The Heat of the Sun

him, fixing a
liquid gaze on me, was the young Japanese officer.
    ‘I said, “Where did you go?”’
    Sunlight, for some time, had pressed behind the blinds; now it filled the room, and Le Vol turned back from the window.
    ‘Please.’ I pressed my face into the pillow.
    ‘Goro brought you home. You were stumbling and swearing. And in the consul’s house! What are you playing at?’ He pulled back my mosquito netting. ‘Come on. Koshi-byo
awaits.’
    ‘The temple? Baedeker’s by my bed.’
    ‘Baedeker? I want Sharpless.’
    ‘You go.’ I pulled my face from the pillow – temporarily, I hoped.
    Le Vol had shaved, dressed, slicked his hair.
    ‘What’s with the grooming?’ I said. ‘This isn’t like you.’
    ‘And this isn’t like you . You’re still drunk, aren’t you?’
    ‘I’m sick!’
    ‘Well, you can’t be. Do you want the Pulitzer or not? This story’s going to be big.’
    ‘Great Temples of Kyushu!’ Le Vol could not be serious. ‘Calvin Coolidge said the man who builds a factory builds a temple. Do you think it works the other way around? Does the
man who builds a temple build a factory?’
    ‘Up! Mr Arnhem is at our disposal – and Goro and his automobile.’
    I told Le Vol to go ahead. ‘I’ll catch up with you.’
    ‘I’ll bet!’ He flung up his hands. ‘Damn you, Sharpless.’
    ‘Close the blinds, will you?’ I called, but he had gone.
    I rolled on to my back. I flung a forearm over my eyes. From outside came the chugging of the Lincoln sedan, then tyres crunched over the drive.
    When I rose at last it was afternoon. The house was quiet; even the bent-backed maidservant did not come when I called. I searched the kitchen for coffee, but found none. I glugged down several
glasses of water.
    My plan was no plan at all: I would walk into town and wander without direction. If my odyssey brought me to Koshi-byo, well and good; but as I reached the end of the consulate’s drive, I
found, when I rounded a vine-covered wall, a rickshaw-puller standing idle. The fellow, after the manner of his tribe, was wiry, naked to the waist, and strangely ageless, a wizened boy, his teeth
brown with chewing-tobacco as he grinned and said, ‘Koshi-byo?’
    ‘Higashi Hill.’ I settled into the rickshaw like an invalid, drawing a rug across my knees. The sun struck brightly at my eyes. We rattled into streets thick with people and stalls
and cluttered storefronts. We crossed a canal; automobiles honked like geese and streetcars trundled by, tugging at overhead wires. I glimpsed a temple, scaly with ornament like a dragon’s
back. Might this be where Le Vol had gone?
    The rickshaw disconcerted me; its swayings and bumpings, its openness to the streets, made me feel vulnerable and strangely ashamed. Grimly, I concentrated on the puller’s knobbly back,
until the pressing streets gave way and we climbed between houses spaced wider apart and spring trees shedding sticky buds.
    Now the air was sweet and I forgot my queasiness. Buildings scattered down the hills like pale boxes. The harbour, far below, flashed in the sun. We passed through a screen of cypresses and
before us was a house, a low, ethereal affair of papery walls and black beams beneath an overhanging terracotta roof. The garden was broad and long, with ornamental boulders, curving paths, and
raked pebble borders. Slipping down from the rickshaw, I felt as if I had reached a centre that I had skirted all my life.
    Like a thief, I moved through the garden. An ornamental pond smelled noxious; no fish flickered in the reedy water. Making for the lawn’s edge, where the hill sloped downwards, I surveyed
the harbour. Yes, I thought. From here, one could follow all the ships that came and went.
    I made for the house. The veranda, unbalustraded, jutted out from creamy walls. The steps that led up to it were an arrangement of stones. The quiet was hypnotic. One of the walls had been slid
back, opening the way to an interior deep in shadow. Old timbers creaked beneath my feet; I might have been on the deck of a sailing ship. I removed my hat, my shoes; I stepped through the screen.
Inside, the sparse room was not as dark as I had expected. Inner screens, some partially opened, led to other rooms. The place was a magic box; the configuration of the walls could be changed at a
whim.
    ‘Hello?’ I said, though I thought the house was empty.
    Tatami matting muffled my steps as I passed from room to room. Incense drifted on