The Sound of Waves (16 page)

The old grandmother could not resist the impulse to lay her hand against the nipples of these breasts that were so healthily virginal and, at the same time, so exquisitely formed. The touch of her rough palm made Hatsue jump to her feet.

Everyone laughed.

“So now do you understand how men must feel about them, Grandma Ohara?” someone asked.

The old woman rubbed her own wrinkle-covered breasts with both hands and then spoke in a cracking voice:

“What’re you talking about? Hers are just green peaches, but mine—mine are well-seasoned pickles. They’ve soaked up a lot of delicious flavor, let me tell you.”

Hatsue laughed and tossed her head. A piece of green, transparent seaweed fell from her hair to the dazzling sand.

While they were all eating their lunches, a favorite man of theirs suddenly appeared from behind some rocks where he had been awaiting what he knew would be the propitious moment.

The women all screamed for the sake of screaming, put their lunches back into the bamboo-leaf wrappers on the ground beside them, and covered their breasts. Actually, they were not in the slightest taken aback. The intruder was an old peddler who made his way to the island every season, and their pretense at bashfulness was nothing but their way of poking fun at his old age.

The old man was wearing a seedy pair of trousers and a white, open-necked shirt. He put down on a rock the big cloth-wrapped bundle he was carrying on his back and wiped the sweat from his face.

“I guess I gave you an awful scare, didn’t I? Maybe it was wrong of me to come like this. Shall I go away?”

The peddler said this in full confidence that they would never let him go. He well knew that there was no better way of arousing the divers’ desire to buy than by exhibiting his goods here on the beach. The divers always felt bold and open-handed when they were beside the sea. So he would have them choose what they wanted to buy here, and then the same night he would deliver the goods to their homes and collect his money. The women too liked it this way because they could judge colors better in the sunlight.

The old peddler spread his wares out in the shade of some rocks. Still cramming the lunches into their mouths, the women crowded around the display.

There were lengths of stencil-dyed cotton material for summer kimonos. There were light housedresses and children’s clothes. There were unlined sashes, underpants, undershirts, and sash strings.

The peddler took the lid off a flat wooden box, and cries of admiration escaped from the women’s mouths. The
box was filled to overflowing with beautiful notions—coin purses, clog thongs, plastic handbags, ribbons, brooches, and the like, all in assorted colors.

“There’s not a thing there I wouldn’t like to have,” one of the young divers truthfully remarked.

In a flash many sun-blackened fingers reached out; the goods were painstakingly examined and criticized; arguments broke out among the women as to whether something was or was not becoming to so-and-so; and half-joking bargaining grew apace. As a result the peddler sold two lengths of summer-kimono material in tawdry, towel-like patterns at almost a thousand yen each, as well as one unlined sash of a mixed weave, and a large amount of sundry merchandise. Shinji’s mother bought a plastic shopping-bag for two hundred yen, and Hatsue bought a length of the better cotton-kimono material, in a youthful pattern of dark-blue morning-glories on a white background.

The old peddler was pleased with all this unexpectedly good business. He was quite gaunt, and his sunburned ribs could be seen through the open collar of his shirt. His pepper-and-salt hair was cut short, and the years had deposited a number of dark splotches on his cheeks and temples. He had only a few straggling tobacco-stained teeth, which made it difficult to understand what he said, and still more so now when he raised his voice loudly. Nevertheless, by the laughter that made his cheeks tremble as though with a twitch and by his exaggerated gestures, the women realized that the peddler was about to render them some magnificent service, “quite apart from any desire for gain.”

With scurrying fingers—he had let the nail grow long
on the little finger of each hand—the peddler produced three beautiful plastic handbags from the box of notions.

“Look! This blue one is for young ladies, this brown for the middle-aged, and this black for ladies of advanced years—”

“I’ll take the young ladies’ one,” the same old woman broke in, and everyone laughed, causing the peddler to raise his quavering voice still higher.

“Plastic handbags of the very latest fashion. Fixed price, eight hundred yen—”

“Oh, they’re
dear
, aren’t they?”

“Of course; he’s padded the price.”

“No, no, eight hundred yen without any padding at all. And I’m going to present one of these beautiful handbags to one of you ladies as a token of my appreciation for your kind patronage … absolutely free!”

Dozens of guileless, open hands were simultaneously stretched forth. But the old man brushed them aside with a flourish.

“One, I said. Just one. It’s the Omiya Prize, a sort of sacrificial service rendered by my shop, the Omiya Shop, in celebration of the prosperity of Uta-jima Village. We’ll have a contest, and one of these bags shall go to whoever wins. The blue if the victor is young, the brown if it’s a middle-aged lady …”

The diving women were holding their breath. Each was thinking that, with just a little luck, she would receive an eight-hundred-yen handbag for nothing.

The peddler had once been a grade-school principal and often brooded over having come to his present humble circumstances because of a mess he had gotten into with a woman, but now the divers’ silence gave him new confidence
in his ability to win people’s hearts, and once again he told himself that he would quit peddling and become an athletic director.

“Well, then, if we’re to have a contest, it ought to be something for the good of Uta-jima Village, to which I owe so much. How about it, everyone—what would you say to an abalone contest? And to the person who brings up the biggest catch in the next hour I’ll present the prize.”

Ceremoniously he spread a cloth in the shade of another rock and gravely decked it with the prizes. To tell the truth, not one of the handbags was worth more than about five hundred yen, but they looked worth fully eight hundred. The youthful prize was sky-blue and box-shaped, and its cobalt color, bright as a new-built boat, made an inexpressibly lovely contrast with its glittering, gold-plated clasp. The brown, middle-aged one was also box-shaped, and its ostrich-skin pattern had been so exceedingly well pressed into the plastic that at first glance one could not tell whether it was genuine ostrich skin or not. Only the black one, for old ladies, was not box-shaped, but with its long and slender golden clasp and its oblong boat shape, it was indeed a tasteful, refined piece of workmanship.

Shinji’s mother, who wanted the brown, middle-aged bag, was the first to announce her name for the contest.

The second person who called out her name was Hatsue.

Carrying the eight divers who had entered the contest, the boat pulled away from the shore. A fat, middle-aged woman, who had not entered the contest, stood in the stern and sculled. Of the eight, Hatsue was the only young girl. All the other girls had held back, knowing they could not win anyway; they were cheering for Hatsue.
As for the other women left on the beach, each was shouting encouragement to her own favorite.

The boat took a southward course along the beach and moved away to the eastern side of the island.

The divers who were left behind gathered around the old peddler and sang songs.

The water in the cove was clear and blue, and when the waves were still one could plainly see the round rocks on the bottom, covered with red seaweed and looking as though they were floating close to the surface. Actually, however, they were deeply submerged. The waves swelled large at this point, throwing shadows of their patterns and refractions of froth over the rocks on the ocean floor as they passed over them. Then, no sooner had a wave risen full than it smashed itself to pieces on the beach. Thereupon a reverberation like that of a deep sigh would overflow the entire beach and drown out the women’s singing.

An hour later the boat returned from the eastern side of the island. Many times more exhausted than usual because of the competition, the eight divers sat silent in the boat, leaning against one another, each staring out toward whatever direction her eyes happened to fancy. Their wet, disheveled hair was so tangled together that it was impossible to tell one diver’s hair from that of her neighbors. Two of them were hugging each other to keep warm. All their breasts were covered with goose flesh, and in the too-brilliant sunshine even their naked, sunburned bodies seemed to turn pale, making them look like a group of pallid, drowned corpses.

The noisy reception they received from the beach was out of keeping with the quietness of this boat that moved so soundlessly forward. The moment they were on
land the eight women collapsed on the sand around the fire and would not even speak.

The peddler checked the contents of the buckets he had collected from the divers. When he was done, he called out the results in a loud voice:

“Hatsue-san is first—twenty abalone! And the mistress of the Kubo family is second—eighteen!”

The winner and the runner-up, Hatsue and Shinji’s mother, exchanged glances out of tired, bloodshot eyes. The island’s most expert diver had been bested by a girl who had learned her skill from the divers of another island.

Hatsue got to her feet in silence and went around the rock to receive her prize. And the prize she returned with was the brown, middle-aged handbag, which she pressed into the hands of Shinji’s mother.

The mother’s cheeks flushed red with delight.

“But … why?…”

“Because I’ve always wanted to apologize ever since my father spoke so rudely to Auntie that day.”

“She’s a fine girl!” the peddler shouted, and when everyone joined in with unanimous praise of Hatsue, urging the older woman to accept the girl’s kindness, Shinji’s mother took the brown handbag, wrapped it carefully in a piece of paper, clasped it under a bare arm, and spoke quite casually:

“Why, thanks.”

The mother’s simple, straightforward heart had immediately understood the modesty and respect behind the girl’s gesture. Hatsue smiled, and Shinji’s mother told herself how wise her son had been in his choice of a bride.… And it was in this same fashion that the politics of the island were always conducted.

F
OR
S
HINJI
the rainy reason brought only one bitter day after another. Even Hatsue’s letters had ceased. Doubtless, after her father had frustrated their meeting at Yashiro Shrine, which he had probably learned about by reading her letter, he had absolutely forbidden Hatsue to write again.

One day before the end of the rains the captain of the
Utajima-maru
came to the island. The
Utajima-maru
was the larger of Terukichi Miyata’s two coasting freighters and was now anchored at Toba.

The captain went first to Terukichi’s house, and next to Yasuo’s. The same night he went to see Shinji’s boss, Jukichi, and then at last went to Shinji’s house.

The captain was a few years past forty and had three children. He was a man of big stature and proud of his strength, but he had a gentle disposition. He was a zealous member of the Nichiren sect, and if he happened to be on the island at the time of the Lantern Festival, he would always officiate as a sort of lay priest in reading the
sutras
for the repose of the souls of the dead. He had women in various ports, whom his crew referred to as the Yokohama aunt, the Moji aunt, and the like. Whenever the ship called at one of these ports, the captain would take the young crew members along to his woman’s place for a drink. The “aunts” all dressed conservatively and always treated the young men with great kindness.

The gossip was that the captain’s half-bald head was the result of his debaucheries. This was the reason he always maintained his dignity with a gold-braided uniform cap.

As soon as the captain reached the house he began discussing his business with Shinji’s mother. Shinji too was present.

When the boys of the village reached the age of seventeen or eighteen they began their maritime training in the capacity of “rice-rinsers,” the local word for apprentice seamen. And Shinji was at the age to be thinking about it. The captain asked if he would like to join the
Utajima-maru
as a “rice-rinser.”

The mother was silent, and Shinji replied that he would give his answer after he had had a chance to discuss it with Jukichi, his boss. The captain said that if it was a question of Jukichi’s approval, he had already secured that.

But still there was something strange about it all. The
Utajima-maru
belonged to Terukichi, and there certainly
was no reason for him to employ Shinji, whom he disliked so much, as a crew member on one of his own ships.

“No, Uncle Teru himself sees that you’ll make a good sailor. As soon as I mentioned you, Uncle Teru agreed. So come on then, do your best and work hard.”