Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,82

faint voice of a man at the other end, when he’d at last understood what I was saying. “Dr Kawashita the doctor? Yes, he’s with the police right now.”

“The police? Why’s he with the police?”

“Haven’t you seen the papers? A woman was horribly murdered here last night. Three doctors who were attending the conference, including Dr Kawashita, are helping the police as key witnesses. So I can’t really say when they’ll be coming back, I’m afraid.”

Without access to television or newspapers, I was completely unaware that such an incident had happened. If the doctor was being questioned by the police, this would be no time to discuss medicines, even if I did make contact. I abandoned the idea and replaced the receiver.

There was no sign of my trunk the following day either. Or the day after that. Ten days had passed since the trunk was sent. That day, the village headman’s wife called to inform me, in a roundabout way, that the whole village was starting to notice my wife’s immodest behaviour with the students.

Another five days passed. I was completely neglecting my work, spending whole days making long-distance phone calls here and there. Having finally lost patience with me and my complaining, whining and moaning, my wife took our child and returned to the mainland. Together with the five students. On the ferry.

Each time I argued violently with this person or that on the telephone, I thought I was going to die. I had palpitations eight times and stopped breathing four times. On three occasions, I was attacked by an intense heart pain that nearly made me lose consciousness. Each time, I fell and writhed on the floor in fear of imminent death.

At last, on the seventeenth day, there was a call from the Shimizu Branch to say the trunk had arrived. I’d asked them to call me as soon as it turned up.

“So, will it be here today?”

“Today’s ferry has already left, hasn’t it. So it’ll be on tomorrow’s,” said the gravelly voice.

“Why has it taken so long?”

“Because it came by road.”

“Why wasn’t it sent by rail?”

“How should I know,” he said, hanging up abruptly again.

The next day, I was waiting at the ferry landing stage a good hour before the ferry was due to arrive. A typhoon had passed from Kyushu to the Korean Peninsula, and the seas were rough. It wasn’t raining, but the wind continued to gather force as I waited.

At last, some thirty minutes behind schedule, the ferry came into view.

“It’s here!” I danced for joy at the end of the jetty. “That’s the one! That’s the boat that’s carrying my medicine!”

“But he can’t possibly berth here!” said the village headman, who’d come to stand behind me with several other villagers in their concern over the stormy weather.

“W-why’s that?” I asked in surprise.

“Because of the typhoon,” one of the villagers replied.

“That’s right. With the waves this high, if he tries to berth he could be smashed against the jetty and capsize,” the village headman explained.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I screamed. “I’m at the end of my tether, I tell you! I can’t wait any longer! All right – if the boat can’t berth, I’ll swim out to it!” I took off my jacket.

“Impossible!” The village headman and the other villagers hastily tried to hold me back. “Don’t do it! You’ll drown! No, before you drown, you’ll be smashed against the jetty and die of heart failure!”

“What do I care?! My heart can do what it likes! I need that medicine!” I shook myself free of their grasp and plunged deep down into the angrily billowing waves.

And that was when my crazy adventure started. I abandoned my family, packed in my job, crossed seven seas and traversed five continents in pursuit of a single package of medicine. I swam the English Channel naked, ran the Sahara Desert barefoot, fought off natives blowing poisoned darts in dense tropical jungle, grappled with a polar bear on the Arctic ice, and was caught in a gunfight between international agents trying to snatch my medicine on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Because that, you see, was my only way of staying alive.

I still haven’t found my medicine.

Salmonella Men

on Planet Porno

It was Yohachi, the odd-job man, who brought the Team Leader’s message. He wanted us all to attend an emergency meeting because Dr Shimazaki, an authority on botany and the only woman in our Research Team, was pregnant.

I looked up from my microscope. “Why must we have a meeting just because she’s pregnant?”