A Wild Sheep Chase (26 page)

I said that he’d helped enormously.

“I sometimes wish I could go off in search of something,” he declared, “but before getting even that far, I myself wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to search for. Now my father, he’s someone who’s been searching for something all his life. He’s still searching today. Ever since I was a little boy, my father’s told me about the white sheep that came to him in his dreams. So I always thought that’s what life is like. An ongoing search.”

The lobby of the Dolphin Hotel was hushed as ever. An elderly maid was going up and down the stairs with a mop.

“My father’s seventy-three now and still no sheep. I don’t know if the thing even exists. I can’t help thinking that it hasn’t been such a good life for him. I want to see my father happy now more than ever, but he just belittles me and won’t listen to a word I say. That’s because I have no purpose in life.”

“But you have the Dolphin Hotel,” my girlfriend said sweetly.

“Besides, your father’s stepped down from his sheep searching,” I added. “We’ve taken up the rest.”

The hotel owner smiled.

“If that’s so, there’s nothing more for me to say. We two ought to get on very happily.”

“I sure hope so,” I said.

Later, when we were alone, she asked me, “Do you really think those two deserve each other?”

“They’ve been together this long … They’ll be all right. At least, after a forty-two-year gap, the Sheep Professor’s role is finished. Now we have to track down the sheep.”

“I like those two.”

“I like them too.”

We finished our packing and had intercourse, then went out and saw a movie. In the movie there were a lot of men and women having intercourse too. Nothing wrong with watching others having intercourse, after all.

It was an early morning train we took from Sapporo to Asahikawa. I opened a beer as I settled down to the voluminous, slip-cased
Authoritative History of Junitaki Township
. Junitaki was the township in which the Sheep Professor’s homestead was located. Reading up on its history probably had no practical value, but it couldn’t hurt.

The author was born in 1940 in Junitaki and, after graduating from the literature department of Hokkaido University, was active as a local historian, or so the cover copy said. For being so active, he had only one book to his name. Published in May 1970. First edition, probably the only edition.

According to the author, the first settlers arrived in what today is Junitaki early in the summer of 1881. Eighteen persons total, all poor dirt farmers from Tsugaru, meager farm tools, clothes, bedding, cook pots, and knives being the sum of their possessions.

They passed through an Ainu village near Sapporo, and with the little money they had, they engaged a lean, dark-eyed Ainu
youth as a guide. The youth’s name in Ainu translated into “Full Moon on the Wane” (suggesting a tendency toward manic depression, the author hypothesized).

Perhaps the youth was not cut out to be a guide; still, he proved far better than he might have at first appeared. Hardly understanding any Japanese, he led these eighteen grim, suspicious farmers north, up along the Ishikari River. He had a clean picture in mind where to go to find fertile land.

On the fourth day, the entourage arrived at this destination. Endowed with vast waters, the whole landscape was alive with beautiful flowers.

“Here is good,” said the youth. “Few wild animals, fertile soil, plenty of salmon.”

“Nothing doing,” said the leader of the farmers. “We want farther in.”

The youth understood the farmers to believe they’d find better land the farther in they went. Fine. If that’s what they want, off into the interior.

So the entourage continued their march north for another two days. There the youth found a rise where, if the soil was not exactly as rich as the earlier spot, at least there was no fear of flooding.

“How about it?” asked the youth. “Here is also good.”

The farmers shook their heads.

This scene repeated itself any number of times until finally they arrived at the site of present-day Asahikawa. Seven days and one hundred miles from Sapporo.

“What about here?” asked the youth, more uncertain than ever.

“No go,” answered the farmers.

“But from here, we climb mountains,” said the youth.

“We don’t mind,” said the farmers gleefully.

And so they crossed the Shiokari Pass.

Needless to say, there was a reason why the farmers had passed up the rich bottomland and insisted on going deep into the wilderness. The fact was, they were on the lam. They had skipped town, walking out on sizable debts, and wanted to get as far away from civilization as possible.

Of course, the Ainu youth had no way of knowing this. And so naturally his initial surprise at the farmers’ rejection of fertile farmland soon turned to bewilderment, distress, and loss of self-confidence.

Nevertheless, the youth’s character was sufficiently complex that by the time the entourage crossed the Shiokari Pass, he had given himself over to his incomprehensible fate, leading them northward, ever northward. He took pains to choose the most rough trails, the most perilous bogs, to please his patrons.

Four days north of the Shiokari Pass, the entourage came on to a west-flowing river. By consensus, it was decided they should head east.

This tack sent them up horrible trails through horrible terrain. They fought through seas of brush bamboo, hacked their way across fields of shoulder-high grass a half-day at a time, waded through mud up to their chests, squirmed up crags, anything to get farther east. At night, they spread their tarps over the river-bank and kept an ear out for the howling of wolves while they slept. Their arms, scraped raw from the bush bamboo, were beset at every turn by gnats and mosquitoes that would burrow into their ears to suck blood.

Five days east, they found their way blocked by mountains and
could go no further. What lay beyond was not fit for human settlement, the youth declared. Upon hearing this, the farmers halted in their tracks. This was July 8, 1881, 150 miles overland from Sapporo.

First thing, they surveyed the lay of the land, tested the water, checked the soil. It was reasonably good farmland. Then they divided the land among the group and erected a communal log cabin in the center.

The Ainu youth came upon a band of Ainu hunters passing through the area. “What is this area called?” he asked them.

“Do you really think this asshole of a terrain even deserves a name?” they replied.

So for the time being, this frontier was without a name. As another dwelling (or at least another dwelling that desired human contact) did not exist for forty miles, the settlement had no need for a name. In fact, when in 1889 an official census taker from the Territorial Government pressed the group for a name, the settlers remained steadfastly indifferent. Sickle and hoe in hand, they met in the communal hut and decided against naming the settlement. The official was literally up a creek. All he could do was to count the falls in the nearby river, twelve, and report the name of Junitaki-buraku, or Twelve Falls Settlement, to the Territorial Government. From then on, the settlement bore the formal appellation Junitaki-buraku (and later, Junitaki-mura, Twelve Falls Village).

The area fanned a sixty-degree arc between two mountains and was cut down the middle by a deep river gorge. An asshole of a terrain for sure. The ground was covered with brush bamboo while huge evergreens spread their roots far and wide. Wolves and elk and bears and muskrats and birds competed in the wilderness
for the meager food available. Everywhere flies and mosquitoes swarmed.

“You all really want to live here?” asked the Ainu youth.

“You bet,” replied the farmers.

It is not obvious why the Ainu youth, instead of returning to his own home, chose to stay on with the settlers. Perhaps he was curious, hypothesized the author (who loved to hypothesize). Whatever the case, if he had not remained, it’s doubtful the settlers could have made it through the winter. The youth taught the settlers how to root for winter vegetables, how to survive the snow, how to fish in the frozen river, how to lay traps for the wolves, how to escape the attention of bears before hibernation, how to determine the weather from the direction of the wind, how to prevent chilblains, how to roast bush bamboo roots for food, how to fell evergreen trees in a set direction. Soon, everyone came to recognize the youth’s value, and the youth himself regained his confidence. He eventually took a Japanese name and married the daughter of one of the settlers, with whom he had three children. No more “Full Moon on the Wane.”

Yet, even with the practical knowledge of the Ainu youth, the settlers’ lot was miserable. By August, each family had built its own hut, which being a hurriedly thrown together affair of split logs did next to nothing to keep out the winter wind. It was not uncommon to awaken and find a foot of snow by one’s pillow. Most families had but one set of bedding besides, so the menfolk typically had to sleep curled up by the fire. When their store of food was used up, the settlers went out in search of fish and whatever shriveled-up wild plants they could find deep beneath the snow. It was an especially cold winter. No one died, however.
There was no fighting, no tears. Their strength was their inbred poverty.

Spring came. Two children were born and the settlers’ number rose to twenty-one. Two hours before giving birth the mothers were working in the fields, and the morning after giving birth they were working in the fields.

The group planted corn and potatoes. The men felled trees and burned the roots to clear more land. New life came over the face of the earth, young plants bore fruit, but just when the settlers were sighing with relief, they were beset by swarm after swarm of locusts.

The locusts swept in over the mountains. At first, they looked like a giant black cloud. Then there came a rumbling. No one had any idea what was about to overtake them. Only the Ainu youth knew. He ordered the men to build fires in their fields. Dousing their last piece of furniture in their last drop of oil, the men burned everything they could lay their hands on. The womenfolk banged pots with pestles. They did everything in their power, but everything was not enough. Hundreds of thousands of locusts swooped down on their crops and laid them to waste. Nothing was left in their wake.

When the locusts departed, the youth went out into the fields and wept. Not one of the settlers shed a tear. They gathered up the dead locusts and burned them, and as soon as they were in ashes, the settlers continued to clear land.

They went back to eating fish and wild vegetables all through the next winter. In spring, another three children were born. People planted the fields. In summer, they were visited by locusts again. And again all the crops were chewed down to the roots. This time, however, the Ainu youth did not weep.

The onslaught of the locusts finally stopped the third year. A
long spell of rain had gotten to the locust eggs. But the excessive rain damaged the crops. The following year saw an unusual infestation of beetles, and the summer after that was unusually cold.

Having read that far, I shut the book, opened another beer, and pulled a box lunch of salmon roe out of my pack.

She sat across from me with folded arms, fast asleep. The autumn morning sun, slanting in through the train window, spread a thin blanket of light over her lap. A tiny moth blew in from somewhere and fluttered about like a scrap of paper. The moth ended up on her breast and stayed there before flying off again. Once the moth had flown off, she looked the slightest bit older.

I smoked a cigarette, then resumed reading the
Authoritative History of Junitaki Township
.

By the sixth year, the settlement was at last holding its own. The crops were bearing, the cabins refurbished, and everyone had adjusted to life in a cold climate. Sawed-board houses took their place among the log cabins, hearths were built, lamps hung. People loaded up a boat with what little they had in the way of extra produce and dried fish and elk antlers, traveled two days to market in the nearest town, and bought salt and clothing and oil in exchange. Some learned how to make charcoal from the timber felled in clearing fields. A number of similar settlements sprang up downstream and trade was established.