Three Views of Crystal Water (30 page)

‘Why are you shy?’ he said. His word was unfamiliar in Japanese but she understood his meaning.

She put her back to him again. His hands were near her heart and she was afraid he would discover how hard it was beating. She leaned over his arms, as if she were leaning over the rail of a ship. She thought of how, last summer – was it only last summer? – she had stood on these very
rocks and imagined the whole island steaming away like a passenger ship to take her home. To take her anywhere, in fact.

Tamio pressed his face against the back of her neck. A gust of wind caught her face. Here amongst the islands the winds were confusing. They came and went in the channels, intermittent, and unreliable in direction, brought on by a gust somewhere out at sea, a storm pulling air and water one way or another. Sometimes there was a rush of cold, and sometimes of warm. This one was warm. She felt Tamio’s lips on the back of her neck. She imagined the ship sailing out of port. She would be on deck, waving, just as her grandfather and Keiko had when their ship had pulled in to Vancouver. That was long ago. And all because of that she was here.

She turned to face Tamio. She put her arms around his neck. His face was just at the level of hers, his eyes too close to see. She closed hers. His lips were all that was there.

His body smelled sweet, oddly sweet, and clean. His skin was very smooth, and stretched tight over his frame. There was the sense of braiding ropes under the surface. He seemed to be made of ropes that pulled her this way and that, supported her, bound her. She liked to explore the way they moved against her.

They found a rock to sit on. The same rocks where she had sat alone when she first came. She took her mind off herself, then.

Tamio put his arm over Vera’s shoulders. She let him touch her breasts and that was enough. They looked into the water and wondered what was down there. She told him about the manta ray and how it came to the light. The next time, he promised, he would bring his lantern.

In the dark his warmth was more palpable. She leaned into it. His arms flexed around her. He felt like a man, sure of himself. He was right there and intent on her, his mouth at her ear, his arms long around her back. He did not feel
like Tamio and she did not feel exactly like herself. She seemed to watch as, in the dark, another, bold girl came out of her skin. A girl who knew exactly what to do. Vera kept apart from this girl a little. The girl was under her control, but just barely.

When darkness came it was complete, amongst the bushes and the stones of the island. Only when the moon was full and the sky clear, when the water gave back its light, could they see. So then, whether in darkness, or in light, there was no refuge. The life of night existed inside the huts at the far end, where the rougher characters drank.

The last light drained out of the sky. It was too dark. Maiko would be looking for them. Tamio loosened his arms. As he withdrew she could feel the cold night. She was suddenly tired.

Most days, after dinner, in darkness, the girls slipped out of the hut. Maiko said nothing. They had been doing it for the past two years, together, night diving and just walking.

But it was different now. They looked for the boys. There was no agreement to meet. But if they hadn’t appeared, the girls would have been insulted. And they did appear, first Teru, who never smiled, and then Tamio, who did. Sometimes all four of them stood sheepishly in a circle, but there was nothing to say. A few voices came from the harbour, and little wavery lines of light. The men had their oil lamps. They were putting out the night nets. The girls gave each other one final smile as Teru and Tamio pulled on their hands. Vera and Tamio always went to the High Place. Hana and Teru always took the path to the other side of the island.

Sometimes Vera could imagine her mother’s admonitions – Come away from him! Where do you think you’re going? But her mother was dead and it was different here. And Keiko, living in her family house, seeing Vera only by day, said nothing. No one said anything. It seemed that in this
country she had a right to go off in the darkness with Tamio.

That was when the bold girl came from inside Vera. She could do things that made Vera feel so good, that made her feel as if she could not stop. When that happened it was as if Tamio was not Tamio anymore. And she was not Vera. Vera was a girl from another country. She was not going to stay here on this island. That meant she should stop. And she did stop.

But sometimes she thought the other way. If she did things she could not control, even if that bold girl took over her bones and went into the unknown with this boy, it would not really count, because she didn’t live here.

Sitting on the rock facing the black water, with Tamio’s arm behind her, bracing her so that she could lean back, she wondered what Hana was doing. She had no hint from her friend. A curtain had fallen between them. They mentioned the boys by name as if they were talismans, not people. ‘Teru’, Vera notified, in one word, when he hove into view. ‘Has Teru gone yet?’ or, ‘you were with Teru’ was permissible. But not, ‘What did you and Teru do?’ He was a fact, the details of which could not be discussed; he was an expected event. Nothing individual about him would be debated, not his wide nose, nor his jaw, which looked too firm to Vera. Not his deep solemn eyes, which did not match with the upturned lips, smiling at Vera as he moved to Hana’s side as if he could steer her with a shoulder, nor his officious manner. He had been accepted.

The boys had come, and the girls would not talk about why they had let them in. Vera missed Hana, missed the simplicity of their play, and the way Hana had trained her. When she kissed Tamio she wondered if Hana kissed the sombre Teru as easily. If Teru were as easy to explore as Tamio was. She wondered where she and Tamio were going. She had no roadmap. No one spoke to her about it.

Except that during the day, in the
amagoya,
around the
fire, the
ama
teased her. Most of them had married at sixteen or seventeen. Marriage was altogether a comical thing. Hana and Vera afforded amusement to the whole cluster around the fire.

‘What are the lovers doing when they walk on the shore every night?’ they said to Hana.

‘Getting married,’ said Setsu.

‘Getting a baby!’

Gales of laughter. Hana simply continued to eat her rice with a serene expression.

‘You can dive with your stomach very very big.’

‘Have baby in water, at work.’

‘No!’

‘Some do, some do. Setsu’s mother did.’

Setsu nodded. ‘Yes she did. And the baby is born swimming.’

More peals of laughter.

Only when they were in the water was Hana Vera’s again. They would sink a foot below the blue gel line that was the ocean’s top edge, and face one another. With arms and legs akimbo, they’d press the water sideways, maintaining themselves level. They’d look into each other’s faces and try to keep eye contact. Hana’s hair would float sideways all around her. Vera’s hair seemed to disappear into threads of light lying in the water. They sculled, and smiled, and sometimes circled around each other in a strange dance, staying down, staying on the level, staying hooked together by their eyes.

That was the way Vera wanted it.

Once, the
ama
let Vera go out in the boats to watch them dive
funado,
in the deep. She hung over the side, and peered down, ten, fifteen yards of water was below. She saw them bob and descend, and come up. She heard the weird sweet whistle of their breathing out, that announced the return to air. She jumped in the sea to swim.

In the water, Hana was perfect to Vera still. In the water,
she would not leave her, or betray her. In the water, there was no Teru. The girls went under together.

The boats were above, on the surface, dark ellipses. In the shimmer of the surface were the
tomahi
‘s dark, square heads. Sometimes she saw the dark square head of Tamio, leaning over, looking for them.

But outside, as the diving day ended, Hana’s attention slipped away. She was the one who leaned on the handle that was the rudder, and also the paddle. She made a smooth, curving pull and then pushed it away. It was an easy, rocking motion and the boat slipped gently over little wavelets that were going the same way they were, toward shore. The
ama
were silent, mostly, seated two by two, tired and, despite the hot sun, chilled: after eight hours no amount of glow from sun or flame could warm their insides. That would only come when they reached land.

As the boats came in, all, from babies to ten-year-olds, were on the beach, rolling in and out of the water, finding shells and stones, shouting over games. The
ama
‘s eyes turned from each other to find their own children in the group. Hana’s eyes lifted from the rudder to the beach. Vera could see how she scanned it for tall men, and then how she looked farther up the diagonal path that led away. Perhaps Teru was out fishing; perhaps they’d come in already and he was at home, or repairing the bath, or at the temple with the other men, where they discussed the development of China.

Vera saw this but she did not know what Hana thought. She was more like a plant than a person at this time, simply bursting. Vera was hurt, and a little afraid. It seemed too soon, too simple to take the first one who offered himself.

The next morning she went to practise with Ikkanshi. But for once he lost patience with her. ‘Are you practising seriously or not?’ he said after she had forgotten three times in a row.

‘Probably I am not good enough,’ she said. ‘Most people aren’t.’ For you she meant.

‘Most people are not serious,’ he said. ‘If you are not practising seriously, don’t get up in the morning, just stay in bed.’

For weeks the people prepared for the festival of
O-Bon,
laying out the tools and the clothing of their loved ones and preparing to welcome them in their homes. This was the time when the dead, who had gone to live in the sea, returned. It would be in the middle of August. Every family had someone to expect. The priest prepared special banners and polished the icons that were normally locked away. On the days of the festival the women would dress in white. Drums would beat for three days, and the green night would be lit by rows of torches. Keiko put out James Lowinger’s cap and his cape, that he had worn when he had first come there. She put out the book of pearls she had brought with her from Vancouver.

In the festival, the boys and men had to carry a big wooden palanquin that was covered in gold, from the new shrine at the low end of the island to the harbour, and back again. They practised with one of the longer boats, getting in line one behind the other, and hoisting it to their shoulders. When the day came, they would perform this task dressed as women. No one seemed to know why this was, but it had always been so.

When the day came, the boys carried the long box down the length of the island to the shrine. Tamio shouldered the burden along with his friends, and laughed with them, and staggered, too, when he’d had too many sake breaks. But he was, or seemed to be, elsewhere. Perhaps he was not simple enough to be wholly present in these rituals. But his perfect face and body and his nearly perfect presence, marred only by this diffidence, were irresistible to Vera. She followed Hanako to the festival and began laughing loudly and joining arms with the other girls as if she were truly one of them. And acting this way, she became this way.

She was rewarded then by a public look from Tamio, straight into her eyes. His own were direct, as if a screen had slid away,
he seemed to see her, completely, for the first time. She felt a deep blush begin at the roots of her hair. And she glanced away, looking for a place to hide her eyes. She tried not to smile but she could not stop herself.

Again, summer ended and the boats sailed for Toba.

7
San-po-giri
Three direction cuts

The second winter came swiftly, with snow as early as November, and a cruel wind.

Hana went back to work at the pearl factory. The boys had disappeared: Keiko said that they might go to war. Vera was allowed to help in the
udon
shop.

Despite all the privations of war, the uncle was full of an optimism that his wife could not share. He bought a neon sign for the
udon
shop, to bring in more business. It was red and black and was to hang beside the door, lengthwise, like a banner. He went up on a ladder in the street to attach it to the front of the shop, while Vera held the bottom. The aunt stood beside, inviting passersby to agree that her husband was foolish.

‘He’s making a celebration,’ she said. ‘He is mad. Or he is stupid. One of them.’

But when the sign was plugged in, it shone bright red in the gloomy street under the dark winter sky. It made them all smile. But it did not bring in more customers.

‘You bring in customers, Vera,’ laughed the uncle. ‘They come to see you.’

Why would they come to see Vera? Because she was white. She could not have been more white.

‘They come to see her, or they do not come, because she is here. They go by and,’ the aunt made a gesture of flattening her face against the glass.

A new law was passed, called the National Mobilisation Law. It gave the government the special powers it needed because of the war. The people were all asked to make small sacrifices for the country. The sign had been up only a few weeks when the law pronounced that everyone had to turn off all electric signs because they used too much electricity. So it hung, dark with its white tube blank and empty of light. Rice was rationed, along with salt, sugar, and matches. Then it became illegal to polish rice. Polishing rice was not economical; it made waste. But unpolished rice was unpalatable; it made every meal a small humiliation. Thus the war ate its way into their lives. Some rules were not even about saving money at all. Women were forbidden to perm their hair, for instance. Curls were un-Japanese.