Chapter 4: Warm Oil

"Take off the shirt," Hanae said.

Jiro looked at her.

"I said take off the shirt. Or I'll cut it off, and it's a good shirt."

"It's torn."

"It's still a good shirt."

He sat on the kitchen bench with water dripping off his hair, and for a long moment she thought he would refuse.

Then he shrugged his right arm out of the sleeve.

The left one he had to ease off slowly, a finger's width at a time, with his jaw set.

Hanae turned away and became very busy with the stove.

She had seen men without shirts before, in a village full of farmers and fishermen.

She had never seen one like this.

She put a small pan on the fire and poured in camellia oil from the lamp jar.

She added three slices of ginger and a pinch of crushed pepper.

It was the oil she used on her own hands after a long day over the kneading board.

When it started to smell warm, she took it off the heat and tested a drop on her wrist.

"Lie down," she said. "On your front. On the bench."

"I am a guest in your house," said Jiro. "I should not trouble you."

"You mended my roof at midnight with one arm. The trouble has started. Lie down."

He lay down.

The bench was too short for him, and his boots hung over the end.

His back was long and lean and scarred in a dozen places.

There were old white lines and old round puckers.

And over everything, down from the left side of his neck, the new scar, pink and angry.

She stood there with the pan in her hand and for a moment she could not breathe properly.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"It does not hurt."

"Jiro."

"It aches," he said to the wood of the bench. "When it rains. When I lift it. When I do not lift it."