Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather Read Free Page A

remember.”
    “At the time, you had two little plaits.”
    “At the time, you always wore dungarees, and you were very cocky.”
    “You were unfriendly, always haughty.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, nobody would dare antagonize you.”
    “I don’t remember, but I liked playing with you and I even used to kick a rubber ball with you.”
    “Nonsense, you didn’t ever kick a rubber ball! You used to wear little white shoes and were always afraid of getting them dirty.”
    “That’s right, when I was little I was really fond of wearing white sneakers.”
    “You were like a princess.”
    “Sure—a princess wearing sneakers.”
    “Then your family moved.”
    “That’s right.”
    “At first you often came to visit on Sundays, but later on not as much.”
    “I had grown up.”
    “My mother really liked you.”
    “I know.”
    “There were no daughters in our family.”
    “Everyone said we looked alike, like an older sister and a younger brother.”
    “Don’t forget we’re the same age, that I’m two months older.”
    “But I seemed older than you; I was always taller by a hand, as if I were your older sister.”
    “At the time, girls got tall earlier. Enough of that, let’s talk about something else.”
    “What will we talk about, then?”
    The path under the trees has clipped Japan cypresses growing on both sides. On the slope behind the cypresses, a young woman wearing a dress and carrying a red handbag sits down on a stone bench.
    “Let’s sit down awhile, too.”
    “All right.”
    “The sun’s about to set.”
    “Yes, it’s beautiful.”
    “I don’t like this artificial sort of beauty.”
    “Didn’t you say you liked going to parks?”
    “That was when I was little. I’ve lived in the mountain regions. I was a woodcutter for seven years in primitive forests.”
    “You managed to survive.”
    “Forests are really awesome.”
    The young woman wearing a dress gets up from the stone bench and looks to the end of the shady path beyond the neatly clipped cypresses. Several people are coming from that direction, among them a tall youth with hair over his temples. Beyond the treetops and the wall, the sky is infused with brilliant red and purple-red colors of the sunset, and rippling clouds begin to spread overhead.
    “I haven’t seen a beautiful sunset like this for a long time. The sky seems to be on fire.”
    “It’s like a wildfire.”
    “Like what?”
    “It’s like a forest wildfire…”
    “Well, keep talking.”
    “When there’s a forest wildfire, the sky is just like this. The fire spreads swiftly and with a vengeance, and there’s not time to cut down the forest. It’s really terrifying. All the felled trees fly into the air, and from a distance they look like bits of straw drifting up in a fire, and crazed leopards come out of the forests to throw themselves into the rivers, swimming right at you—”
    “Don’t the leopards attack people?”
    “They’re past thinking about that.”
    “Can’t you use your rifles on them?”
    “People are also traumatized; from riverbanks they just stare vacantly at the fire.”
    “Isn’t there anything that can be done?”
    “Mountain streams can’t stop it. The trees on the other side get scorched, start crackling, and suddenly they’re alight. For a distance of more than several li around it’s so smoky and hot, you can’t breathe. All you can do is wait for the wind to change or for the fire to get to the river, exhaust itself, and burn out.”
    The young woman in the dress sits down again on the stone bench; her red handbag is beside her.
    “Tell me some more about your experiences during those years.”
    “There’s nothing much to tell.”
    “How can there be nothing much to tell? All that was very interesting.”
    “But there’s not much point in talking about all that now. Talk about what you’ve been doing all these years.”
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you.”
    “I’ve got a daughter.”
    “How