Kondo has been married three times. He has been divorced three times, and all three wives gave the same reason, in different handwriting. He spent everything he had at the Shoyukan.
He does not dispute it. He sells life insurance, and he is good at it, because he can look at a man of forty and tell him to the yen what he is worth. He knows what he is worth himself. The house keeps a book, and Kondo’s page is the longest in it. He is paying it off at a rate he has worked out, with the tables he uses at the office. It will be settled in full when he is a hundred and thirty-one.
He keeps the three rings on his key ring. Two men from the third bench witnessed the second divorce paper. It wants two signatures, and nobody else he knew was awake. He handed it in at the ward office’s night window on his way home.
Nobody has to bring Kondo down from the street. He comes down the twenty-six steps on bonus days and on ordinary days, and he sits on the third bench, and for most lots he keeps his paddle in his lap like a sensible man. He is safe with a tamari. He is safe with anything pale. There is one kind he cannot be in a room with, and the man in grey, who knows this, does not bring it out more than twice a year.
“This is the tasting. Lot five. A koikuchi, from Kagoshima, made sweet, the way they like it in Kyushu. Two winters. It is the shoyu of somebody’s house. It is the only one I sell by the large bottle, because a house gets through a great deal.”
One drop on each white dish. It was dark, and it shone.
The man in grey did not bend down to Kondo, or lower his voice. He had no need. Kondo had been shown it in 1999, and in 2008, and in 2017. He looked anyway.
It was a table, laid for two. There was rice in two bowls, and a fish, and a small dish of pickles. A lamp had been left on over it. It was seven in the evening, and somebody was listening for the door.
He tasted it. It was sweet. It always was.
Then he saw the young man on the first bench.
He was thirty at most, in a suit that still had the shop’s creases in it. The man in grey had brought him down himself, an hour before, with a hand under his elbow. He had a ring on, a new one, on the proper finger, and he was looking into his dish as if it had spoken to him. Kondo knew the look. He had seen it three times in a mirror.
“Nobody is poured a second drop. Six thousand yen.”
Night 5 · Bid!
¥6,000the young man
¥30,000Kondo
¥100,000the young man
“When were you married?” Kondo asked him, along the benches.
“June,” the young man said, without looking round.
¥400,000Kondo
¥700,000the young man
It was more than a wedding ring, Kondo judged, and less than a wedding. The boy’s paddle was shaking. So had his, in 1999. He had gone home that night to a lamp left on, and it was the last time.
¥1,200,000Kondo
¥1,900,000the young man
“Go home,” said Kondo. “Somebody is listening for the door. I have had that table three times. I know where it goes.”
The young man raised his paddle. Kondo raised his first, and higher, and kept it there. It is the only time the benches have seen a man bid with his arm straight.
¥4,100,000Kondo, on the book
Nobody spoke. The man in grey looked at Kondo’s arm for a moment. Then the mallet fell, and for once nobody said his name.
On the stairs the young man called him something that is not said to a deputy general manager. Kondo agreed with it. The young man went up into the street, and as far as anyone knows he caught the first train.
Kondo carried the big bottle home in both arms, like a child. There was nobody to hide it from. He found that he missed that.
He is seeing a woman from the claims department. She has asked him, twice now, why his coat smells of shoyu.
He has told her that he cooks.