Canal Dreams

'Ah, we have enough time then, she said, conspiratorially. She knew he was due to talk over the radio to the shipping line's agent in Caracas soon.

'Just about; they'll wait.

'What if they replace you? she whispered, sliding one arm under his body. 'What would I do then?

Philippe shrugged. 'If they can replace me, they can get you out too.

It wasn't what she meant, and she wondered if he knew that. But he moved his arms down her spine — making her shiver — to the small of her back, and she didn't feel inclined to pursue the point.

She walked down the muddy highway. She wondered where all the traffic had gone. The highway looked broad enough for enormous trucks and vehicles, like the scrapers you saw constructing new roads, or the huge dump trucks in open-cast mines. She looked behind her, shivering, but saw nothing. The sky was dark but the ground was bright; corn swept back and forth on either side of her, like weeds in a stream. The corn was grey, like the sky and the ground and the road. Her feet raised slow clouds of dust from the road, and the clouds. floated in the sky behind her. The road wound round the sides of low grey hills, twisting this way and that through the silent landscape. Away in the distance, through the slow-swaying weeds, men fought, swinging sparkling swords at each other. She had to jump up and down to see the faraway figures; the weeds were crowding in around her.

Once, when she jumped up to see the warriors, she couldn't see them at all but instead, over the field of swaying grey crops, glimpsed another landscape entirely, far below and far away, with a great dark stretch of water lying among mountains; but when she jumped after that all she saw were the samurai again, swords striking sparks off each other, while the sky beyond boiled blackly, like smoke.

The track entered a dark forest where the bright leaves fluttered against the starless sky. Finally the path became twisty and narrow and she had to force her way through the wet foliage to the city.

The city was deserted, and she was surprised and angry that her footsteps made no sound; they ought to echo off the tall sides of the great buildings. Her boots were clean now, but when she looked back she saw that she was leaving a line of silvery footprints along the street; they glittered and wobbled where they lay on the paving stones, as though they were alive. It was growing darker in the town, and the alley had no lights; she was frightened of tripping on something. At last she came to the temple.

The temple was long and thin and tall; buttresses and the ribs of its roof made lines against the dull, orange-black sky. She heard something at last; metal ringing, and raised voices, so she started looking for a way into the temple. She couldn't find any doors, and began to hit the stone walls, then she noticed a great window, set low down in the wall, with no glass in it. She climbed through.

Inside it was like a factory, but the machines sat on the grass. At the far end of the building, on a stage raised a little off the grass, the samurai were fighting. She went up to tell them to stop, and saw that the two warriors weren't fighting each other; they were both fighting Philippe. She cried out to him, and he heard, and stopped to wave, putting his sword down.

One of the samurai pulled his sword arm back behind him, and then swung forward and down; the thin, slightly curved sword bit into Philippe's white dress uniform at the neck, and cut him in half, coming out at his waist. Philippe looked surprised; she tried to scream but no sound came out. The samurai bowed slowly, and put his sword back carefully into its scabbard; his left arm jutted out like a triangle from his side, and his thumb slid up the blunt side of the sword as it went back into its sheath; she saw a little bead of blood wiped off the edge of metal; it collected on the warrior's thumb.

Then the sword burst out of the scabbard again and started jumping about the altar like a firecracker, jumping and unravelling and making a noise like a flexible metal tape measure as it leapt and expanded and unfolded over Philippe's white and red body.

Philippe was weeping and so was the warrior, and so was she.

Philippe woke her, pulling her to his side. Her jerking legs had kicked him, and he'd heard her breathing oddly. She wasn't crying when she woke up, but she sighed deeply when she realised none of it had been real.

She buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him like some terrified monkey to its mother, while he gently stroked her hair and she fell gradually back to sleep again, and relaxed once more, breath slackening and slowing and shallowing.

2: Bridge of the World

She was promised a cello for her birthday, but she was impatient, so she made her own. Pocket money bought an old violin from a junk shop, and she discovered a large nail on a building site. She glued the nail on to the bottom of the violin to make the spike. 'Don't ever forget it's not a violin, her mother told her, amused. 'You'll stab yourself in the neck! She made a bow from a piece of wood salvaged from a broken screen an aunt in Tomakomai was throwing out, and some elastic bought in a Sapporo market.

The stretched elastic broke the wooden bow before she even had a chance to play the violin/cello, so she made another from a branch she found in the woods. She thought you were supposed to put chalk on the bow, so the violin/cello ended up covered in white each time she played. it, as did her hands. She shook the chalk dust out of the holes in the instrument afterwards. Hisako and her mother lived in a tiny flat in the Susukino district, and the sound Hisako made was so terrible her mother raided her savings and bought the child a real cello in October, three months before Hisako's birthday.

Hisako had to wrestle with the huge instrument (and, much to her consternation, throwaway a great deal of assiduously ground-up chalk begged from school), but finally succeeded in producing tunes her mother could recognise, and by her birthday the following January was clamouring for lessons. Mrs Onoda discovered — only a little to her dismay — that there was a gentleman in Sapporo able and willing to give cello lessons; a lecturer in the university music department who championed Western music in general and the string quartet in particular. Mrs Onoda made another resigned trip to the bank and paid for a six-month course of lessons with Mr Kawamitsu.

Panamá Puente del Monde said the taxi's number plate.

'Bridge of the world! Mr Mandamus translated, though Hisako had guessed what it meant. This was one of the names they called the country. The other was 'The Heart of the Universe'.

'Ah, she said, politely.

It was eight o'clock in the evening on Pier 18 in Balboa on the day the Nakado had docked after its Pacific crossing. They were taking a taxi into Panama City, which was lighting up the overcast sky beyond the orange-necklaced dark bulk of Balboa Heights.

'Oh, get in here, Mandamus, I'm hungry, Broekman said from inside the cab. It had taken them longer than they'd expected to clear Customs.

'Puente del Monde! Mandamus said, and with a clumsy flourish opened the passenger's door for Hisako, narrowly avoided jamming her ankle in the door as he closed it again, and got into the back seat beside Broekman.

'Panama City, por favor! Mandamus shouted at the driver, a young man in a vest.

'Panama, the driver said, shaking his head. 'Yeah, OK. Any particular bit?

'Via Brasil, Mandamus told him.

Hisako laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

'Via Brasil, the driver nodded. He stuffed the copy of Newsweek he'd been reading between the dash and the windscreen and put the auto into drive. The cab bumped over the rail tracks sunk into the rough concrete of the dock.