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finalshaft at his hostility. “Won’t you join us in a whisky or a beer?”
    “No thank you!” the youth replied in a tone of disgust so blatant as to render it suspect, at the same time thrusting out one hand in a rather forced gesture of rejection. “Taka said people who drink are weak when attacked. He said that if a man who drinks has a fight with one who doesn’t, the one who doesn’t always wins, even if they’re equal in strength and technique.”
    Somewhat daunted, I poured a beer for myself and a whisky for my wife, who seemed possessed by a curiosity livelier than any she had shown in the past few months. Clutching our glasses with the air of two alcoholics banded together in last-ditch resistance against some superior force of non-drinkers, we confronted the stubby red hand still thrust out at us. One look at it was enough to show how short a time had elapsed since he’d left his farming village.
    “I’m sure your idea of Takashi is the right one,” my wife said to the boy. “Today will be my first meeting with my brother-in-law, and I’m glad to hear he’s such a decent young man.”
    The youth gestured with his hand to show he wasn’t taking any sarcasm from a drunken female, and abruptly turning his face away went back to the trivial sports program on the television. As he did so, he spoke in a low voice, checking the attacking team’s score with the girl, whose eyes had not once left the television during our exchange. My wife and I, silenced willy-nilly, immersed ourselves in our drinks.
    The plane was further delayed. It seemed it would be delayed forever. Midnight came and still it didn’t arrive. The airfield, as I peered through the slats of the blind, was a vault of pale light, of glowing blues and hot shades of orange pierced by the jagged, off-white darkness that covered the city, as though night had come down as far as the outskirts of the vault then remained hovering there indefinitely, without encroaching any further. Exhausted, we had turned off the lights in the room, whose only source of illumination now was the fine stripes of light shining pointlessly from the television set, which my brother’s friends had watched until, as the last program finished, it ceased to convey any meaning. It still seemed to hum with a sound like mosquito wings, though I wondered if this wasn’t a noise in my own head.
    My wife doggedly sipped at her whisky, her back to the runways as though to fend off in advance any visitor who might come throughsome imaginary door. She was equipped with an odd sense that gauged the depth of her own drunkenness. Like a fish that keeps to its own level of habitation and activity, she sank to a certain depth but would under no circumstances go further, nor would she willingly sober up. According to her own analysis, she’d inherited this sense, this automatic safety apparatus, from her mother, who had herself been an alcoholic. Once she reached a certain fixed limit within the safe layer of intoxication, she would make up her mind to sleep and drop off without further ado. And since she never suffered from any hangover, each tomorrow began with a renewed search for some pretext for returning as soon as possible to that well-known stratum.
    I’d told her: “You’re different from other alcoholics on one score at least—you can regulate how drunk you get and stay at the same level, of your own free will. In a few weeks, I imagine, your sudden taste for drink will pass. You shouldn’t connect a passing craving for alcohol with memories of your mother and try to rationalize it, or establish it as something that’s here to stay.” I’d said this again and again, but just as often she’d dismissed my overtures.
    “On the contrary, it’s the very ability to regulate the intoxication voluntarily that makes me an alcoholic. Mother was just the same. The reason I stop when I’ve reached a certain stage isn’t that I’m holding back from the temptation to get