F-0054 Your stars are clearly visible from here

It was a night in August with a lot of shooting stars. A father had set the telescope he bought at the end of last year out in the garden, and he and his daughter were looking at the sky. The telescope was mail order, twelve thousand yen. It had taken an hour to put together, and that night they had looked at nothing but the moon. It had been in the shed ever since, until the daughter dragged it out saying she would use it for her summer project.

They put a mosquito coil at their feet and counted. Four for the father, six for the daughter. The father thought she got more because her eyes were better. The daughter got bored of counting shooting stars and started swinging the telescope wherever she liked.

“There’s a round place.”

That was what she said. The father looked at the sky. Where, he asked, and she pointed. There, no stars. Where she was pointing there were several stars. It’s a cloud, the father said. The daughter did not take her eye from the telescope.

The next night the daughter went out to the garden again. The father was watching television. She said, from outside the window, “It’s gotten bigger.” The father said, oh.

On the third night she sat on the veranda for a while and then came back in. “It’s not there today.” The father looked up from the paper and said, see, it was a cloud. The daughter drew circles in her project notebook. For the first two days she had filled them in black. On the third day she drew only the outline.

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October came in and the early mornings turned cold. The newspaper man had been delivering in this town for ten years. He leaves the depot a little after three and is back before six. The route on the motorbike is fixed: from the prefectural road past the front of the farmers’ co-op, through the housing estate, out to the hamlet under the pass and back.

After ten years of deliveries you can tell that the sky turns. On summer mornings the east is already pale and there are no stars to speak of, but in autumn four o’clock is still night, and Orion stands high. In winter, at the same hour, it has already tipped toward the west. He knows that is how it is.

He reaches the corner in front of the co-op at around four, and he always stops there once. There is no signal, but that is where he swaps the bundles of papers. When he looks up, above the mountain, there is a place with no stars.

It was there every morning, in the same spot.

The man thought, that one doesn’t move. He told nobody. He swapped the bundles and pulled the bike out. Over the course of October, Orion moved a little at a time. That did not move.

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A nurse coming off a night shift was smoking on the fourth-floor balcony of the housing estate. Half past four in the morning, still dark. The balcony faces the mountain, and above the mountain is the sky. There are more stars here than in the town she lived in before.

While she smoked and looked at the sky she noticed a place with no stars. A round gap. She thought it was a cloud, but the edge of a cloud is a vague white. This was black right up to the edge.

She took a picture with her phone. The screen was pure black. When you shoot the night sky on a phone that is always what happens. The stars had not come out either, so there was nothing to compare it to. She took three and stopped.

She got up in the early afternoon and told a colleague on shift that night. There’s a place with no stars, she said, and the colleague laughed, well of course there are places with no stars. That was the end of it. The next morning she came off a night shift, it was raining.

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The November stargazing evening is held in the car park behind the community hall. The man who organizes it puts a notice in the town newsletter every year. About ten people come, half of them children. This year he set up two telescopes. One was his own, the other belonged to the hall, and the hall’s had one leg shorter than the others.

At half past six the space station goes over. The organizer makes that the main attraction, and he had written the predicted time on slips of paper and handed them out. At six thirty-one, a point of light climbed up from the northwest, and everyone pointed and followed it. It passed overhead and, partway down toward the east, went out all at once. A child said, it’s gone. It went into the Earth’s shadow, the organizer explained.

After that, a small child tugged at the organizer’s sleeve. “What about the one up there?”

Several of the adults looked up. There’s nothing there. There are stars, see. The child’s mother said, don’t say strange things.

The organizer looked up too. Directly overhead, there it was. About the size of an open umbrella. The stars around it were, just as everyone said, all properly there.

The organizer turned the telescope to the east. He showed them Jupiter. Several people looked in turn. Then he said, some cloud has come over, so let’s call it a night. Nobody checked the sky.

There was no cloud. While they packed up, the organizer did not look up. He had trouble folding the legs of the hall’s telescope.

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At the end of November the kerosene delivery comes over from the next town. The truck crosses the pass, and once it is through the tunnel, this is the town. The driver is the shop’s son, who has been trusted with the round since last year.

The days were short, and it was already dark when he entered the tunnel. It is not a long tunnel. Coming out of it, up near the top of the windscreen, there was a round place with no stars.

He made five deliveries. While the kerosene ran into the cans he looked at the sky a few times. It was there.

On the way back he came through the tunnel and stopped the truck where the road widens partway up the pass. He got out, turned around, and looked at the sky in the direction of the town. Stars were out above the ridge. The gap was not there.

He thought about going back through the tunnel once more, but did not. When he got back to the shop he was asked whether the road over the pass had iced up. It hadn’t, he said. The next delivery was in two weeks, and he was to make the round in daylight.

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It was lunch break in December. The fourth-grade teacher was looking out at the schoolyard from the staff room window.

In the middle of the yard, five or six children were looking up at the sky. One would point, and the others looked the same way. There were children who pointed and children who did not. The ones who did not were watching the faces of the ones who did.

The teacher went outside. What are you looking at, the teacher asked. One of the girls said, there.

It was a blue sky. There was one cloud, in the east.

“Now it’s there in the daytime too,” the girl said.

The teacher did not ask, what is. Go inside, the teacher said. The children went in. The ones who had been pointing and the ones who had not went in just the same.

The teacher looked up once more. It was blue. The teacher’s neck started to hurt, and the teacher stopped.

In the December school newsletter, the following appeared.

A game of pointing at the sky has become popular in the schoolyard. Looking up for a long time can strain the neck, so we are guiding the children to refrain from it at school as well. We ask families to have a word at home too.

Below that were flu prevention and the rules for the winter holidays.

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After the new year, the midday news was on in a diner along the national road. There were four customers, all eating set lunches.

The announcer read from the script. A national research institute has announced that it will remove one region of the sky from next year’s observation program. It has not given a reason. Next, coming-of-age ceremonies around the country.

One of the customers asked for another bowl of miso soup.