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  He had worried that his mother would be against his going, but when he told her what he was thinking, she agreed almost at once. Though he didn't know the language or the culture, his blood was half Japanese, she told him, so the people there would treat him as part of the family. That was only natural. There were successful Brazilian Japanese who had managed to send their children to college and secure a place for them among the country's elite, but Kazuo's situation was different. He was the son of a barber from the poor part of town, and it made all the sense in the world for him to go abroad to seek his fortune. Then he could return to Brazil with his savings and make a success of himself. He would be following in the footsteps of the man whose independent spirit he'd inherited.

  Kazuo quit the print shop where he had worked for six years, and six months ago he had arrived at Narita Airport. It had been an emotional moment, with him thinking of his father coming all alone to Brazil at the age of nineteen. Kazuo was twenty-five when he arrived in Japan as a guest worker on a two-year contract.

  But he soon found that the land of his forefathers didn't pay much attention to the fact that its blood was running in his veins. At the airport, on the streets, he knew he was seen as a gaijin, a foreigner, and it burned him up. 'I'm half Japanese,' he wanted to shout. 'I'm a Japanese citizen.' But to these people, anyone who didn't share their facial features, who didn't speak their language, just wasn't one of them. In the end, he decided the Japanese as a whole tended to judge most things by their appearance; and the idea of fellowship, which his mother had taken for granted and which involved going beyond appearances, was something few people here were actually willing to follow up on. The day he realised that his face and physique would forever consign him to the status of a gaijin, Kazuo gave up on Japan. It didn't help matters that his job at the boxed-lunch factory was less interesting than the work he'd done at the print shop back in Brazil. It was mindless, back-breaking work that seemed designed to break your spirit, too.

  So he had decided to think of his time in Japan as a spiritual test - a two-year test to see whether he could save up the money for a car. Kazuo's mother was a devout Catholic, but his was a different kind of spiritual discipline. Not God but his own willpower would give him the strength, the self-control to reach his goal. But last night, for the first time in a long while, he had let his self-control slip. He put the stalk of grass in his mouth and raised his eyes. Compared to Brazil, there were almost no stars in the sky.

  -

  Yesterday had been his day off. The Brazilian employees at the factory were on a five-day cycle, four days on and one off. This odd schedule numbed the body's internal clock, which was normally set to rest at the weekend, and made the workers feel exhausted when their day off came around. So, though he'd been looking forward to the break, Kazuo had been tempted just to spend the whole day in bed. He felt dull and heavy; perhaps, he thought, because he'd never experienced the rainy season in Japan before. The humid air plastered his black, glossy hair to his head and made his dark skin look lifeless. Wet laundry stayed wet; his spirits remained damp. In the end he decided to go and do some shopping in a town known as Little Brazil on the border between Gunma and Saitama prefectures. The trip would have been quick by car, but Kazuo didn't have a licence or a car. By train and bus, it took nearly two hours.

  He stood in the aisles of the bookstore in the Brazilian Plaza and read soccer magazines. Then he bought a few ingredients he needed to make Brazilian food and looked in at the video store. By the time he should have been heading back to Musashi Murayama, he was thoroughly homesick. He missed Sao Paolo, missed everything about Brazil. Deciding to linger a bit longer, he stopped in at a restaurant and began drinking Brazilian beer. None of his friends from the factory were there, but as he sat drinking with these Brazilian strangers, he could almost imagine he was in a bar in downtown Sao Paolo.

  The place he worked for had a dormitory for foreign workers near the factory. Two men could rent a single room with a small kitchen. Kazuo lived with a man named Alberto, but when he stumbled in drunk around nine, the room was dark. Alberto must have gone out for something to eat. Relaxed from his day off and the beer he'd drunk, Kazuo crawled into the upper bunk and dozed off.

  It was about an hour later that he woke to the sound of heavy breathing. Alberto and his girlfriend must have come back while he was sleeping and they were going at it in the bottom bunk. Apparently they had no idea that Kazuo was sleeping above them, or if they did, it wasn't dampening their enthusiasm. It had been a long time since Kazuo had heard a woman in the throes of passion, and by the time he'd covered his ears, it was already too late - somewhere inside him the fuse had been lit. For all that he'd tried to keep the gunpowder away from sparks, he'd never been able to get rid of the fuse. And once it was lit, the powder was sure to explode. He lay writhing silently on the upper bunk, his hands trying desperately to cover his mouth, to plug his ears.

  When the time came to go to work, Alberto and his friend got dressed and left the place, kissing noisily the whole time. Kazuo stumbled out a few minutes later and set off through the dark streets in search of a woman. He had never felt so pent up in his whole life, as if he might die if he couldn't find some release. He was scared to think that his self-imposed trials would probably make the explosion worse. But he couldn't stop himself.

  He walked along the ill-lit street that led from the dormitory to the factory. It was a lonely stretch of road, lined with an abandoned factory and a bowling alley that had gone out of business. It occurred to him that if he waited here, one or two of the part-timers would come by. He knew that most of them were as old as his mother, or older, but at the moment he didn't care. Still, it was late, and no one came. Part of him was relieved, but another part felt the violent disappointment of the hunter whose prey has slipped away. He watched the empty road with mixed emotions . . . and then suddenly a woman had come hurrying along.

  She seemed to be lost in thought, and even when he came up and tried to speak to her, she didn't notice him. That was why he had grabbed her arm, almost without thinking. As she pushed him away, he could see the look of horror in her eyes, even in the dark, and somehow that had made him want to drag her with him into the thick grass.

  Would he have been lying if he said that he had no intention of raping her? He only wanted her to hold him, so he could feel her softness next to his body. But when she began to resist, he suddenly wanted to force her down, to pin her there. That was when she told him that she knew who he was.

  'You're Miyamori, aren't you?' she'd said in that cold, hard voice of hers, and fear had gripped him. Now that he was close to her, he realised that he knew her, too: it was the tall woman who seldom laughed, the one who was always with the good-looking girl. He had often thought that anyone who looked that gloomy must be suffering nearly as much as he was. His fear gave way to guilt about the crime he was committing.

  When she had suddenly proposed that they meet again later, 'just the two of them', his heart had leapt. For just an instant, he'd felt he was falling in love with this woman, despite the fact that she was so much older. But then he had realised that she would say anything to escape from him, and he felt a black anger welling up inside. He was just lonely - what was so wrong with that? Why couldn't she humour him? He didn't want to rape her; he just wanted her to be nice to him. Overwhelmed with longing and unable to control himself, he pushed her up against the shutter and kissed her.

  How shameful it had been. He buried his face in his hands at the memory. But what happened later had been worse. When she had pushed him off and fled, he'd been terrified that she would report him to the management or to the police. He remembered that there'd been talk of a man stalking women in the area. The rumour had even reached the Brazilians, and some of the women seemed to talk of little else, forming their own theories about who it could be. It wasn't Kazuo, of course, but how was he going to explain that to this woman? He had to apologise to her - as soon as possible.

  H