The Sound of Waves (15 page)

Shinji had now learned well enough the pain of waiting. So he decided it would be better if he let the girl do the waiting this time. But he could not do it. As soon as his mother and Hiroshi were in bed, he went out. It still lacked two hours of eleven o’clock.

He thought maybe he could kill the time by going to the Young Men’s Association. Light was shining from the windows of the hut on the beach and he could hear the voices of the boys who were sleeping there. But then he had the feeling that they were gossiping about him, and he went on by.

Going out onto the nighttime breakwater, the boy turned his face to the sea-breeze. As he did so he recalled the white ship he had seen sailing against a background of sunset clouds on the horizon that day when he had first
learned Hatsue’s identity from Jukichi, recalled the strange feeling he had had as he watched the ship sail away. That had been the “unknown.” So long as he had observed the unknown from a distance, his heart had been peaceful, but once he himself had boarded the unknown and set sail, uneasiness and despair, confusion and anguish had joined forces and borne down upon him.

He believed he knew the reason why his heart, which should have been filled with joy at this moment, was instead crushed and unable to move: the Hatsue whom he would meet tonight would probably insist upon some hasty solution or other to their problem. Elopement? But they were living on an isolated island, and if they were to flee by boat, Shinji had no boat of his own nor, even more important, did he have any money. Double suicide then? Even on this island there had been lovers who took that solution. But the boy’s good sense repudiated the thought, and he told himself that those others had been selfish persons who thought only of themselves. Never once had he thought about such a thing as dying; and, above all, there was his family to support.

While he had been pondering these matters, time had moved ahead surprisingly fast. This boy who was so inexpert at thinking was surprised to discover that one of the expected properties of thought was its efficacy as a time-killer. Nevertheless the strong-willed young man abruptly turned off his thoughts: no matter how efficacious it might be, what he had discovered above all else about this new habit of thinking was that it also comprised point-blank peril.

Shinji did not have a watch. As a matter of fact, he needed none. In its place he was endowed with the marvelous
ability of being able to sense what time it was instinctively, day or night.

For instance, the stars moved. And even if he was not an expert at measuring their changes precisely, still his body perceived the turning of the immense wheel of the night, the revolution of the giant wheel of the day. Placed as he was, close to the workings of nature, it was not surprising that he should understand nature’s precise system.

But, to tell the truth, as he sat on the stairs at the entrance to the office of Yashiro Shrine he had already heard the clock give the single stroke of the half-hour and so was doubly sure it was past ten thirty. The priest and his family were fast asleep. Now the boy pressed his ear to the night-shutters of the house and counted, at full length, the eleven strokes that sounded lonesomely from the wall clock inside.

The boy stood up and, passing through the dark shadows of the pine trees, came to a stop at the top of the flight of two hundred stone steps leading downward to the village. There was no moon, thin clouds covered the sky, and only an occasional star was to be seen. And yet the limestone steps gathered together every last gleam of the night’s faint light and, looking like some immense, majestic cataract, fell away from the spot where Shinji stood.

The vast expanse of the Gulf of Ise was completely hidden by the night, but lights could be seen on the farther shores, sparse along the Chita and Atsumi peninsulas, but beautifully and thickly clustered about the city of Uji-Yamada.

The boy was proud of the brand-new shirt he was wearing. He felt sure that its unparalleled whiteness would
immediately catch the eye even from the bottommost of the two hundred steps. About halfway down the stone steps there crouched a black shadow, caused by the pine branches that hung over both sides of the stairway there.…

A human figure came into view at the bottom of the steps, looking very small. Shinji’s heart pounded with joy. The sound of the wooden clogs running determinedly up the steps echoed with a loudness out of all proportion to the smallness of the figure. The footsteps sounded tireless.

Shinji resisted the desire to run down the steps to meet her. After all, since he had waited so long, he had the right to stay calmly at the top. Probably, however, when she came close enough for him to see her face, the only way he could keep from shouting out her name in a loud voice would be to go running down to her. When would he be able to see her face clearly? At about the hundredth step? What—

At that instant Shinji heard a strange roar of anger from below. The voice seemed for certain to be calling Hatsue’s name.

Hatsue came to an abrupt halt on the hundredth step, which was slightly wider than the others. He could see her breast moving.

Her father came out of the shadows where he had been hiding. He caught his daughter by the wrist, and Shinji watched them exchange a few violent words. He stood motionless at the top of the steps as though bound there. Terukichi never once so much as glanced in Shinji’s direction. Still holding his daughter’s wrist, he started down the steps.

Not knowing what he ought to do and feeling as though even his head was half-paralyzed, the boy continued
to stand in the same motionless posture, like a sentinel at the top of the stone steps.

The figures of the father and daughter reached the bottom of the steps, turned to the right, and disappeared from view.

T
HE YOUNG GIRLS
of the island faced the arrival of the diving season with precisely the same heart-strangling feeling city youths have when confronted by final school-term examinations. Their games of scrambling for pebbles on the bottom of the sea close to the beach, begun during the early years of grade school, first introduced them to the art of diving, and they naturally became more skillful as their spirit of rivalry increased. But when they finally began diving for a living and their carefree games turned into real work, without exception the young girls became frightened, and the arrival of spring meant only that the dreaded summer was approaching.

There was the cold, the strangling feeling of running out of breath, the inexpressible agony when water forced its way under the water-goggles, the panic and sudden
fear of collapsing that invaded the entire body just when an abalone was almost at the fingertips. There were also all kinds of accidents; and the wounds inflicted on the tips of the toes when kicking off against the sea’s bottom, with its carpet of sharp-edged shells, to rise to the surface; and the leaden languor that possessed the body after it had been forced to dive almost beyond endurance.… All these things had become sharper and sharper in the remembering; the terror had become all the more intense in the repeating. And often sudden nightmares would awaken the girls from sleep so deep as seemingly to leave no room for dreams to creep in. Then, in the dead of night, in the darkness surrounding their peaceful, dangerless beds, they would peer at the flood of sweat clenched within their fists.

It was different with the older divers, with those who had husbands. Coming out of the water from diving, they would sing and laugh and talk in loud voices. It seemed as though work and play had become united in a single whole for them. Watching them enviously, the young girls would tell themselves that they could never become like that, and yet as the years passed they would be surprised to discover that, without their quite realizing it, they themselves had reached the point where they too could be counted among those lighthearted, veteran divers.

The divers of Uta-jima were at their busiest during June and July. Their operations centered about Garden Beach, on the eastern side of Benten Promontory.

One day, before the onset of the rainy season, the beach lay under a strong, noonday sun that could no longer be called that of early summer. A drying-fire had been lit, and a southerly breeze was carrying its smoke in the direction
of the ancient grave-mound of Prince Deki. Garden Beach embraced a small cove, directly beyond which there stretched the Pacific. Summer clouds were towering over the distant sea.

As its name suggested, Niwa-hama—Garden Beach—did indeed have the qualities of a landscaped park. Many limestone crags surrounded the beach, seeming to have been arranged purposely in order that children could hide themselves and fire their pistols in games of cowboys and Indians; moreover, the surfaces of the rocks were smooth to the touch, with occasional finger-size holes as dwellings for crabs and sea-lice. The sand held in the arms of these crags was pure white. Atop the cliff facing the sea to the left the flowers called beach-cotton were in full bloom; their blossoms were not those of the season’s end, looking like disheveled sleepers, but were vividly white petals, sensuous and leek-like, brandished against the cobalt sky.

It was the noonday rest period and the area around the fire was noisy with laughing banter. The sand was not yet so hot as to scorch the soles of the feet and, though cold, the water was no longer of that freezing temperature that made the divers rush to put on their padded garments and huddle around the fire the minute they emerged from the sea.

Laughing boisterously, all the divers were thrusting out their chests, boastfully exhibiting their breasts. One of them started to lift her breasts in both hands.

“No, no, it’s no fair using your hands. There’s no telling how much you might cheat if you used your hands.”

“Listen to who’s talking! Why, with those breasts of yours you couldn’t cheat even if you
did
use your hands.”

Everybody laughed. They were arguing as to who had the best-shaped breasts.

All of their breasts were well tanned, and if they lacked the quality of mysterious whiteness, still less did they have the transparent skin that reveals a tracery of veins. Judging merely by the skin, there seemed to be no particular indication of any sensitivity. But beneath the sunburned skin the sun had created a lustrous, semi-transparent color like that of honey. The dark areolas of the nipples did not stand out as isolated spots of black, moist mystery, but instead shaded off gradually into this honey color.

Among the many breasts jostling around the fire there were some which already hung slack and others whose last vestiges remained only in form of dry, hard nipples. But in most cases there were well-developed pectoral muscles, which supported the breasts on firm, wide chests, without letting them droop under their own weight. Their appearance bespoke the fact that these breasts had developed each day beneath the sun, without any knowledge of shame, like ripening fruit.

One of the girls lamented the fact that one of her breasts was smaller than the other, but an outspoken old woman consoled her:

“That’s nothing to worry about. Any day now there’ll be some handsome young swain to pet them into shape for you.”

Everyone laughed again, but the girl still seemed to be worried.

“Are you sure, Grandma Ohara?” she asked.

“I’m sure. I knew a girl like that once before, but once she got herself a man, her breasts evened right up.”

Shinji’s mother was proud of the fact that her own breasts were still young and fresh, the most youthful
among the married women of her age. As though they had never known the hunger of love or the pains of life, all summer long her breasts turned their faces toward the sun, deriving there, first-hand, their inexhaustible strength.

The breasts of the young girls did not particularly arouse her jealousy. There was, however, one beautiful pair that had become the object of everyone’s admiration, including that of Shinji’s mother. These were the breasts of Hatsue.

This was the first day Shinji’s mother had come out to dive. So it was also her first opportunity to have a leisurely look at Hatsue. Even after she had hurled those insulting parting words at Hatsue, they had kept exchanging nods whenever they happened to meet, but Hatsue was by nature not a talkative person. Today again they had been busy with one thing and another and had not had many opportunities for speaking with each other. Even now during the breast-beautiful contest it was mainly the older women who were doing all the talking, and so Shinji’s mother, already prejudiced anyway, purposely avoided getting into conversation with Hatsue.

But when she looked at Hatsue’s breasts she nodded to herself, understanding why with the passage of time the ugly rumor about the girl and Shinji had died out. No woman who saw those breasts could have any more doubts. Not only were they the breasts of a girl who had never known a man, but they had just begun to bloom, making one think how beautiful they would be once they were in full flower.

Between two small mounds that held on high their rose-colored buds there was a valley that, though darkly
burned by the sun, still had not lost the delicacy, the smoothness, the veined coolness of skin—a valley fragrant with thoughts of early spring. Keeping pace with the normal growth of the rest of her body, her breasts were in no way late in their development. Yet their roundness, still tinged with the firmness of childhood, seemed on the verge of awakening from sleep, seemed ready to come awake at the slightest touch of a feather, at the caress of the slightest breeze.