Even though it was always a day late, village gossip reached the lighthouse together with the daily deliveries of mail and food. And the news that Terukichi had forbidden Hatsue to see Shinji turned Chiyoko’s heart black with feelings of guilt. She comforted herself with the thought that Shinji did not know she was the source of this false gossip. But, even so, she simply could not look Shinji in the eye when he came one day to bring fish, completely cast down in spirits. And on the other hand her good-natured parents, not knowing the reason, were worried over Chiyoko’s moroseness.
Chiyoko’s spring vacation was drawing to a close and the day came when she was to return to her dormitory in Tokyo. She simply could not bring herself to confess what she had done, and yet she had the feeling that she could not return to Tokyo until she asked Shinji to forgive her. If she did not confess her guilt, there was no particular reason for Shinji to be angry with her, but still she wanted to beg his pardon.
So she got herself invited to spend the night before her departure for Tokyo at the house of the postmaster in the village, and before dawn the next morning she went out alone.
The beach was already busy with preparations for the day’s fishing, and people were going about their work in the starlight. The boats, pulled on the “abacus” frames and urged on by many shouting voices, inched reluctantly down toward the water’s edge. Nothing could be seen distinctly except the white of the towels and sweat cloths the men had tied around their heads.
Step by step, Chiyoko’s wooden clogs sank into the cold sand. And in its turn the sand slithered whisperingly off the arches of her feet.
Everyone was busy and no one looked at Chiyoko. She realized with a pang of shame that here all these people were, caught fast in the monotonous but powerful whirlpool of earning a daily living, burning out the very depths of their bodies and souls, and that not one of them was the sort of person who could become engrossed in sentimental problems such as hers.
Nevertheless Chiyoko peered eagerly through the dawn’s darkness, looking for Shinji. All the men were dressed alike and it was difficult to distinguish their faces in the morning twilight.
One boat finally hit the waves and floated on the water as though it had been freed from cramped confinement. Instinctively Chiyoko moved toward it and then called out to a young man with a white towel tied around his head.
The youth had been about to jump aboard, but now he stopped and turned back. His smiling face revealed the whiteness of two clean rows of teeth, and Chiyoko knew for certain it was Shinji.
“I’m leaving today. I wanted to say good-by.”
“Oh, you’re leaving? …” Shinji fell silent, and then in an unnatural tone of voice, as though he were trying to decide what would be best to say, he added:
“Well … good-by.”
Shinji was in a hurry. Realizing this, Chiyoko felt even more hurried than he. No words would come, much less a confession. She closed her eyes, praying that Shinji would stay before her even one second more. In this moment she realized that her wanting to beg his pardon was actually nothing but a mask to conceal her long-felt desire to have him be kind to her.
What was it she was wanting to be forgiven for, this girl who was so convinced of her ugliness? On the spur of the moment, without thought, she let slip the question she had always kept pushed down in the very bottom of her heart, a question she probably could never have asked anyone but this one boy:
“Shinji—am I so ugly?”
“What?” the boy asked, a puzzled look on his face.
“My face—is it so ugly?”
Chiyoko hoped the dawn’s darkness would protect her face, making her appear even the slightest bit beautiful. But the sea to the east—didn’t it seem to be already turning light?
Shinji’s answer was immediate. Being in a hurry, he escaped a situation in which too slow an answer would have cut into the girl’s heart.
“What makes you say that? You’re pretty,” he said, one hand on the stern and one foot already beginning the leap that would carry him into the boat “You’re pretty.”
As everyone well knew, Shinji was incapable of flattery. Now, pressed for time, he had simply given a felicitous answer to her urgent question.
The boat began to move. He waved back to her cheerfully from the boat as it pulled away.
And it was a happy girl who was left standing at the water’s edge.
Later that morning her parents came down from the lighthouse to see her off, and even while she talked with them Chiyoko’s face was full of life. They were surprised to see how happy their daughter was to be returning to Tokyo.
The Kamikaze-maru pulled away from the jetty, and Chiyoko was finally alone on the warm deck. In the solitude her feeling of happiness, on which she had been pondering constantly all morning, became complete.
“He said I’m pretty! He said I’m pretty!” Chiyoko repeated yet again the refrain she had said over and over to herself how many hundreds of times since that moment.
“That’s really what he said. And that’s enough for me. I mustn’t expect more than that. That’s really what he said to me. I must be satisfied with that and not expect him to love me too. He—he has someone else to love. … What a wicked thing it was I did to him! What terrible unhappiness my jealousy has caused him! And yet he repaid my wickedness by saying I’m pretty. I must make it up to him … somehow I must do whatever I can to return his kindness. …”
Chiyoko’s reveries were broken by a strange sound of singing that drifted across the waves. When she looked she saw a fleet of boats, covered with red banners, sailing from the direction of the Irako Channel.
“What are those?” Chiyoko asked the captain’s young assistant, who was coiling a hawser on the deck.
“They’re pilgrim boats bound for the Ise Shrines. The fishermen from around Enshu and Yaizu on Suruga Bay bring their families with them on the bonito boats to Toba. All those red flags have the boats’ names on them. They have a great time drinking and singing and gambling all the way.”
The red banners became more and more distinct, and as the fast, ocean-going fishing-boats drew near the Kamikaze-maru, the singing voices borne on the wind were almost raucous.
Once more Chiyoko repeated to herself:
“He told me I’m pretty.”
12
IN THIS WAY the spring had neared its end. It was still too early for the clusters of crinum lilies that bloomed in the cliffs on the eastern side of the island, but the fields were colored here and there with various other flowers. The children were back in school again, and some of the women were already diving in the cold water for the seaweed called “soft lace.” As a consequence there were now more houses that were empty during the daytime, doors unlocked, windows open. Bees entered these empty houses freely, flew about in them lonesomely, and were often startled upon running headlong into a mirror.
Shinji, not clever at scheming, had been able to discover no way to meet Hatsue. Although their meetings before had been few and far between, still the happy anticipation of their next meeting had made the waiting bearable. But now that he knew there could be no next meeting, his longing to see her became even stronger. And yet the promise he had given Jukichi not to loaf made it impossible for him to take even a day off from fishing. So there was nothing for him to do every night after he returned from fishing but to wait until the streets were empty and then prowl about the neighborhood of Hatsue’s house.
Sometimes an upstairs window would be thrown open and Hatsue would look out Except on those lucky occasions when the moon was shining just right, her face was lost in the shadows. Even so, the boy’s sharp eyesight allowed him to see clearly even how her eyes were wet with tears. Out of fear of the neighbors Hatsue never spoke. And Shinji too, from behind the stone wall of the small vegetable garden at the back of her house, would simply stand looking up at the girl’s face, not saying a word. Without fail, the letter Ryuji would bring the next day would dwell at great length upon the pain of s
uch an ephemeral meeting, and as Shinji read the words Hatsue’s image and voice would finally come into focus together, and in his mind the wordless girl he had seen the night before would come alive with speech and action.
Such meetings were painful for Shinji too, and there were times when he preferred to relieve his pent-up emotions by wandering to those parts of the island where people seldom came. Sometimes he went as far as the ancient burial mound of Prince Deki. The exact boundaries of the tumulus were not clear, but at the highest point there were seven ancient pine trees and, in the midst of them, a small torii and shrine.
. . .
The legend of Prince Deki was vague. Nothing was known even about the origins of his strange name. In a time-honored ceremony held during the lunar New Year, the strange box that reposed in the shrine was briefly opened each year and old couples of more than sixty years of age were allowed a fleeting glimpse of the object it contained, which looked like an ancient nobleman’s fan-shaped baton, but no one knew what relationship there was between this mysterious treasure and Prince Deki. Until about a generation past the children of the island had called their mothers eya, and this was said to have arisen from the fact that the prince had called his wife heya meaning “room,” and that his infant heir had mispronounced the word as eya when trying to imitate his father.
Be that as it may, the story goes that long, long ago, in a golden ship, the prince drifted from a far land to this island, took a girl of the island to wife, and when he died was buried in an imperial tumulus. No accounts have been handed down concerning the prince’s life, nor are there recounted any of those tragic tales that are apt to grow up and adhere to such a legendary figure. Assuming the legend to be based on fact, this silence suggests that Prince Deki’s life on Uta-jima must have been so happy and uneventful that it left no room for the birth of tragic yarns.
Perhaps Prince Deki was a heavenly being who descended to a nameless land. Perhaps he lived out his earthly years without being recognized and, do what he would, will as he could, was never separated from happiness, nor from the blessings of Heaven. Perhaps this is the reason why his remains were interred in a mound overlooking the beautiful Five League Beach and Hachijo Isle, leaving behind not a single story. …
But the boy knew only unhappiness as he wandered about the shrine until exhausted. Then he sat down absent-mindedly on the grass, hugged his knees, and gazed out at the moonlit sea. There was a halo around the moon, foretelling rain on the morrow. …
The next morning when Ryuji stopped by Hatsue’s house to pick up the daily letter, he found it sticking out a little from under one corner of the wooden lid on the water jar, covered with a metal basin to keep the rain from wetting it.
The rain continued during the entire day’s fishing, but Shinji managed to read the letter during the noon rest by protecting it with his raincoat.
Her handwriting was terribly difficult to read, and she explained that she was writing in her bed early in the morning, groping in the dark to avoid arousing her father’s suspicions by turning on the light. Usually she wrote her letters at odd moments during the day and “posted” them before the fishing-boats went out the next morning, but this morning, she wrote, she had something she wanted to tell him at once, so she had torn up the long letter she had written him yesterday and was writing this in its place.
Hatsue’s letter went on to say that she had had a lucky dream. In the dream a god had told her that Shinji was a reincarnation of Prince Deki. Then they had been happily married and had had a jewel-like child.
Shinji knew that Hatsue could not have known about his visit to Prince Deki’s tomb the night before. He was so struck by this uncanny happening that he decided to write Hatsue at length when he got home that night and tell her this amazing proof of her dream’s deep meaning.
Now that Shinji was working to support the family it was no longer necessary for his mother to go diving when the water was still cold. So she had decided to wait until June to start diving. But she had always been a hard worker, and now, as the weather became warm, she became dissatisfied, with nothing to do but the housework. Whenever she found herself unoccupied she was apt to let herself become upset with all sorts of unnecessary worries.
Her son’s unhappiness was always on her mind. Shinji was now completely different from the person he had been three months before. He was as taciturn as ever, but the youthful gaiety that had lighted up his face even when he was silent was now extinguished.
One day she had finished her darning in the morning and was facing a boring afternoon. Idly she began to wonder if there was not something she could do to relieve her son’s misery. Theirs was not a sunny house, but over the roof of the next-door neighbor’s godown she could see the tranquil sky of late spring. Making up her mind, she left the house.
She went directly to the breakwater and stood there watching the waves as they dashed themselves to pieces. Like her son, she too went to take counsel with the sea whenever she had something to think about.
The breakwater was covered with the ropes of the octopus pots, spread there to dry. The beach too, now almost empty of boats, was spread with drying nets. The mother caught sight of a lone butterfly that came flying capriciously from the outspread nets toward the breakwater. It was a large and beautiful black swallowtail. Perhaps the butterfly had come searching for some new and different flower here among the fishing tackle and sand and concrete. The fishermen’s houses had no gardens worthy of the name, but only ragged flowerbeds along the narrow, stone-fenced paths, and the butterfly had apparently come to the beach, disgusted with their niggling blossoms.
Beyond the breakwater the waves were always churning up the bottom of the sea, and the water was a muddy yellow-green. And as the waves rolled in, the muddiness was chopped into patterns of tossing bamboo leaves. Presently the mother saw the butterfly take off from the breakwater and fly close to the surface of the muddy water. There it seemed to rest its wings a moment, and then it soared high into the air again.
“What a strange butterfly,” she told herself. “It’s imitating a sea gull.” And at the thought her attention became riveted upon the butterfly.
Soaring high, the butterfly was trying to fly away from the island, directly into the sea-breeze. Mild though it seemed, the breeze tore at the butterfly’s tender wings. In spite of it, however, the butterfly, high in the air, finally got clear of the island. The mother stared until it was only a black speck against the dazzling sky.
For a long time the butterfly continued to flutter there in one corner of her field of vision, and then, flying low and hesitantly over the surface of the water, it returned to the breakwater, bewitched by the wideness and glitter of the sea, doubtless driven to despair by the way the next island looked so close and was yet so far. The butterfly added what appeared to be the shadow of a large knot to the shadow made by one of the drying ropes, and rested its wings.
The mother was not one to put faith in signs and superstitions, and yet the butterfly’s futile labor cast a shadow over her heart.
“Foolish butterfly! And if it wants to get away, all it has to do is perch on the ferryboat and go in style.”
And yet she herself, having no business in the world outside the island, had not been on the ferryboat now for many, many years.
At this moment for some reason a reckless courage was born within her heart. With firm steps she strode quickly from the breakwater. A diving woman greeted her along the way and was surprised when Shinji’s mother walked steadily on as though deep in thought, not even returning the greeting.
Terukichi Miyata was one of the richest men in the village. Of course, about all that could be said of his house was that it was a bit newer than the other village houses. Otherwise it could not even be said that its tile roof towered in particular above the houses around it. The house had neither an outer gate nor a stone wall. Nor was it different from the other houses in its arrangement: the hole for ladling out night soil was to the left of the ma
in door, and the kitchen window to the right, both insisting majestically upon their equal rank, precisely in the same way that the Ministers of the Left and the Right occupy their seats of honor at either side of a Doll Festival arrangement. And yet, being built on a slope, the house did derive a certain air of stability from a stoutly constructed concrete basement on the lower level, where the slope dropped away; this was used as a storeroom and had windows opening directly on the narrow road.
Beside the kitchen door there was a water jar large enough for a man to crawl into. Its wooden lid, under which Hatsue left her letter each morning, gave the outward appearance of protecting the water from dust and dirt, but when summer came it could not keep out the mosquitoes and other flying insects whose dead bodies would suddenly be found floating on the water in the jar.
Shinji’s mother hesitated a moment as she was about to enter the house. Just the fact that she had come calling at the Miyata house, where she was not on intimate terms, would be enough to set the villagers’ tongues to wagging. She looked about; there was not a human form to be seen. There was nothing but a few chickens scratching in the alley and the color of the sea below, glimpsed through the scanty azalea blossoms of the next house.
The mother put her hand to her hair and, finding it still disarranged from the sea-breeze, took from her bosom a small, red celluloid comb with several teeth missing and quickly combed her hair. She was wearing her everyday work-clothes. Beneath her face, which was bare of any make-up, there was the beginning of her sunburned chest; then came her kimono-like jacket and bloomer-like work-pants, both with many patches, and the wooden clogs on her bare feet.