Shipwrecks Read online

  Sahei told him that O-fune-sama referred to the ships wrecked on the reef that stretched out in front of the village. The ships normally carried such things as food, utensils, luxury goods and cloth, which would substantially improve the lives of the villagers. Also, pieces of ship’s timber smashed by the rocks and angry seas and hurled up on the beach would be used to repair houses, or even to make furniture. The late-autumn village ritual was carried out in the hope that passing ships would founder on the reef.

  ‘So you wouldn’t know about the cave on Crow Beach, either, then?’ Sahei said condescendingly as he turned his rheumy eyes toward the south. There was the little cape jutting out into the sea, defined by the white spray of the waves. Often crows could be seen circling in the sky above the several small pine trees standing atop the cape.

  ‘I’ve heard about the cave. You mean the place where they throw the bodies washed up on the beach,’ said Isaku aggressively.

  ‘Not just the ones that are washed up. It’s also where they throw the bodies of the crew aboard O-fune-sama,’ said Sahei with a smirk on his face.

  Isaku struggled to make sense of what Sahei said, though he grasped the significance of the ritual and the lacquered bowl.

  He mused afresh over his memories from when he was three years old. It finally dawned on him that his father, mother, and all the other villagers had been in such high spirits because O-fune-sama had come that year. He recalled that for the next couple of years he had eaten foods unthinkable nowadays and had set eyes on all sorts of remarkable objects.

  On festive occasions, or when there had been a death in the village, his mother would scoop rice from an earthenware pot and make him some gruel. When he had a fever she would bring out a jar ever so carefully and let him lick some white substance off her finger. This amazingly sweet powder, called white sugar, was also said to be effective in curing all ailments.

  The light of the candle he saw at night at the Bon festival was likewise etched into his memory. It had been grey, shaped like a thin rod almost three inches in length, and he remembered his amazement when the wick was lit. It was so incredibly bright that he was dazzled by the glare. How could such a little stick generate so much light? Besides, unlike pine torches and wicks soaked in fish oil, it did not give off any black smoke, and the smell was quite pleasant. It had a beautiful glow, at times crackling ever so slightly, sending tiny beads of light flying.

  These two were undoubtedly part of the bounty from O-fune-sama, but before too long they were gone.

  Even so, vestiges of previous good fortune were still present. The old mat on the floor next door, the chest in the village head’s house carrying the insignia of a shipping company. Also, some households had the ship’s large wooden fire buckets. It was now clear that, like the lacquered bowl in Isaku’s house, these were all from O-fune-sama.

  2

  Realising that autumn was fast closing in on the village, Isaku stared at the red hues unfolding on the far-off crests of the ridges through different eyes from the previous year. Though he was happy at being allowed to work alongside the men at the cremation, he was also aware of his position in this village made up mostly of old people, women and children. Until this year, as a child, Isaku had only watched village rituals, but from now on, he thought, he, too, would have to take an active part in the proceedings.

  After the cremation, the villagers all disappeared into their houses. Isaku followed his mother into their house, past the straw mat hanging down at the doorway.

  His sister Teru, born at the end of the previous year, was on all fours and crying on the floor. She seemed to have been crying for quite some time; her voice was hoarse. She crawled toward them when she recognised her mother.

  His mother ignored her and headed to the urn in the dirt floor part of the house and scooped up some water with a cracked bowl, gulping it down noisily before going into the outhouse at the back. By and by she reappeared, stepping up onto the matted floor and adjusting the bottom of her kimono. She sat down, casually positioning Teru on her knee. She opened her kimono to expose a large dark nipple.

  Teru moved her head from side to side impatiently as she tried to latch onto the nipple. Isaku could hear Teru feeding; she seemed to have a stuffy nose. At times she would turn her head away from her mother and breathe so heavily she sounded like an adult.

  It was the custom in the village to refrain from working both on the day of bereavement and on the day of the cremation so as not to disturb the dead. Isaku felt at ease, glad that he didn’t have to go out fishing; at the same time, he feared his mother, knowing how she hated idleness. He cast furtive glances in her direction as he sat down on the edge of his bed.

  There was no sign of his little brother and sister; he guessed they were playing in the woods behind the house. Faint wisps of purple smoke drifted up from the wood among the ashes in the fireplace.

  ‘The mountains have turned red,’ Isaku said ingratiatingly to his mother.

  She didn’t reply. The afternoon sun shone in through a knothole in the wooden wall, throwing a single beam of light across the murk of the room onto the back of Teru’s slightly bent leg.

  ‘Get some wood,’ his mother said.

  Isaku stood up immediately and went out through the back door. Heads of eulalia grass were swaying here and there on the rocky slope. The sun was sinking between the folds in the mountains, and the village was already half in darkness. He picked up some firewood from the pile next to the back wall of the house.

  The next morning he went fishing.

  The catch would fall off at the onset of winter when the sea became rough, so before then they would have to store as much seafood in their houses as possible. Fortunately, the autumn octopus was coming in to shore in greater numbers than usual.

  Out by the reef, men and boys no more than ten years old were in little boats spearing octopuses between the rocks. Isaku worked the oar of his father’s boat, steering it across the water. He stopped and took hold of his long, barbed fishing-spear. There was a piece of red cloth attached to the tip, and he stretched it out into the water towards the shadow of rocks or near thick clumps of duckweed. When the end of the spear was jiggled slightly, the octopuses would mistake the wavering cloth for food and emerge from their hiding-places in crannies in the rocks or deep in the duckweed. Isaku would then skilfully hook them with the barb of his spear.

  There were so many that Isaku would sometimes find himself having to stab at as many as three or four octopuses each time he put the spear into the water.

  Isaku’s father had taught him how to fish and steer a boat two years earlier. Unlike his mother, Isaku’s father never lifted a hand against him, but his taciturn moods struck terror into the boy. When Isaku was learning how to catch octopus, he dropped the fishing-spear into the water time and time again, but his father said nothing and only glared at him as he jumped into the sea to retrieve it.

  Isaku was well aware that the status of manhood hinged upon becoming an expert fisherman. So he was eager to learn the art, and despite his inexperience he started going out on the water with the men from the time his father left the village to go into bondage.

  On the shore, the old people and young children were collecting seaweed, while the women stepped into the water to pick shellfish off the rocks.

  Isaku occasionally cast his eyes toward the far-off ridges as he fished for octopus. Day by day the reddish colour seemed to flow down from the crests, tinting the surface of the mountains as it went, with the autumn hues now beginning to reach the trees on the nearer slopes.

  The days became colder and the chill on the water intensified. The octopus seemed to be coming into the shore in hordes, and sometimes a simple flutter of the red cloth would lure ten of the little creatures. Isaku jerked the hook up and then waited for the cloud of ink to disappear before putting the barbed spear into the water again.

  The leaves of the trees behind the village reached their full autumn splendour. As happened ev
ery year at this time, the octopus suddenly began to leave the shoreline. However much he shook the cloth on his spear, only an occasional octopus would emerge, and before long they ceased to appear at all.

  The octopus season came to an end, but that year’s catch had been better than usual. Outside each house, octopuses hung from lines of straw twine, split open to dry in the autumn sun. The octopus was not only an essential staple of the New Year but also a valuable commodity. It would be sold through the next village to people in the mountain hamlets, enabling the villagers to buy grain.

  The O-fune-sama ritual was held around the time the village was enveloped in the autumn colours. With her husband at the helm, a boat carrying a twenty-eight-year-old pregnant woman moved off the thin strip of sandy beach. Looking out toward the horizon, she held up a small sacred straw festoon as the boat bobbled its way out into deeper water. It eventually came to a stop after being skilfully manoeuvred out past the rocks. The villagers gathered on the shore pressed their palms together in prayer when the woman tossed the festoon into the water. The pregnant woman represented their wish for a good catch of fish, and the casting of the sacred festoon into the water their hope that a passing ship would be wrecked on the reef in front of the village.

  Isaku, his mother, with Teru tied to her back, his younger brother and sister, all watched the boat bob up and down as it headed back to shore. It was high tide, and the rocks were almost completely submerged, but even so the water foamed in spots.

  The boat reached the shore, and the woman stepped out onto the sand. The people gathered on the beach parted ranks to let her pass, then followed her as she walked up the shore. Normally a cheerful woman, known for her shrieks of laughter, she seemed to be a completely different person as she walked purposefully up the slope.

  Once on the path she advanced, with slow, deliberate steps, up to the village chief’s house. Isaku followed them inside, stepping onto the dirt floor of the entrance and peering between the men standing in front of him. The old village chief was sitting cross-legged, upright, a box-shaped table and a bowl full of food placed in front of him. The woman knelt, placing her hands on the floor as she bowed deeply. It was the first time Isaku had watched this ritual, because until this year he had not been permitted into the house.

  The woman stood, holding up the bottom of her kimono as she stepped toward the little table and overturned it with a solid kick. Then she knelt once more and bowed in front of the village chief. The kicking over of the bowl expressed their desire for a ship to capsize, and with this the ceremony ended.

  The villagers began to return to their homes. Work was forbidden on the day of the O-fune-sama ceremony, so Isaku followed his mother back along the narrow path leading to their house.

  In front of them a man named Senkichi was walking with his family. He had broken his thighbone when he was small, leaving him with one leg considerably shorter than the other, but he was famous for making the best dugout boats in the village. His eldest daughter had been sold into bondage, and there was talk that his fifteen-year-old second daughter would be sold in the near future.

  Isaku’s eyes followed the third daughter, Tami, as she walked behind her father. She was dark-skinned like Senkichi’s wife, but she had sharp eyes and a straight nose. Her movements were lithe, like an animal’s. Whenever he looked at Tami he felt strangely aroused.

  In the village, when a young man turned fifteen he was allowed to make advances to the girl he wanted for his wife. It was the custom for the youth to creep into her house at night, and if the girl did not refuse him the family would turn a blind eye to his presence. Isaku yearned for a chance to hold Tami in his arms. He worried that Tami, a year older than he was, might give herself to someone else before he reached the required age. The thought frightened him.

  He was also afraid that Tami might be sold into bondage like her older sisters. Women were normally sold as maids, and few returned home after their term of bondage was over. Some probably loathed the impoverished life in the village, and others would find a man during their indentureship and start a family once they had fulfilled their bond. Even if they did return, those who had served terms as long as ten years were too old to marry anyone except widowers. There were men with older wives, but Isaku felt that he had little hope of ever being able to live under the same roof as Tami.

  They came to a fork in the path, and Tami and her parents walked off along the track parallel to the coast. Isaku stared at Tami’s legs, which showed underneath her kimono.

  A north-westerly wind began to blow.

  Isaku worked hard cutting down trees in the forest, dragging them back to the house to chop into firewood. On days when the sea was calm he went out in the boat and dropped a line into the water.

  The reddish colour on the far ridges disappeared, and the leaves of the trees on the slope behind the village faded fast. The temperature dropped day by day. On windy days great clouds of dry leaves swirled into the air from among the rocks and fell on the village path or the roofs of the houses. Many were blown far out to sea.

  The sea became rough, and spray from the whitecaps smashing on the rocks rained onto the houses near the shore. The village was enveloped in the sound of the waves.

  When the sun set, the salt-making began on the thin strip of sand by the shoreline. The women carried thirty shallow boxes from the village chief’s storehouse, lined them up on the beach, filled them with sand, then poured in tubs of seawater. Once the sand had dried in the sun, it was again washed with seawater. The heavily salted water would be drained into tubs and transferred to two large cauldrons placed on the shore.

  Each household would supply equal amounts of firewood, and the men would take turns watching over the fires until daybreak, when the salt was ready. While this would provide an essential commodity for the villagers, the fires under the cauldrons also served to attract O-fune-sama.

  3

  Isaku lifted his bundle of dry branches onto his back and started off down the path. The sea was growing angry under the bright red sky. Whitecaps surged in, and breakers smashed onto the shore and the cape. The onset of winter was usually marked by four days of rough seas followed by two of calm; the past three days’ heavy seas had made fishing impossible. Rocks were exposed everywhere along the path, and Isaku struggled to keep from toppling forward under the weight of his load.

  The roofs of the houses came into view. Isaku’s mother was standing beside the back door, waving at him to hurry. She seemed to have something urgent to tell him. Using a stick to keep his balance, he stepped down behind the house.

  ‘A messenger came, saying the village chief wants to see you. Get up there right away,’ his mother said hurriedly.

  Isaku had seen the village chief, but he had never spoken to him and so had no idea why he was being summoned.

  ‘Hurry up!’ said his mother, taking his load off his back, something unheard-of for her, and giving him a good slap on the back to send him on his way. Isaku scampered off along the track. The reddish tinge to the sky was fading, and the sea was beginning to darken. The shore was wet from the waves.

  He ran along the path and on up some stone steps. The old man who worked for the village chief’s family was collecting grain which had been spread out on a straw mat.

  Isaku entered the house and sat down, bowing deeply. The village chief was sitting beside the fireplace. Isaku introduced himself in a trembling voice, his knees shaking from the foreboding that he was about to be scolded for some offence.

  ‘Starting tonight you’re out on the salt cauldrons. It’ll be your first night, so go out with Kichizo and get him to show you the ropes. After that you’re on your own. Don’t let the fires go out.’ The village chief had a thin, high-pitched voice like a child’s. Isaku bowed deeply, until his forehead touched the ground.

  ‘Off you go.’

  Still kneeling, Isaku shuffled back toward the entrance, stood up and left.

  His face flushed with excitement as the
tension disappeared. The order to work through the night on the salt cauldrons meant that he was recognised as an adult. Ever since he had been allowed to help with the cremation he had felt that this might happen, but knowing that it was actually about to come to pass filled him with irrepressible joy. He ran back along the shoreline path to his house. By now the sky was dusky grey.

  He left the house carrying a flaming torch in his hand. When his mother heard that he had been ordered to watch over the fires under the cauldrons, she had become unusually cheerful and had pan-roasted beans for him to eat during the night. The torch flame flickered in the wind. He left the path and went down to the shore. He could see the colour of the fire ahead of him on the beach and sensed that someone was there.

  He picked up his step. The man’s good eye was trained on Isaku. The other was pale and cloudy, having long since lost its glint. Isaku was indeed fortunate to have Kichizo, who was on good terms with Isaku’s father, initiating him.

  Large stones had been arranged in two spots on the sandy area of the beach to serve as a base for the two big cauldrons. The wood under one of them had already been lit.

  ‘Light that one, too,’ said Kichizo, looking toward the second big pot, which was about ten yards away on the beach. Isaku responded eagerly, pulling out a bundle of dried branches from under a straw mat, swinging it onto his back, and carrying it over to the other cauldron. He put the branches into the stone enclosure and lit them with a burning piece of wood. The twigs and branches crackled as they lit. Isaku placed more wood on the fire.

  Flames rose from under the two cauldrons, flickering in the wind off the sea as sparks scattered on the sand. Isaku watched the flames as he sat next to Kichizo on a log inside a makeshift wooden hut.

  Several years earlier, Kichizo had been afflicted with an eye disease which had left him unable to go out fishing, forcing him to sell his wife into bondage for three years. She came back to the village after she finished her term working at the port at the southern tip of the island, but, as she was almost six months late returning from bondage, Kichizo suspected that she must have taken up with another man.