The Sound of Waves (11 page)

“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.

S
HINJI
’
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 cookstove 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.

Beuten 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 god 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.

The three boys waved back in reply and walked on along the path. Here and there in the soft grass among the pine trees there were patches of milk vetch blooming red.

“Look! the seining boats!” Katchan pointed to the sea off the eastern shore of the promontory.

On that shore the Garden Beach embraced a lovely little cove, and at its mouth there were now three seining boats floating motionless, waiting for the tide. These were the boats that manipulated the drag-nets as they were pulled along the ocean floor by larger vessels.

Hiroshi said “Look!” also and, together with his friends, squinted out over the dazzling sea, but the words Sochan had spoken earlier still weighed on his spirit, seeming to become heavier and heavier as time passed.

At suppertime Hiroshi returned home with an empty stomach. Shinji was not yet home and his mother was alone, feeding brushwood into the cookstove. There was
the sound of the crackling wood and the windlike sound of the fire inside the stove, and it was only at times like this that delicious smells erased the stench of the toilet.