One of the hornets came flying timidly toward the wrist watch, only to find that this strange beetle that emitted a shimmering light and chirruped methodically was protected within slippery, cold armour of glass. Perhaps out of disappointment, the hornet turned its stinger toward the skin at Yasuo’s wrist—and drove it in with all its might.
Yasuo gave a shout.
Hatsue straightened up and turned in his direction, but she did not even so much as scream. Instead, in a flash she had the ropes off the carrying pole and, holding the pole slantwise across her body, took up a posture of defense.
Even Yasuo had to admit he must have been a sorry sight in Hatsue’s eyes. She retreated a step or two before him, keeping the same defensive posture.
Yasuo decided it would be better to turn it all off as a joke. He broke into foolish laughter and said:
“Hey! I guess I scared you. You thought I was a hobgoblin, didn’t you?”
“Why, it’s Brother Yasuo!”
“I thought I’d hide here and give you a scare.”
“But—at this time of night?”
The girl did not yet realize how very attractive she was. Perhaps she might have if she had thought about it deeply enough, but just now she accepted Yasuo’s explanation that he had actually hidden here for no other reason than to frighten her.
In an instant, taking advantage of her trustfulness, Yasuo snatched the pole away from her and caught her by the right wrist. The leather of Yasuo’s jacket was making creaking sounds.
Yasuo had finally recovered his poise. He stood glaring at Hatsue. Now he was quite self-possessed and, intending to win the girl fairly, he fell unconsciously into an imitation of the open and aboveboard manner he imagined Shinji must have used on a similar occasion.
“All right,” he said reasonably, “now will you listen to what I’ve got to say? You’ll be sorry if you don’t. So you’d better listen—unless you want everybody to know about you and Shinji.”
Hatsue’s face was flushed and she was breathing hard.
“Let go of my arm! What do you mean—about me and Shinji?”
“Don’t act so innocent. As though you haven’t been playing around with Shinji! You really put one over on me.”
“Don’t say such ridiculous things. I haven’t done any such thing.”
“Me, I know all about it. What was it you did with Shinji up on the mountain the other day in the storm? … Hey! just look at her blush! … So now you’re going to do the same thing with me. Come on! Come on!”
“Get away! Get away from me!” Hatsue struggled, trying to escape.
Yasuo would not let her go. She would be sure to tell her father if she got away now before anything happened. But afterwards—then she wouldn’t tell a soul. Yasuo was hopelessly addicted to the pulp magazines, which came from the city, with their frequent confessions of girls who had been “seduced.” What a grand feeling it was to be able to do this to a girl and yet be sure that she could never tell anyone about it!
Yasuo finally had Hatsue pinned to the ground beside the spring. One of the buckets had been knocked over and the water was running over the moss-covered earth. The light of the street lamp showed Hatsue’s nostrils quivering and her wide-open eyes flashing. Her hair was half in the spilled water.
Suddenly Hatsue pursed her lips and spat full on Yasuo’s chin.
This aroused his passion all the more and, feeling her heaving breasts beneath him, he thrust his face against her cheek.
At that moment he gave a shout and jumped to his feet: the hornet had stung him again, this time on the nape of the neck.
Angered beyond endurance, he tried wildly to catch the hornet, and while he was dancing about, Hatsue went running toward the stone steps.
Yasuo was in a panic of confusion. He was fully occupied with the hornet, and yet still managed somehow to satisfy his urge to recapture Hatsue, but from one moment to the next he had no idea which action he was performing, nor in what order. At any rate, catch Hatsue again he did.
No sooner had he forced her ripening body down again onto the moss than the persistent hornet lit, this time on the seat of Yasuo’s trousers, and drove its stinger deeply into the flesh of a buttock.
Hatsue was gaining experience in the art of escape and, when Yasuo leaped up, this time she fled to the far side of the spring. As she dived into the grove of trees and ran to hide behind a clump of ferns, she caught sight of a big rock. Holding the rock over her head in both hands, she finally got her breath and looked down across the spring.
As a matter of fact, until that moment Hatsue had not known what god it was who had come to her rescue. But now, as she suspiciously watched Yasuo’s mad cavortings on the other side of the spring, she realized it was all the doing of a clever hornet. Yasuo’s hands clawed the air and she could see, just at their fingertips, full in the light of the street lamp, the flashing of little, golden-colored wings.
When he at last realized he had driven the hornet away, Yasuo stood looking blank and wiped the sweat off his face with his handcloth. Then he looked around for Hatsue. Seeing no trace of her, he made a trumpet with his hands and nervously called her name in a low voice.
Hatsue deliberately rustled some ferns with her toe.
“Come on down from up there, won’t you? I promise not to do anything else.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Come on down—please.”
He started to climb up, and Hatsue brandished the stone. Yasuo drew back.
“Hey, what’re you doing! Watch out—that’s dangerous. … What can I do to get you to come down?”
Yasuo would have liked to run away without more ceremony, but his fear that she would tell her father kept him wheedling:
“… Please! I’ll do anything you say, just so you come on down. … I suppose you’re going to tell your father on me, aren’t you?”
There was no answer.
“Come on, please don’t tell your father? Ill do anything you say if only you won’t tell. … What do you want me to do?”
“Well, if you’ll draw the water for me and carry it all the way home …”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“All right, I’ll sure do it then. That Uncle Teru is really something to be afraid of!”
Then Yasuo silently set about his task—earnestly, wholeheartedly, making a truly ridiculous sight. He refilled the bucket that had been overturned, put the rope handles of the buckets on the pole, shouldered the pole, and began walking. …
After a moment Yasuo glanced back and saw that Hatsue had come down from the grove without his knowing it and was following along about two yards behind him. She did not so much as smile. When she saw him stop walking, she stopped too, and when he started on down the steps again, she started too.
The village was still buried in sleep, its roofs bathed in moonlight. But as they descended the stone stairs toward the village, step by step, they could hear rising up to them the crowing of cocks from all sides, a sign that the dawn was near.
10
SHINJI’S BROTHER returned home to the island. The mothers were waiting on the jetty to welcome their sons. There was a drizzling rain and the open sea was invisible. The ferryboat was only about a hundred yards from the jetty when its shape came into view through the mist.
In the same breath each mother called the name of her own son. Now they could plainly see the caps and handkerchiefs being waved from the deck.
The boat had arrived, but even when they were ashore, face to face with their mothers, these middle-school boys only smiled a little and went right on playing around among themselves. They all disliked showing affection for their mothers in each other’s presence.
Even after he was at his own home, Hiroshi was still too excited to settle down. About all he could tell of his trip were incidents such as the morning he had been so sleepy because one of his friends had been afraid to go to the toilet by himself the night before and had pounded Hiroshi awake in
the middle of the night to go with him. But not a word did Hiroshi have for all the famous historic spots they had visited.
Certainly Hiroshi had brought back some deep impressions from his trip, but he did not know how to put them into words. He would try to think of something to say, and all he could recall would be something like the time, already a year or so ago, when he had had such fun waxing a spot on the corridor floor at school and seeing one of the women teachers slip on it and fall. Those gleaming streetcars and automobiles that had come upon him so suddenly, flashed by, and disappeared, those towering buildings and neon lights that had so amazed him—where were they now?
Here at home, looking just the same as they had before he had gone away, there were still the same old cupboard, wall clock, Buddhist altar, dining-table, dressing-table—and the same old mother. There were the cook-stove and the dirty straw mats. These things could understand him even without words. And yet all of them, including even his mother, were at him to tell them about his travels.
Hiroshi finally calmed down about the time Shinji came home from the day’s fishing. After supper he opened his travel diary and gave his mother and brother a perfunctory account of his trip. Satisfied, they ceased questioning him about the excursion.
Everything was back to normal. His became again an existence in which everything was understood without the need for words. The cupboard, the wall clock, his mother, his brother, the old sooty cookstove, the sea’s roaring … folded in these familiar arms, Hiroshi slept soundly.
Hiroshi’s summer vacation was nearing its end. So every day from the moment he got up until he went to bed he was playing with all his might.
The island abounded in places to play. Hiroshi and his friends had finally seen the Western movies that until that time they had only heard about, and the new game of cowboys and Indians had now become a great favorite with them. The sight of smoke rising from a forest fire around Motoura, on Shima Peninsula across the sea, inevitably reminded them of signal fires rising from some Indian stronghold.
The cormorants of Uta-jima were birds of passage, and by this time of year they were vanishing one by one. All over the island the songs of nightingales were now frequently heard. The steep pass leading down to the middle school was known as Red Nose Pass because of its effect on the noses of passers-by in the winter, when it received every blast that blew, but now, no matter how cool the day, the breezes there would not even so much as turn a nose pink.
Benten Promontory, at the southern tip of the island, provided the boys with their Western locale. The western side of the promontory was entirely of limestone, and it led finally to the entrance of a cave, one of the most mysterious spots on Uta-jima.
The entrance to the cave was small, only about a yard and a half wide and two feet high, but the winding passageway leading into the interior gradually widened out into a three-tiered cavern. Until that point the passageway was truly black, but a strange half-light wavered within the cavern proper. This was because the cave actually went completely through the promontory to an invisible opening on the eastern side, where the sea entered, rising and falling at the bottom of a deep shaft in the rock.
Candles in hand, the gang entered the cave. Calling “Watch out!” and “Be careful!” to each other, they went crawling through the dark passageway. They could see each other’s faces floating on the darkness, tinted with grimness in the flickering candlelight, and they thought how wonderful they would look in this light if only they had the unshaven beards of young toughs.
The gang was made up of Hiroshi, Sochan, and Katchan. They were on their way to search for Indian treasure deep in the farthest recesses of the cavern. Sochan was in the lead, and when they came out into the cavern, where they could at last stand erect, his head was splendidly covered with thickly woven cobwebs.
“Hey! look at you!” Hiroshi and Katchan chorused. “Your hair’s all decorated. You can be the chieftain.”
They stood their three candles up beneath a Sanskrit inscription some unknown person had carved long ago on one of the moss-covered walls.
The sea, ebbing and flowing in the shaft at the eastern end of the cave, roared fiercely as it dashed against the rocks. The sound of the surging waves was completely different from that to which they were accustomed outside. It was a seething sound that echoed off the limestone walls of the cavern, the reverberations overlapping each other until the entire cave was aroar and seemed to be pitching and swaying. Shudderingly they recalled the legend that between the sixteenth and eighteenth days of the sixth moon seven pure-white sharks were supposed to appear out of nowhere within that shaft to the sea.
In this game the boys changed their parts at will, shifting between the roles of enemies and friends with the greatest of ease. Sochan had been made an Indian chief because of the cobwebs in his hair, and the other two were frontier guards, implacable enemies of all Indians, but now, wanting to ask the chief why the waves echoed so frighteningly, they suddenly became his two loyal braves.
Sochan understood the change immediately and seated himself with great dignity on a rock beneath the candles.
“O Chief, what terrible sound is this that we hear?”
“This, my children,” said Sochan in solemn tones, “this is the god showing his anger.”
“And what can we do to appease the god’s anger?” Hiroshi asked.
“Well, now, let me see. … Yes, the only thing to do is to make him an offering and then pray.”
So they took the rice crackers and bean-jam buns that they had either received or filched from their mothers, arranged them on a sheet of newspaper, and ceremonially placed them on a rock overlooking the shaft.
Chief Sochan walked between the two braves, advancing with pomp to the altar, where after prostrating himself on the limestone floor he raised both arms high, chanted a curious, impromptu incantation, and then prayed, bending the upper half of his body back and forth. Behind the chieftain Hiroshi and Katchan went through the same genuflections. The cold surface of the stone pressed through their trousers and touched their kneecaps, and all the while Hiroshi and the others felt themselves in very truth to be characters in a movie.
Fortunately, the god’s wrath seemed to have been placated, and the roar of the waves became a little quieter. So they sat in a circle and ate the offerings of rice crackers and bean-jam buns from the altar. The food tasted ten times more delicious than usual.
Just then a still more tremendous roar sounded, and a spray of water flung itself high out of the shaft In the gloom the sudden spray looked like a white phantom; the waters set the cavern to rumbling and swaying; and it seemed as though the sea were looking for a chance to snatch even these three Indians, seated in a circle within the stone room, and pull them to its depths.
In spite of themselves, Hiroshi, Sochan, and Katchan were afraid, and when a stray gust of wind blew out of nowhere, fluttering the flames of the candles beneath the Sanskrit inscription and finally blowing one out altogether, their fear grew still stronger. But the three of them were always trying to outdo each other in displays of bravery; so, with the cheerful instinct of all boys, they quickly hid their fear under the guise of playing the game.
Hiroshi and Katchan became two cowardly Indian braves, trembling with fear.
“Oh! oh! I’m afraid! I’m afraid! O Chief, the god is terribly angry. What could have made him so angry? Tell us, O Chief.”
Sochan sat on a throne of stone, trembling and shaking majestically like the chieftain he was. Pressed for an answer, he recalled the gossip that had been secretly whispered about the island during the past few days and, without any evil purpose, decided to make use of it. He cleared his throat and spoke:
“It is because of an immorality. It is because of an unrighteousness.”
“Immorality?” asked Hiroshi. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know, Hiroshi? I mean what your brother Shinji did to Miyata’s daughter Hatsue—I mean omeko—that’s what. And that’s what the g
od is angry about.”
Hearing his brother mentioned and feeling something disgraceful was being said about him, Hiroshi flared out at the chieftain in a rage:
“What’s that you say my brother did with Sister Hatsue? What do you mean by omeko?”
“Don’t you even know that? It means when a boy and a girl sleep together!”
Actually, Sochan himself knew little more about the word than this. But he knew how to smear his explanation thoroughly with insulting colors, and in a fit of rage Hiroshi went flying at Sochan.
Before he realized it, Sochan felt his shoulders grabbed and his cheek slapped. But the scuffle ended disappointingly soon: when Sochan was knocked against the wall the two remaining candles fell to the ground and went out.
In the cavern there remained only the dim light, barely sufficient for them to see each other’s faces vaguely. Hiroshi and Sochan were still facing each other, breathing hard, but they gradually realized what danger they were inviting by fighting in such a spot.
Katchan intervened, saying:
“Stop fighting! Can’t you see it’s dangerous here?”
So they struck matches, found their candles, and went crawling out of the cave, saying practically nothing. …
By the time they had scrambled up the cliff, bathed in the bright light of outdoors, and reached the ridge of the promontory, they were again as good friends as ever, seeming to have forgotten all about their fight of a little while before. They walked the narrow path along the ridge of the promontory singing:
Along the Five League Beach of Benten-Hachijo, And all along the Garden Beach …
This Five League Beach was the most beautiful stretch of coastline on the island, lying along the western side of Benten Promontory. Halfway along the beach towered a huge rock called Hachijo Isle, as tall as a two-storied house, and, just now, among the rank-growing vines on its summit, there were four or five playful urchins, waving their hands and shouting something.