Shingo talked alone with Shuichi only when the two of them happened to be on the same train. ‘We’re almost there,’ he would say to himself as they crossed the railway bridge into Tokyo and the Ikegami grove came in sight. It was his habit to look out the window of the morning train at the grove. But, for all the years he had taken the same train, he had but recently discovered two pine trees in the grove. The pine trees stood out above the grove. They leaned toward each other, as if about to embrace. The branches came so near that it was as if they might embrace at any moment. Since they so stood out, the only tall trees in the grove, they should have caught his eye immediately. Now that he had noticed them, it was always the two pines he saw first. This morning they were blurred by wind and rain. ‘Shuichi,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with Kikuko?’ ‘Nothing in particular.’ Shuichi was reading a weekly magazine. He had bought two in Kamakura station and had handed one to his father.
What do You think about The Sound Of The Mountain?
