They waited lower down, however, under tall Hokkaido pines on the outskirts of the town. When the stretcher group caught up, they descended through the pines and orchards together, into the upper streets of the town. A loud gang, passing fine window-fronted houses overlooking the crowded harbor, straight to a medical clinic, as if they knew where they were going. They dropped off the injured youth and then went to some public baths; and after a quick bath they went to the curve of businesses backing the docks, and invaded three or four adjacent restaurants with tables out under umbrellas, and strings of bare incandescent lightbulbs. Nirgal sat at a table with the youngsters, in a seafood restaurant; after a while the injured boy joined them, knee and calf wrapped, and they all ate and drank in huge quantities— shrimp, clams, mussels, trout, fresh bread, cheeses, peasant salad, liters of water, wine, ouzo— all in such excess that they staggered away when they were done, drunk, their stomachs taut as drums.

Some went immediately to what the butcher woman called their usual hostel, to lie down or throw up. The rest limped on past the building to a nearby park, where a performance of Tyndall’s opera Phyllis Boyle was to be followed by a dance.

Nirgal lay sprawled on the grass with the park contingent, out at the back of the audience. Like the rest he was awed by the facility of the singers, the sheer lushness of orchestral sound as Tyndall used it. When the opera was done some of the group had digested their feast enough to dance, and Nirgal joined them, and after an hour of dancing joined the band as well, with many other audience sit-ins; and he drummed away until his whole body was humming like the magnesium of the pans.