The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.22

About this book

Between the 10:42 and the 14:42, nothing is scheduled at Hoshizaki Station. The platform empties, the camphor's shade stands on the bench, and the valley keeps its quiet hours — the hours in which, this spring, eight people discover that the middle of the day is the one part of it they have been keeping where nobody can witness it.

Eight linked stories of midday in a small valley in Japan, where the trains run at :42 and the station cat holds her office in the shade. A father on childcare leave walks the lane with an empty shopping bag, running errands from his own noon. A farm cook has carried the slope crews' meals up the hill for twenty years — and eaten her own cold, standing, at three. A caller is welcome at every door at noon and expected at no table by evening. A pianist plays the waiting-room piano only when the room is empty — or so she believes. The valley's whole water order exists in one deputy's head, in a dry year. A master carpenter who sold his house has lost the room his noon nap lived in for fifty years. A young teacher eats lunch alone, fast, two doors from a staff-room seat that has her name on it in pencil. And keeper Sumi, who has entered every one of these middays in the station book's remarks column, in a small plain hand, has never once entered her own.

The first train is at 05:42. The last train is at 22:17. The cat, as ever, is on the bench — and the day, at its height, will be witnessed entire.