The Sound of Waves (10 page)

Chiyoko’s version of how she had seen Shinji and Hatsue coming down together from the deserted mountain, clinging to each other, certainly did nothing to make the event less compromising; and her story was a staggering blow to Yasuo’s pride. He brooded about it all night. And the next night, when Shinji happened to see him, what he was actually doing was reading the roster displayed under the eaves of a house beside the steep street that ran through the center of the village.

Uta-jima had a meager water supply, which reached its lowest point about the time of the old-calendar New Year, leading to endless quarrels over water rights. The village’s sole source of water was a narrow stream beside the cobbled street that tumbled in flights of steps down through the center of the village. During the wet season or after a heavy rain the stream would become a muddy torrent, on whose banks the village women would do their laundry, chattering together noisily. Here too the children would hold the launching ceremonies for their hand-carved warships. But during the dry season the stream would all but become a dried-up marsh, without strength enough to wash away even the slightest bit of rubbish.

The stream was fed by a spring. Perhaps it was because the rains that fell on the peaks of the island all filtered down to this spring, but whatever the cause, this was the only such spring on the island. Hence the village government had long since been given the power of determining the order in which the villagers should draw their water, the order being rotated each week.

Only the lighthouse filtered rain water and stored it in
a tank; all the other houses on the island depended solely upon this spring, and each family in its turn had to put up with the inconvenience of being assigned the midnight hours for water drawing. But after a few weeks even a midnight turn would gradually move up the roster to the convenient hours of early morning. Drawing water was women’s work.

So Yasuo was looking up at the water-drawing roster, posted where the most people passed. He found the name Miyata written precisely under the 2
A.M.
column. This was Hatsue’s turn.

Yasuo clicked his tongue. He wished it were still octopus season, as the boats did not put out quite so early in the morning then. During the squid season, which had now arrived, the boats had to reach the fishing grounds in the Irako Channel by the crack of dawn. So every household was up preparing breakfast by three o’clock at the latest, and impatient houses were sending up smoke from their cooking fires even earlier.

Even so, this was preferable to next week, when Hatsue’s turn would come at three o’clock.… Yasuo swore to himself that he would have Hatsue before the fishing-boats put out the next morning.

Standing looking at the roster, he had just made this firm resolve when he saw Shinji standing before the men’s entrance to the bathhouse. The sight of Shinji annoyed him so that he completely forgot his usual punctilious ways and turned his back to hurry home.

Reaching home, Yasuo glanced out of the corner of his eye into the sitting-room, where his father and elder brother were still serving each other their evening saké
and listening to a ballad singer on the radio, which was resounding throughout the house. Yasuo went straight on to his own room on the second floor, where he angrily puffed on a cigarette.

Because of his experience and way of thinking, Yasuo saw the matter thus: As Shinji had seduced Hatsue, he had certainly been no virgin. All the time he had been coming to the meetings of the Young Men’s Association, sitting there innocently clasping his knees, smiling and listening attentively to the others’ talk, putting on his childish airs—all that time he’d been having women on the sly. The damn little fox!

And yet, given the honesty of Shinji’s face, even Yasuo simply could not believe him capable of having won the girl by deceit. The inevitable conclusion then—and this was the most unbearable thought of all—was that Shinji had had his way with the girl fairly and squarely, with complete honesty.

In bed that night Yasuo kept pinching his thighs to keep from going to sleep. But this was not really necessary: the animosity he felt toward Shinji and the jealousy he felt at Shinji’s having stolen a march on him were enough to keep him awake of themselves.

Yasuo was the proud and always bragging owner of a watch with a luminous dial. Tonight he had left this on his wrist and had slipped into bed still wearing his jacket and trousers. From time to time he put the watch to his ear, looking often at its luminously glowing face. In Yasuo’s opinion the mere ownership of such a wonderful watch made him by rights a favorite with the women.

At twenty minutes past one Yasuo stole out of the
house. In the dead of night the sound of the waves could be plainly heard, and the moon was shining brightly. The village was silent.

There were only four street lamps on the island—one at the jetty, two along the steep street through the center of the village, and one on the mountain beside the spring. Except for the ferryboat there were nothing but fishing-boats in the harbor, so there were no masthead lights to enliven the night there, and every last light in the houses had been turned off. Moreover, here in a fishing village where the roofs were made of tile or galvanized iron, there were none of those rows of thick, black roofs that seem so imposing at night in a farm village; there was none of the solemn weightiness of thatch to intimidate and hold back the night.

Yasuo quickly mounted the sloping street to the right, his sneakers making not so much as a footfall. He passed through the playground of the elementary school, enclosed in rows of cherry trees, their blossoms half-open. This playground was a recent addition to the school, and the cherry trees had been transplanted from the mountains. One of the young trees had been blown over by the storm; its trunk showed dead-black against a moonlit sand pile.

Yasuo climbed the stone steps beside the stream until he reached a spot where he could hear the sound of the spring. In the light of the solitary street lamp he could see the outlines of the spring.

Clear water flowed out from between moss-covered rocks, into a stone cistern, and then brimmed over one edge of the stone. The stone there was covered with glossy moss, and it seemed, not that water was flowing down over the moss, but that the moss had been thickly coated with some beautiful transparent enamel. From somewhere
in the thicket around the spring an owl was hooting.

Yasuo hid himself behind the lamp-post. There was a tiny flutter of wings taking flight. Yasuo leaned against a huge beech tree and waited, trying to outstare the luminous eyes of his watch.

Soon it was two o’clock and Yasuo caught sight of Hatsue coming across the schoolyard, carrying a water bucket on either end of a wooden pole across her shoulders. Her outline was sharply etched in the moonlight.

Although a woman’s body is ill-suited for midnight labor, on Uta-jima men and women alike, rich and poor, had to perform their own tasks. Robust Hatsue, hardened by the life of a diving woman, came up the stone steps without the slightest difficulty, swinging the empty pails to and fro and giving rather the merry appearance of actually enjoying her untimely work.

At long last Hatsue had put her buckets down beside the spring. This was the moment when Yasuo had intended to jump out at her, but now he hesitated and decided to hold back until she had finished drawing her water. Preparing to leap out when the moment came, he reached up and caught hold of a high branch with his left hand. Then he stood perfectly still, imagining himself to be a stone statue. He watched the girl’s strong hands, red and slightly frostbitten, as she filled the buckets, splashing the water about with lush sounds, and the sight quickened his imagination with delightfully carnal pictures of her healthy young body.

All the time the luminous watch of which Yasuo was so proud, strapped above the hand with which he was holding onto the branch of the beech tree, was giving off
its phosphorescent glow, faintly but distinctly ticking away the seconds. This aroused a swarm of hornets in the nest fastened to this same branch and greatly excited their curiosity.

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? I’ll 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 …”