stumble down a corridor. Urine streams in pulses from a dying beagle. My bladder is nearly too heavy to carry. ‘This way,’ hisses an invisible companion. I find a brand-new toilet as vast as an airport. Floor, wall, ceiling, fittings, sinks, urinals, cubicle doors – snow-blind white. The only other patron is a speck in the distance. A lawyer. I go up to the nearest urinal, hold my golden twin against the wall, and—
The lawyer hums ‘Beautiful Boy’ in such an offputting way my bladder corks up. I glare at him and jump with shock – he is standing right next to me, pissing away. He still has no face.
I awake with an hysterical bladder to a hideous shipwreck noise very near. The typhoon batters back the door when I shift the sack of earth. I piss through the crack. The urine flies off and probably reaches the Sea of China. I go back to my nest of tarpaulin, but nothing can sleep through this night sky violence. The god of thunder is stamping over Kagoshima, looking for me. I wonder why my dreams are so clear – usually they evaporate the moment my eyes open. When I began my serial uncle visits, post-Anju, I imagined there lived somewhere, in an advertland house and family, the Real Eiji Miyake. He dreamed of me every night. And that was who I really was – a dream of the Real Eiji Miyake. When I went to sleep and dreamed, he woke up, and remembered my waking life as his dream. And vice versa. The typhoon catches its breath, and renews its assault as a gale. The potting shed is not going to blow away. I roll over on something hard, and find a medium-sized, flat, round stone. I put it in my backpack. When the gale subsides to a high wind, I am amazed to hear a person snoring – inside the potting shed! I get up and look behind the narrow partition. A woman, still asleep! She does not look like a gardener – she must be a visitor who somehow got trapped here by the typhoon too. Maybe she was too afraid to tell me she was here, and just fell asleep. Do I wake her? Or would that scare her to death? Her eyes open. ‘Uh . . .’ I begin.
‘So, you found me at last.’ She springs up and her kimono swings open. I am too startled to speak. For a weird moment, I mistake her for the mother of Yuki Chiyo, the girl who reported herself lost at Ueno. She dabs my nipples with her wet thumb, her other hand explores inside my boxer shorts – this is wrong, I already told Ai I love her, but her lips slide open for me and a million tiny silver fish change direction. I cannot fight this. I cannot move, look away, respond.
So I come.
Over her shoulder I glimpse Mrs Persimmon. She perches on the sack of earth and sucks dripping pulp from persimmons. She spits out shiny stones.
The bright garden lies trashed by an orgy of gods. Spilt juices from green veins scent the peaceful air. Ripped blooms, torn branches, uprooted shrubs. I find a small, flat, round stone. I put it in my backpack. I would love to stay a while and watch the pond, but I want to avoid the potting shed owner, and anyway the Yakushima ferry leaves in ninety minutes. I wade through the ripped bougainvillea and clamber over the wall, in time to surprise a schoolgirl on a passing bus. My only witness. Back among the houses, neighbours are already up, discussing the mending of fences. I stop at a Lawson’s and buy a bottle of Minute Maid grapefruit juice and a cup ramen – kimchee flavour – and ask the girl to add hot water. I eat it on the sea wall. Sakurajima belches ash into the spotless sky, and the sea is ironed smooth. Typhoons wreck worlds but the following morning cleans worlds up. I phone Uncle Money to say I am still alive – I tell him I spent the night with friends in Kagoshima – then I walk the rest of the way to the port. The ferry is waiting – cars