etc., for ninety-nine generations. That adds up to . . . more computers than there are in Japan, I guess. Way, way beyond the ability of anyone to cover it up. It is out of my hands now, anyway. ‘Going nowhere fast past Hadano, we are,’ says Ogre. ‘Traffic news says a milk-rig overturned ten clicks downstream.’ Urban Tokyo has unfolded into zones and charted rice-fields. ‘On a fine day,’ says Ogre, ‘you can see Mount Fuji over to the right.’ Drizzle fills the known world. Rain stars go nova on the windscreen, wipered away every ninth beat. Radio burbles. Tyres hiss on the wet Tomei expressway. A minibus of kids from a school for disabled children overtakes on the inside. They wave. Ogre flashes his headlights and the kids go wild. Ogre chuckles. ‘Who knows what makes kids tick? Not me. Alien species, kids.’ Line after line of hothouses troop by. I feel I should stoke the conversation to pay for my fare, but when I start a sentence a yawn splits my face in two. ‘Do you have any kids?’
‘No kids, not me. Me and marriage, never in the stars. Many truckers have girls in every port. Say they do, anyway. But me?’ Ogre has a story, but it would be rude to probe. ‘Cigarette?’ Ogre offers me a box of Cabin, and I am about to light up when I remember. ‘Sorry, I promised a friend I’d give up.’ So I light Ogre’s and try to smoke my craving. Traffic nudges. Ogre inhales, leans over the giant steering wheel, and taps ash. ‘Was your age, once, believe it or not. Got a job at Showa-Shell driving ginormous tankers. How ginormous? Ginormous. Freight division had its own on-site training programme – those babies are not your regular engine boxes, you get me? Dormitories were ex-barracks, outside Yamagata. Bleak spot, it was, sleet and frost even in March. Fourteen guys, all sharing one long corridor, small partitions for privacy, get the picture?’ I rub my eyes. We overtake the kids in their minibus. They press their faces against the glass and do zoo faces. I think of drowning men in submarines. ‘Now, I never sleepwalked in my life. Ever. Until my first night in Yamagata. Not just walking – doing things. So, say I dream of walking around my home town: I sleepwalk down the corridor saying, “Afternoon. Nice weather. Afternoon.” If I dream of being a famous artist, then we wake up to find toothpaste smeared on the mirrors. Harmless, it was. I always cleaned up my mess. A laugh, us trainees thought. They never woke me up – everyone knows the rule, “Never wake a sleepwalker”, although nobody really knows why.’ The radio whips and spikes. Ogre tries to retune it. ‘I learned why – the worst sixty seconds of my life. One moment, I am strolling around a shady market on a hot day in China. The next moment, two guys are sitting on me, shouting – two others are grabbing a hand each – two others grappling my fingers loose. What was I holding? A cleaver. Taken it from the canteen, I had. Lethal, fuck-off cleaver, the sort you chop up frozen carcasses with. Walked from partition to partition, waking up my co-trainees by tapping them on the side of their heads.’ On the road ahead, ambulance lights pulse in the slow dusk. A silver container truck lies on its side. Its cabin is crushed and shredded. A car is being winched on to a pick-up. Traffic controllers wave three lanes into one. They have glowing batons and fluorescent flak jackets. Others hose the road. Ogre strokes an amulet. ‘Rock solid, you believe the world is. Then everything jolts and shocks, and it all melts away.’ Traffic crawls through a coned bottleneck, and Ogre gropes for his box of Cabin. ‘Got a lighter?’ I light one for him, wondering if the story is over. ‘My dream. Baking hot day in China, it was. I was parched. I came across a watermelon market. Sweet snow watermelons. Would have sold my soul for one, I would. My mother whispered in my ear: “Be careful, son! They’ll try to sell you rotten fruit!” Something half buried in the dust catches my eye – a dagger, the sort archaeologists dig up. Walked from stall to stall, tapping watermelons with its blade. From the sound quality, I judged if the flesh was rotten or firm. I knew: the first good