(Introductory chapter to the novel)
The sun rises sharply, poking through the gossamer curtain of mist hanging over Tokyo Bay. Golden shafts of light reach across the waters, breaching the underbelly of swollen, low-slung clouds. A somnambulant city creaks into motion, one creaky step at a time, awaking to the clickety-clickety clack-clack clockwork of trains. One and all on the go, forever departing, never really arriving, mostly in a rush to nowhere.
Trains chasing trains, trains facing trains, trains passing, ringing around the loop, chewing up track all day long. The groan of crowded busses, the thunder of over-laden trucks and the impatient swoosh of bullet trains join the aural symphony of early morning, all hustle and hum.
Sleep interrupted and slumber deferred, baggy-suited salary men trod their way to work, brushing past office ladies in tight skirts and short hose, trudging up and down drafty stairwells, offering up their bodies to cramped rail carriages, giving themselves up to a ride so rhythmic, steady and stuffy as to invite a return to slumber along the way. Resting heavy eyelids, commuters drift back into the black, attending to unfinished dreams.
Millions of punctilious citizens march to and fro, transporting themselves from tatami to linoleum, from bedroom to boardroom by way of horde-engorged stations, getting up extra early, drinking extra strong coffee and walking extra fast so as not to be a minute late. Commuters scurry into subways, trading the rattle and roar of the surface road for the muffled whine and thrum of the labyrinthine underground.
Tea is quaffed, toast is buttered, rice balls rolled and hard-boiled eggs are salted to go. Building by building, block by block, a warm tangerine glow beats back the cool of night. Subways slither through dark subterranean tunnels; autos speed obediently along walled-in highways, while up above, whispering jets scratch the sky, exuding iridescent vapor trails. To the west, the cloud cover is sundered by unseen winds, unveiling a glowing mound.
Mount Fuji is blushing pink, modesty violated by the rising sun.
The cityscape trembles and vibrates, lurching almost imperceptibly at first, followed by a sustained shudder and gentle shrug. A powerful subterranean jolt strikes unannounced, a hidden ninja leaping out of nowhere, poised to kill.
The ground underfoot ripples with unseen waves, causing the city to creak, shudder and sway.
Startled crows caw noisily and take wing, fleeing from rattled trees and wobbly utility poles. Lingering plum blossoms shiver and let drop. Pink sakura petals flutter free, cascading to the moist ground like falling snowflakes. Concrete condos and steel towers quiver and swing in synchrony with undulating stands of bamboo.
The power is carried upward, causing things to thrust this way or that, and then just as abruptly, all goes still.
Tectonic plates girding the earth’s fragile crust come to rest. Slipping and sliding done with, subterranean adjustments made, terra firma is restored once more. An uneasy calm follows. In the absence of further shifting, the lovely green volcanic archipelago perched atop the ocean’s deepest trench ceases to tremble, and once again Japan is fully at peace with itself, gently lapped by the caress of Pacific waves.
Traffic signals dangle loosely, swinging in decreasing increments like spent pendulums, while startled crows caw-caw the all-clear signal. It was as if some humongous subterranean earth spirit had woken with a start, stretched, yawned, turned over, yawned again, readjusted its pillow, and then went back to a deep, peaceable sleep, unaware that it had roiled countless sentient beings in its wake.
No sooner does the trembling of the earth subside, than the rumble of rush hour resumes full-bore.
The shadow of uncertainty that passed over the city like an inauspicious eclipse is gone now, replaced by the reassuring cacophony of rush hour in full flow. The brush with the unthinkable does not bear undue thinking, but it nonetheless imparts to the drudgery of the daily routine a renewed intensity, a raw appreciation for the little things in life, like the miracle of life itself.
With the passing of apocalyptic danger, the habitual motions of the morning are back in full swing again. Along the banks of the rocky riverbeds transecting Tokyo, tramps and vagrants huddle in musty makeshift shacks and cardboard boxes, lucky just this once not to have a solid roof over their heads.
In the shadow of a cantilevered bridge that spans the banks of a broad, shallow river, unwashed and unshaven men share a cup of hot coffee. Their homemade brew cooks in a kettle that sits suspended on a stick over an open fire. The whiskered men, unaware they are being watched, huddle around the smoking embers, warming their hands, exchanging knowing glances.
“Ji-shin?”
“Ji-shin da.”
The earthquake has passed.
One of these days, the big one would get its day in the sun; both the superstitious and scientific could agree on that much. A sneak attack from the subterranean depths was as overdue as it was inevitable. The big one would be big; big enough to shatter buildings, big enough to shutter the city, big enough to bring Tokyo down.
One of these days, without any proper warning, the gentle contours of the Kanto plain would ripple, buckle and shift, snap, sag and lift, reducing man-made towers and monuments of human ingenuity to rubble and ruin, rendering the rich as exposed and vulnerable as the homeless already were.
For the tramps camped out on the riverbed, the early-morning geologic disruption brings scant pause to the life-affirming rituals of heating water, washing up and airing out. Outsiders in an insular society, losers in a material world, they live on the edge of things, clinging to the detritus and discards of a sparkling city. They cling to hope like shipwrecked survivors, thankful for the shirts on their back, dry ground to sleep on, discarded food, and whatever flotsam and jetsam might come their way.
As a chill descends on riverbank as violent gusts of wind send dust into the air. The sky darkens and a few drops fall as the wind starts to blow. How quickly the false promise of the red-streaked dawn had been betrayed by gray storm clouds, the sun lost behind a mass of mist and purple precipitation tumbling in from the sea.
A disheveled foreign man, whose arrival on the riverbank had initially gone unnoticed due to the drama of the early morning quake, stands a short distance away from the tramp’s bonfire, rubbing his eyes.
“Gai-jin?”
“Gai-jin da.”
It is plain to see that he was no early morning jogger, more likely a Roppongi refugee from a bout of drunken madness the night before. The foreigner’s face is whiskered, his hair unkempt, his jeans and sweatshirt dusty and covered with flecks of dried grass. A man out of place and out of time.
“Gaijin!”
The homeless men are grinning now. They greet the far-from-home foreigner like a long-lost friend. Waving him over, they offer him a steaming cup of their black brew. He tentatively accepts, approaching slowly, smiling eagerly, trying his best to be pleasing, like an English teacher on his first day of work. Under their communal gaze, he sips the coffee fitfully, nodding repeated thanks, trying not to think about the rain that is already starting to pour down.