The Factory

by Hiroko Oyamada

  The Forest Pantser dresses the part. Under a mantle of coypu fur, he wears a gray jumpsuit, an old design that no one wears anymore. His uniform is on the baggy side, a little too large for him. He tucks his pants into his black rubber boots. Age has made a smaller man of him.

  “Like I said last time, the first thing you should do is walk around the factory to see what kind of moss you can find. It’s really not my area of expertise, so I can’t help you any more than that.” No one could. The hike came to an end, and so did the first moss hunt. Following that, though, there was a nebulous stretch of nothing but time, but I suppose that was the same at the lab at my university. Spring, summer, fall, winter. A never-ending cycle of seasons. Back then, everything was easy for me — it was a time of happiness. At the factory, I wake up, eat breakfast, walk around, maybe ride around on the bus, grab lunch at the usual cafeteria, take another walk, go back home to work on samples or plug data into my computer. Then I eat dinner, take a bath, go to sleep, and get ready to start the whole thing over again. How long can this go on? My live-in lab next to the cleaning facility has a kitchen and a bath. The cafeteria is a five-minute walk. It’s close enough to the residential areas that once in a while you’ll see married couples or families there. “This cafeteria is a little ways from HQ, and not many of you work in the area, I’m sure, but it doesn’t hurt to know it’s here. The lunch special is highly recommended. Personally, I enjoy the, uh, croquette . . . What is it? Koban croquette? Aoyama-san, do you remember?” “Waraji.” “Waraji croquette?” “The waraji croquette lunch special. With ground beef inside. It’s sweet and spicy. You’ll love it!” “It’s the PR Department’s favorite. We’ll ride the bus over just to eat here.” It’s not ground beef, though. It’s pulled beef cooked in sweet sauce. They serve breakfast between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m., and if you sign up for the breakfast plan, you can eat something a little different every morning — grilled fish with rice and miso, an omelet with a side of toast — all for just 5,000 yen a month. They’re closed on weekends and holidays, whenever the factory is closed, so that makes it about 250 yen per day. It’s a cheap alternative to going grocery shopping, getting up early, and fixing your own breakfast. Most days, I’m there for lunch and dinner, too. Still, when I’m out searching for moss around the factory, I’ll make a point of trying out the local cafeterias and restaurants. Some places are awful, with rice like glue or watery ramen. But the factory has a handful of places that are amazing — if this were a real town they’d be legendary, with lines running around the corner. We’ve got a great dim sum stand, a French creperie, a vegetable tanmen place, and a really good BBQ spot for dining alone. We’ve even got an eel restaurant that delivers anywhere. I’ve eaten broiled eel on rice in the middle of the forest. My diet at the factory was definitely a step up from my student days, when my culinary life was pretty much limited to the school cafeteria and chain izakayas. But I didn’t come here to get fat on the food. I’m not walking around the factory to burn calories, either. So why did I come here?

  “Thank you for calling Public Relations. This is Irinoi.” Huh? Illinois? “Uh, yes, this is Furufue of the EI Division Office for Green-Roof Research.” “Always a pleasure.” “Oh, the pleasure’s all mine. Could I please speak to Goto-san?” “Sorry, could I get that name again?” “Me? Furufue.” “Sorry, the name of your office, please . . .” “The EI Division Office for Green-Roof Research.” “The EI Department of Green-Roof Research. My apologies, Professor. For Goto, right? One moment, please.” On hold, a MIDI version of the factory anthem played. When I first heard the lyrics at the welcome ceremony, I shuddered at the loftiness of the factory’s ideals, but this was just the melody. No lyrics. I’m only forced to listen to this song when I’m on hold. I can’t even remember the words anymore. After two or three minutes, Goto picked up. “Sorry to keep you waiting. This is Goto. The woman who took your call wasn’t making any sense.” Goto was practically shouting. Could Irinoi hear him? Maybe their office was just really loud? “It’s no problem. She was very helpful, actually. Is it a bad time? Do you have a moment to talk?” “Yes, yes, go ahead.” “It’s about greening the rooftops. Things really aren’t progressing at all. I believe there’s someone at HQ who okayed the green-roofing project. I hate to impose, but I was wondering if I could have a minute of their time, to discuss matters.” “Discuss matters? Specifically, what were you hoping to discuss?” “Well, like I said, my work isn’t exactly proceeding according to plan. I’d like to talk with HQ about the best path forward. Otherwise, I can’t be sure what my next step ought to be.” “It’s fine. Just keep going at your own pace. We understand that it could take months, years. Don’t worry about that.” “That’s the thing. I genuinely have no idea how long it’s going to take. As things are, the factory’s roofs and walls may be bare for the foreseeable future.” I could hear Goto pause and take a swig of something. Something metallic clanked against the receiver. Probably a can of coffee. They say you’ll get diabetes if you drink too much of that stuff. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. This isn’t the sort of thing you can finish overnight.” “I understand that. But it doesn’t feel right to continue like this. If it were a year or two, maybe. But we have no idea how much time it’ll take, and I’m doing it alone.” “I know what you mean. But trust me, you’re doing plenty. New products always take entire teams years to develop. It’s completely normal. A result-oriented approach simply doesn’t make sense in Japan. Just take it easy, keep classifying your moss. The factory is a big place, bigger than you know. There are so many places we couldn’t show you during the hike. At the moss hunt, you said that moss can grow anywhere. Aoyama told me. It’ll take you a long time to make your way around the factory looking for moss, and there’s no reason to believe you won’t find new kinds of moss in the same place if you go back a month later or a year later, right? What if you made a moss map? I bet even that would take a whole lifetime to complete — a map of the moss across the factory. Just put the green-roof business on the back burner for now, okay?” I had no idea what Goto was trying to tell me. Back burner? Moss map? Sure, I mentioned a map like that to the kids during the moss hunt. “Why don’t you try it? I bet it’d be fun to make a moss map of everything you find in your garden. Or all the moss you see on the way to school. When you find something, take a little sample of it, a specimen, and ask your teacher at school to help you figure out what you found! I’d be happy to help out in any way I can, too.” If green-roofing doesn’t matter, then what am I doing here? “You’re really passionate about this, I can see that. Truly, there’s no need to rush. Just take your time, try to relax a little. Let’s grab a drink sometime soon,” he said. I thought I could hear him reaching for his can of coffee. Clearly he wanted to get off the phone. “Well, thanks for your time,” was all I managed to say. Before I could even finish, Goto said, “Okay, talk soon,” and hung up.

  “Here,” I said, setting down a cup of black tea. “Thank you, sir. So, sensei, have you seen the black birds at the mouth of the big river?” the old man asked as he reached for his cup of tea. Black birds? “I know about the birds. There are more of them every year, completely unafraid of people. I’ve been to the river a few times. Sometimes, I’ve gotten right up next to them — they don’t even flinch.” I’d been thinking about these birds ever since I’d started at the factory. I actually felt kind of excited when the old man brought them up. The other employees didn’t seem to pay any attention to the birds, even though their numbers really did seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. Right where the river becomes the ocean, and nowhere else, the birds roost in such great numbers you can’t tell one from the next. Maybe they huddle together for warmth, or maybe there was some other reason. They almost never leave the group, there are hundreds of them, all looking toward the factory. “Sensei, do you know what kind of birds they are?” I don’t. They look like cormorants or shags, but they aren’t. They’re not ocean cormorants or river cormorants. Their wings and bodies are b
lack, without a hint of white or gray — jet-black birds with long necks. Usually cormorants have white faces and necks and their beaks are yellow. If I really wanted to know more about them, I’d have to take pictures and share them with an expert, but I didn’t see the need to go that far. First of all, I can’t lose sight of why I’m here, right? I came for the moss, not the animals. And it’s not like I’ve even gotten a firm grasp on the moss. I don’t think I ever will, either. “I’m afraid I don’t. It looks like a cormorant, but . . .” “That’s right, sensei. It’s a kind of cormorant, one found nowhere else in the world. They only live in this river, in the factory.” “Only in the factory?” “Exactly. You know how, in Tokyo, there’s a moat around the Imperial Palace? It’s been cut off from the outside world for centuries. It’s off-limits, of course, so you can’t put a camera down there or throw a net in.” “Right. I mean, I suppose not.” “But imagine you could. Chances are good you’d find all sorts of oddities: creatures long thought to be extinct, species never before seen, animals that have followed their own unique evolutionary path. Now, keep in mind, this is happening in the middle of a metropolis, a stone’s throw from the National Diet, which is to say that being cut off from the world has nothing to do with physical proximity. Similarly, the black birds in the big river belong to the factory.” “But the palace has real walls, physical boundaries, which keep it separate from the world at large. That’s not true here. The river runs to the ocean. They could go anywhere. All they’d have to do is fly. For that many birds to live together in a space so small would necessitate fierce competition for food. It’s hard to believe that some of them wouldn’t fly off to find a more forgiving environment.” “But they can’t fly. They can leap from spot to spot, but they never go very far.” “They can’t fly?” “Not the way most birds can. Which reminds me, we came here to ask you something.” The old man stopped talking, took a sip of his tea, then turned to his grandson. The boy’s sardine eyes were glowing, dead set on Doctor Moss. “My grandson wrote a report based on his observations of the birds. Actually, not just the birds, but a few kinds of animals that can be found around the factory. Lizards and so on. We were wondering if you wouldn’t mind reading it over.” The boy opened his little mouth and said just one word: “Please.” I wondered if that was the first time I’d heard him speak. Did he say anything during the moss hunt? I honestly couldn’t remember. “I spent a year writing it.” “He started when he was in the fourth grade.” When I heard that, I nodded in spite of myself, my voice only coming later: “I can take a look, I don’t mind.” Of course I minded. Still, I was definitely interested in the birds. I put down my tea and picked up the binder. Flipping back the light-brown construction paper cover, I could see that the report was full of college-ruled loose-leaf paper. On the first page, it said, “A Study of Factory Fauna by Hikaru Samukawa (Grade 5, Gray Valley Elementary School).” His writing was eerily tidy for a boy his age. Thinking this would be easy enough to read, I turned the page. The rest of the pages were typed out on a computer. The old man pulled a pair of silver-wire bifocals out of his shirt pocket and held them up like a lorgnette to peer at the binder with me. “He borrowed his dad’s PC for this.” Each printed page had been carefully cut and pasted onto a sheet of note paper. I looked at the table of contents on the first page. “Chapter One: Grayback Coypu; Chapter Two: Washer Lizard . . .” Washer Lizard? What is this? “I’m sure you already know this, but computers are very convenient. You start typing a word and it’ll complete it for you.” The old man put his glasses back in his pocket, let out a deep sigh, then drank the rest of his tea. “We’ll leave the binder with you. Please read it when you can find time. We know it isn’t really your area of expertise, but it would be great to have an actual scholar go over it. I’m always around, so once you’ve read it, or if you have any questions, please let me know,” he said, holding out a business card and bowing. It was just a formality, to be sure, but it still took me by surprise. “Sorry, I’m out of cards right now . . . Thanks for this.” I hadn’t had any business cards in a few years, actually. I’m sure Aoyama would have made a new batch for me if I asked, but it’s not like there’s anyone I need to give my card to. I never even have the opportunity to talk to others, except maybe when I’m in the cafeteria. And it’s not like I’d want to hand them out to the kids during the moss hunt. “Don’t worry about that. I know how to find you. I can come and visit you here,” the old man said, smiling. They left and I washed the cups. Washer Lizard? Somehow I’d let myself get caught up in some schoolboy’s fantasy. I could already tell this was going to be a headache. I almost never had people over, and the strange air that the two of them had brought into my house showed no sign of clearing. I figured I might as well head out, go to the river, and look at the black birds. I decided to take my digital camera — it seemed like a good idea to get some pictures. I hadn’t even taken any pictures of moss recently. When I turned the camera on, I was confronted with an image I’d taken at the wedding reception of a couple from my lab back at school. It was supposed to be their wedding cake, but I’d ruined the shot. The cake was blurry, unrecognizable. I’m pretty sure it was a chocolate cake in the shape of a violin, because the bride had played violin most of her life. Why do I even remember that? I clicked a couple of buttons and deleted the image.