He would be certain that the buoy was finally within arm’s reach, and when he rose up out of the trough of the next wave he would look for it—and find it just as far away as ever.
The boy swam with all his might. And, inch by inch, step by step, the huge mass of the enemy fell back, opening the way for him. It was as though a drill were boring its way through the hardest of solid rock.
The first time his hand touched the buoy he lost his hold and was pulled away. But then by good luck a wave swept him forward again and, just as it seemed on the point of dashing his chest against the iron rim, lifted him up with a single sweep and deposited him on the buoy.
Shinji took a deep breath, and the wind filled his nostrils and mouth to the choking point. At that instant it seemed to him that he could never breathe again, and for a time lie even forgot the task he was supposed to perform.
The buoy rolled and pitched, surrendering its body openheartedly to the black sea. The waves ceaselessly washed over half of it, pouring off with great commotion.
Lying face down so as not to be blown off by the wind, Shinji started untying the line from around his waist. The knot was wet and difficult to loosen. When it was finally untied, he began pulling the marline.
Now for the first time he looked toward the ship. He could see the forms of the four men clustered about the bow bitts. The men on watch in the bow of the bonito ship also were gazing steadily in his direction. Although only a scant twenty-five yards away, everything seemed exceedingly distant. The black shadows of the two moored ships were rising together, side by side, high into the air, and then sinking back into the waves again.
The thin marline offered little resistance to the wind and was comparatively easy to haul in, but soon a heavy weight was added to its end. It was the lifeline, almost five inches thick, which he was now pulling. Shinji was all but thrown forward into the sea.
The wind resistance against the lifeline was very strong, but at last the boy had one end of it in his hands. It was so thick that even one of his big hands would not go entirely around it.
Shinji was at a loss as to how to apply his strength. He wanted to brace himself with his feet to pull, but the wind would not permit that posture. And when he heedlessly applied all his strength to the rope, he was all but dragged into the sea. His drenched body was at fever heat, his face burning hot, and his temples were throbbing violently.
He finally managed to wind the lifeline once around the buoy; then the operation became easier. The line provided him with a fulcrum for his strength, and now for a change he could support his body with the thick line.
He wound the line once more around the buoy and then proceeded methodically to tie it fast. He waved his arms to announce the successful completion of the job.
He could plainly see the four men on the ship waving their arms in reply. The boy forgot how exhausted he was. His instinct for cheerfulness reasserted itself and flagging energy welled up anew. Facing into the storm, he inhaled his fill of air and then dived into the sea for the return trip.
They lowered a net from the deck and hoisted Shinji aboard. Once the boy was back on deck, the captain clapped him on the shoulder with a huge hand. Although Shinji was ready to faint with fatigue, his masculine energy still maintained him.
The captain had Yasuo help Shinji to his quarters and the men who were off duty wiped him dry. The boy fell asleep the moment he was in his bunk. No noise the storm could make could have disturbed that deep sleep. …
The next morning Shinji opened his eyes to find brilliant sunshine falling across his pillow. Through the round porthole in his bunk he looked out at the crystal-clear blue sky that followed the typhoon’s departure, at the view of bald hills under a tropical sun, at the glitter of a placid, undisturbed sea.
15
THE Utajima-maru returned to Kobe several days behind schedule. So by the time the captain and Shinji and Yasuo reached the island, where they were to have returned before mid-August, in time for the lunar-calendar Lantern Festival, the festivities were already over.
They heard the news of the island while being ferried across on the Kamikaze-maru. A huge turtle had come ashore on Five League Beach a few days before the Lantern Festival and had been quickly killed. There were more than a basketful of eggs in it, which had been sold for two yen apiece.
Shinji went to worship at Yashiro Shrine, to give thanks for his safe return, and then on to Jukichi’s, where he had been immediately invited for a celebration. Over the protests of the boy, who never drank, his saké cup was filled many times.
Two days later he once again went out fishing on Jukichi’s boat. Shinji had not said anything about his voyage, but Jukichi had heard all the details from the captain.
“I hear you did a great thing.”
“Oh, no.” The boy blushed a little, but had nothing further to say. Anyone unfamiliar with his personality might easily have concluded that he had spent the last month and a half off sleeping somewhere.
Jukichi was silent awhile and then spoke in an offhand way:
“Have you heard anything from Uncle Teru?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
No one made any mention of Hatsue, and Shinji, feeling no great loneliness, threw himself into the old familiar work, while the boat rocked in the rough seas of the dog days. The work fit both his body and soul perfectly, like a well-tailored suit, leaving no room for the intrusion of other worries.
The strange feeling of self-sufficiency did not leave him all day. At dusk he saw the outline of a white freighter sailing far out at sea, and it was different from that he had seen on that day so long ago, but once again Shinji felt a new emotion.
“I know where that ship is bound for,” he thought. “I know what sort of life they live aboard it, what sort of hardships they have. I know everything about that ship.”
At least, the white ship was no longer a shadow of the unknown. Instead, there was that about the distant white freighter, trailing its long plume of smoke through the late-summer dusk, that quickened his heart even more than had the unknown. The boy felt again in his hands the weight of that lifeline he had pulled with the last ounce of his strength. With these strong hands he had certainly once actually touched that “unknown” at which he had previously stared from a great distance. He had the sensation that now, by simply stretching out his hand, he could touch that white ship out at sea.
On a childish impulse, he held his five big-knuckled fingers out toward the sea to the east, already thick with the shadows of evening clouds. …
Summer vacation was half over, and still Chiyoko did not come home. The lighthouse-keeper and his wife waited day by day for their daughter’s return to the island. The mother wrote an urgent letter. No reply came. She wrote again. Ten days later there was a grudging answer. Giving no reason, Chiyoko simply wrote that she would not be able to come back to the island during this vacation.
The mother finally decided to try tears as a means of persuasion and sent a special-delivery letter of more than ten pages, pouring out her feelings and begging her daughter to come home. A reply came when only a few days remained of vacation and a week after Shinji’s return to the island. It was a reply which the startled mother had never dreamed of.
In her letter Chiyoko confessed how she had seen Shinji and Hatsue coming down the stone stairs arm in arm that day of the storm, and how she had then landed the two of them in great difficulties by the uncalled-for act of running to Yasuo with the tale. Chiyoko was still tormented with feelings of guilt, and she went on to say that unless Shinji and Hatsue finally found their happiness, she herself would be too ashamed ever to come back to the island. If her mother would act as a go-between and persude Terukichi to let them get married … This was the condition she set for her return to the island.
This tragic, demandingly badgering letter sent chills up the kind-hearted mother’s spine. She was struck with the thought that, unless she took appropriate steps, her daughter, unable to
bear the pangs of conscience, might even commit suicide. From her wide reading the mistress of the lighthouse recalled various frightening instances of adolescent girls who had killed themselves over some equally trivial matter.
She decided not to show the letter to her husband, the lighthouse-keeper, and told herself that every day counted, that by herself she would have to manage everything at once in such a way as to bring her daughter home as quickly as possible.
As she changed into her best clothes, a suit of white cambric, there was reborn within her the mettlesome feeling of years gone by when, as a teacher in a girls’ high school, she was on her way to complain to some parent about a problem student.
Straw mats were spread out in front of the houses along the roadside leading down into the village, and on them there were sesame and red beans and soy beans drying in the sun. The tiny green sesame seed, washed by the late-summer sun, cast their miniature, spindle-shaped shadows one by one across the coarse straw of the fresh-colored mats.
From here one could look down upon the sea. The waves were not running high today.
As the mother descended the steps that formed the main street of the village, her white shoes made light sounds against the concrete. Then she began to hear lively, laughing voices and the springy sound of wet clothes being beaten.
She drew nearer the sounds and found a half-dozen women in housedresses doing their laundry by the side of the stream bordering the road. Shinji’s mother was one of the group.
After the Lantern Festival the diving women had more leisure, going out only occasionally to gather edible seaweed, so they turned then to an energetic washing of the accumulation of dirty clothes. Using almost no soap, they one and all would spread the laundry over flat rocks and trample it with their feet.
“Why, hello, mistress. Where are you on your way to today?”
They all bowed and called out their greetings. Beneath their tucked-up skirts the water reflections were playing over their dark thighs.
“I just thought I’d drop by Terukichi Miyata-san’s place a minute.”
As she made this reply, it occurred to her that it would be strange to meet Shinji’s mother this way and then, without so much as a word to her, proceed on to arrange for her son’s engagement. So she turned and started down the precipitous flight of slippery, moss-covered stone steps that led from the road to the stream. Her shoes made the descent perilous, so, turning her back to the water, but stealing many a glance over her shoulder, she backed slowly down the steps on all fours. One of the women, standing in the middle of the stream, reached out and lent her a helping hand.
Reaching the bank, she took off her shoes and began to wade across. The women on the farther bank stood watching her hazardous progress with blank amazement.
She caught hold of Shinji’s mother’s sleeve and made a clumsy attempt at private conversation, whispering words into her ear that everyone around could plainly hear.
“Maybe this isn’t quite the place, but I’ve been wanting to ask how things have gotten on for Shinji-san and Hatsue-san lately.”
The suddenness of the question made the other’s eyes grow round, and she said nothing.
“Shinji-san likes Hatsue-san, doesn’t he?”
“Well—”
“And still Terukichi-san is standing in the way, isn’t he?”
“Well—that’s what the trouble is all right, but …”
“And how does Hatsue-san feel about it?”
At this point the other divers, who could not have helped overhearing, broke into the private conversation. Where talk of Hatsue was concerned all the divers without exception had become her staunch defenders ever since that day when the peddler had held the contest. They had also heard the whole true story from Hatsue herself and were one and all against Terukichi.
“Hatsue—she’s head over heels in love with Shinji too. That’s the plain truth of it, mistress. And yet, would you believe it, that Uncle Teru is planning to marry her to that good-for-nothing Yasuo! Have you ever heard of such foolishness?”
“Well, that’s that,” said the mistress of the lighthouse, as though addressing a classroom of students. “Today I received a threatening letter from my daughter in Tokyo saying she didn’t know what she might do if I wouldn’t help get the two married. So I’m on my way to have a talk with Terukichi-san, but I thought I ought to stop and find out how Shinji-san’s mother felt about it first.”
Shinji’s mother reached down and picked up her son’s sleeping kimono, which she had been treading clean beneath her feet Slowly she proceeded to wring it out, gaining time for thought Finally she turned to face the mistress of the lighthouse and bowed her head low.
“I’ll greatly appreciate anything you can do,” she said.
Moved by a spirit of helpfulness, die other women went into noisy conclave with each other, like a flock of water fowl beside a river, and decided that if they went along too as representatives of the women of the village, the show of strength might help awe Terukichi. The mistress of the lighthouse agreed, so the five of them, not including Shinji’s mother, wrung out their washing hurriedly and ran to take it home, arranging to meet at the bend of the road leading to Terukichi’s house.
The mistress of the lighthouse stood just inside the gloomy earthen-floored room of the Miyata house.
“Good day!” she called in a voice still youthful and steady.
There was no answer.
The other five women stood just outside the door, their sunburned faces thrusting forward like so many cactus leaves, their eyes glittering with enthusiasm as they peered into the dark interior.
The mistress of the lighthouse called out again, her voice echoing emptily through the house.
Presently the staircase gave a squeak and Terukichi himself came down wearing an undress kimono. Hatsue was apparently not at home.
“Why, it’s Mistress Lighthouse-Keeper,” Terukichi grumbled, standing imposingly on the threshold leading up from the earthen floor.
Most visitors at this house felt the urge to flee when received by this perpetually inhospitable visage with its bristling mane of white hair. The mistress herself was daunted, but she drummed up courage to continue:
“There’s something I’d like to talk with you about for a minute.”
“So? All right, please come in.”
Terukichi turned his back and promptly went up the stairs. She followed him, with the other five women tiptoeing after her.
Terukichi led the way into the inner sitting-room upstairs and, without further ceremony, took the seat of honor in front of the alcove for himself. His face revealed no great surprise when he noticed the number of visitors in the room had grown to six. Ignoring them all, he looked toward the open windows. His hands were toying with a fan showing a picture of a beautiful woman advertising a drugstore in Toba.
The windows looked out directly over the island’s harbor. There was only one vessel inside the breakwater, a boat belonging to the Co-operative. Far in the distance summer clouds were floating over the Gulf of Ise.
The sunshine outdoors was so brilliant that it made the room seem dark. On the alcove wall there hung a calligraphic scroll done by the last-governor-but-one of Mie Prefecture, and beneath it, gleaming with a luster like that of wax, there were an ornamental rooster and its hen, their bodies carved out of a knotty and gnarled root of a tree and their tails and combs formed from the natural growth of the slender shoots.
The mistress of the lighthouse sat at this side of the bare rosewood table. The other five women, having mislaid somewhere their courage of a little while before, now sat primly just in front of the bamboo blind hanging in the entrance to the room, as though they were giving an exhibit of housedresses.
Terukichi continued looking out the window and did not open his mouth.
The sultry silence of a summer afternoon came upon them, broken only by the buzzing of several large blue-bottle flies that were flying about the room.
The m
istress of the lighthouse wiped the sweat from her face several times. At long last she began to speak:
“Well, what I want to talk to you about is your Hatsue-san and the Kubo family’s Shinji-san, and …”
Terukichi was still looking out the window. After a long pause he spoke, seeming to spit out the words:
“Hatsue and Shinji?”
“Yes …”
Now for the first time Terukichi turned his face toward her, and then he spoke, without so much as a sign of a smile:
“If that’s all you have to talk about, it’s all already settled. Shinji’s the one I’m adopting for Hatsue’s husband.”
There was a stir among the women as though a dam had burst. But Terukichi went right on speaking, paying not the slightest heed to his visitors’ reaction:
“But in any case they’re still too young, so for the time being I’ve decided to leave it at an engagement, and then, after Shinji comes of age, well have a proper ceremony. I hear his old lady isn’t having too easy a time of it, so I’ll be willing to take both her and the younger brother in, or, depending upon how it’s finally decided, help them out with some money each month. I haven’t said anything to anybody about all this yet, though.
“I was angry at first, but then, after I made them stop seeing each other, Hatsue became so out of sorts that I decided things couldn’t go on that way. So I decided on a plan. I gave Shinji and Yasuo berths on my ship and told the captain to watch and see which one of them made the best showing. I let the captain tell all this to Jukichi as a secret, and I don’t suppose Jukichi has told Shinji even yet. Well, anyway, to make a short story of it, the captain really fell in love with Shinji and decided I’d never be able to find a better husband for Hatsue. And then when Shinji did that great thing at Okinawa—well, I changed my mind too and decided he was the one for my girl. The only thing that really counts …”
Here Terukichi raised his voice emphatically.