Shipwrecks Page 3

  Whether it was true or not was unknown, but there were rumours among the villagers that she had had a child and had extended her term in order to clean up the matter.

  Kichizo had beaten her violently, and in a fit of rage he even cut off her hair. On such occasions, when she had fled sobbing to Isaku’s house, his father and mother had intervened. Kichizo had stopped beating his wife only after the village chief stepped in and admonished him severely. After that he had become a sullen man of few words. Often at night he used to visit Isaku’s house, sometimes bringing wine made from millet. He would sit there silently, nodding as he listened to Isaku’s father’s fishing stories.

  ‘You know why we make salt on the beach, don’t you?’ said Kichizo, his good eye trained on Isaku.

  One year’s supply of salt would be produced and then distributed according to the size of each family. But Isaku realised that there was another reason for Kichizo’s odd question.

  ‘It’s to summon O-fune-sama, isn’t it?’ he said, looking Kichizo in the face. Kichizo said nothing, turning his eye back to the cauldrons. From his expression, Isaku sensed that his reply had not satisfied the man.

  Isaku thought the village chief’s order meant that he had to know all about tending the salt cauldrons. There was much he didn’t understand about the village rituals, but now that he was an adult he could no longer afford to remain ignorant. After tonight he would have to tend the fires under the cauldrons by himself, so he needed to get Kichizo to tell him everything.

  ‘Is it to pray for O-fune-sama to come in to the shore?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not just for praying. It’s to attract ships passing the beach,’ said Kichizo impatiently.

  ‘To attract ships?’

  ‘That’s right. When the north-west winds start to blow, the seas get rough and more ships get into trouble. At night when the waves start to wash over the decks, they’ll even throw cargo overboard to lighten the ship. At times like that, a crew will see the light from the cauldron fires and think it is from houses on the shore. Then they turn the ships in towards the coast.’

  Kichizo’s good eye gleamed as if he were studying Isaku. Isaku stared at Kichizo before turning to the sea. He could just make out where the starry night sky met the dark water. A vast and intricate reef lay concealed under the surface of the water. When they went out fishing, the village men would thread their little boats through the rocks, but a large vessel entering these waters would be sure to have its bottom ripped open in no time.

  Isaku thought that he was finally starting to understand. He had assumed that the salt cauldrons were part of a ritual carried out in the hope that ships would be wrecked, but now he realised that it was also the means to lure ships onto the reef.

  If gathering salt were the only purpose, then doing it during the daylight hours would be far more convenient, but now he understood why it was done only at night. Also, it was clear to him why the fires were not lit on calm nights; ships would have no problems navigating then.

  ‘The fire’s dying down,’ said Kichizo, getting to his feet.

  Isaku stood up and followed Kichizo, picking up a bundle of firewood from beneath the straw mats. He went over to the cauldron on the right and threw the wood underneath.

  It is said that sailors in distress during a dark, stormy night will do absolutely anything to survive. They will throw their cargo overboard, cut off their hair, and pray to the gods for protection and, if the ship seems in real danger of capsizing, they will even cut down the masts to keep it stable. To them the fires under the cauldrons on the beach might very well appear to be the lights from houses on the shore. No doubt they would think their prayers had been answered and turn their ship in towards the fires.

  The wood was engulfed in flames.

  When Isaku returned to the little hut, Kichizo sat down on the log and piled up dry twigs and branches on the sand. He lit them and put on some firewood. Isaku warmed his hands over the fire. The chill in the air suddenly intensified.

  ‘These fires will bring in O-fune-sama, won’t they?’ said Isaku with a sparkle in his eyes as he looked at Kichizo.

  Kichizo nodded. ‘Not these last few years, but when they do come they come one after another. When I started going out fishing with your father, they came four years in a row. When I was eleven, we had three in one winter. All because of these fires. In those days no one had to sell themselves into bondage,’ he said in a low voice.

  Isaku thought that Kichizo was so unusually talkative because he felt at ease with his friend’s son. Even though he had lost the sight of one eye, if O-fune-sama had come he would not have had to sell his wife into bondage and their marriage would not have been ruined.

  Isaku gazed out to sea. He thought of Tami, Senkichi’s third daughter. The eldest daughter had already been sold, and now there were rumours about the next daughter going into bondage. If there was no bounty from the sea in the next few years, Tami would undoubtedly follow.

  Isaku became restless. If a ship had been lured onto the reef, his father would not have had to sell himself, either. The lives of the villagers hinged on the coming of O-fune-sama.

  ‘We make salt this way to ensure the fires don’t go out and to get O-fune-sama to come.’ Kichizo’s eye gleamed red with the flames from the fire.

  ‘I wonder if it’ll come this winter.’ Isaku looked out to sea.

  ‘Who knows? When the wind starts to blow from the north-west, they get scared and the ships on the offshore run don’t go out. But even then, when they’ve got cargo to carry, they choose a calm day to set sail. Mostly ships carrying rice,’ muttered Kichizo.

  A wave of drowsiness suddenly hit Isaku as he warmed himself by the fire. His body was numb, and his eyelids started to feel heavy. If he nodded off, no doubt he would be removed from salt-making duty, and his mother would fly into a rage and beat him. The very thought of such disgrace terrified him.

  Isaku stood up and ran out of the hut. A chilling wind blew off the sea. He stood on tiptoe and peered into the cauldron. Clouds of steam rose as the salt water boiled away. He checked the fire, then brought over several pieces of firewood and threw them under the cauldron. In a flash his drowsiness had faded.

  Dawn came.

  The fires had gone out. The water had completely evaporated, leaving the sides of the cauldrons covered with a white substance almost up to the lip. On Kichizo’s instructions, Isaku covered each one with two half-moon-shaped lids. The salt would be left to the women who would come to the shore after the cauldrons had gone cold.

  His face, arms, legs and clothes were sticky and damp from the salt air, and he felt light-headed from having worked through the night.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Kichizo, starting off along the shore. Isaku followed him up towards the path.

  Steam was already floating up from the pot on the fire when he got home, and his younger brother and sister were sitting at the fireside. He hung tubs from both ends of a bucket yoke and went out to draw water from the nearby well. The sea was brighter now, and stars could be seen only faintly at one end of the sky. When he got back home, he sat beside the fire and scooped vegetable porridge into a bowl. He wanted to tell his mother how well his work on the cauldron fires had gone, but her silence made him hesitate.

  His mother scooped porridge into bowls for his brother and sister, emptying the pot. As always, she added some water to the pot. Once the water was hot, Isaku poured it into his bowl and drank it. Two soggy grains of millet remained at the bottom of the bowl.

  Isaku mumbled that he would like to get a little sleep. His mother remained silent. He got to his feet and slipped under his straw mat bedding. In a moment he was asleep. After a couple of hours he felt the matting being pulled off him and his cheek being slapped. Turning his head away, he raised himself on his arms.

  His mother’s face loomed in front of him. ‘You going to sleep for ever? Get up and do some work. The sea’s calm.’ He sprang to his feet and stepped down to the dirt floo
r section of the house. His mother swung a basket onto her back and left the house. Shouldering his fishing tackle, Isaku followed her. Listless from lack of sleep, he rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  Down on the beach the women were scooping salt from the cauldrons into tubs to be carried away. The salt would be taken to the village chief’s house and divided up for each household.

  Women, old people and children could be seen hunched over, combing the shoreline. After several days of heavy seas they would find plenty of shellfish and seaweed washed up onto the beach. At times, pieces of wood from wrecked ships, fruit from trees in far-off places, even fragments of everyday items, drifted in on the currents. His mother hurried towards the shore.

  The boats were on the water. In contrast to the previous night, there was no wind; the sea was tranquil, bathed in soft sunlight. Isaku set his little boat afloat in the shallows and stepped into the cold water to push it farther out. Every time he grasped the oar he was reminded of his father. Knowing that the grip had been worn smooth by his father’s hands made him feel that his father was near. He worked the oar slowly.

  He could see the two iron cauldrons on the beach. One had been emptied of salt, and women gathered round the second.

  Suddenly the women stopped moving and turned to look out to sea. Isaku turned his head to follow their gaze. He stopped rowing.

  A ship big enough to carry three or four hundred bales of rice could be seen coming around the cape. Its sails were hanging virtually lifeless. The upper part of the sails bore two black stripes as insignia, and cargo and crew were visible on deck. The ship was slowly moving south-east.

  Isaku gazed at the ship until it at last disappeared behind the small headland where the crows circled.

  Not long after harvest time, ships laden with straw bales of rice became a common sight. Some plied the waters far offshore, others hugged the coastline.

  Ships of the feudal clans bore a large family crest in the middle of the sail; the ship passing the village that day had only two black stripes at the top of the sail, clearly signifying that it belonged to a merchant. It must have been waiting for the stormy weather to clear before leaving port. On days when the sea was rough the fires on the beach would be lit as soon as the sun went down.

  Isaku heard that Sahei had also been ordered by the village chief to work on the salt cauldrons. It was rumoured that Sahei’s family had celebrated their son’s coming-of-age by making buckwheat dumpling soup and drinking millet wine. Isaku was envious, but when he thought of his family’s circumstances, with his father in indentured service, he realised he could hardly expect such treatment. On the contrary, he knew full well that he had to accept the fact that, with his father away, it was up to him and his mother to keep his young brother and sisters from starving.

  Shifts on the salt cauldrons came every ten days. When his turn came, he would go down to the shore alone in the late afternoon and tend the fires until daybreak. If he grew drowsy, he would jump up and down around the hut or go to the water’s edge and dip his feet into the cold sea, gazing out into the night and wondering whether O-fune-sama might be on its way.

  Occasionally ships passed by during the day. Mostly when the sea was calm, but sometimes even on stormy days. Tossed about by the waves, these ships would bob up and down wildly, half-furled sails billowing in the wind as they sped away. Isaku and the other villagers stared intently at each ship as it passed. Every time he saw a vessel he realised that there would be ships passing even on stormy nights.

  He heard a disturbing story from Sahei.

  Sahei appeared one morning after Isaku had finished his third night on the cauldrons and was putting sand onto the remains of the fire in the hut.

  ‘How’s the work on the salt going?’ asked Sahei as he sat down on the log in the hut.

  Isaku was annoyed whenever Sahei acted as if he were the older of the two, but he did feel awed by Sahei’s size and precociousness. Sahei also had a glint in his eye, the look of a worldly-wise man.

  ‘I’m managing,’ said Isaku, looking away.

  ‘Do you ever feel like nodding off?’ said Sahei, studying Isaku’s expression.

  Isaku took this to mean that he mustn’t be the only one having problems staying awake, which made him feel a little more at ease.

  ‘I get sleepy all right.’ Isaku sat down on the log next to Sahei and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Then you’re not taking it seriously enough. If you think about how important the job is, you won’t be sleepy.’ A smirk appeared on Sahei’s face. Isaku said nothing, realising that Sahei would take advantage of the slightest opportunity to get an edge on him. Isaku thought Sahei’s defiant attitude might mean he was upset that Isaku had been first to receive his order from the village chief to work on the salt cauldrons.

  Nevertheless, he was ready to admit that Sahei was undoubtedly right. Quite likely Sahei could get through the night without nodding off, concentrating fully on the salt cauldrons as he kept an eye on the night sea. Isaku blinked weakly, feeling small.

  ‘You heard about O-fune-sama and the bailiff?’ Sahei said, looking sideways at Isaku.

  Isaku turned to look at him. He had no idea what O-fune-sama could have to do with a bailiff. Isaku’s father and mother seldom talked about village affairs, but in Sahei’s family his grandfather and parents discussed all manner of topics; so it was only natural that Sahei would come to learn a great deal. Sahei’s knowledge was another reason Isaku felt a little intimidated by the boy.

  ‘A bailiff?’ he whispered suspiciously.

  ‘You didn’t know? You mean you started working the salt cauldrons without knowing about it?’ sneered Sahei.

  Isaku was irritated by Sahei’s attitude, as well as somewhat uneasy. He had never seen a bailiff but certainly had heard that they were to be feared – stories of how bailiffs would arrest people, tie them up, and cut off their heads or burn them alive on a crucifix or impale them on a pike. Isaku felt crushed by Sahei’s hints of a connection between O-fune-sama and the bailiff, and he thought his ignorance made him unfit to work the salt cauldrons.

  ‘Tell me, then. What about the bailiff?’ he said.

  Sahei didn’t reply. He was watching the women on the beach carry the salt away.

  ‘I heard the story from my grandfather,’ Sahei began. He explained that it had happened when O-fune-sama came one winter, some time before his grandfather was born. That night, too, in heavy seas a ship had had its bottom smashed open on the reef after being lured to the cauldron fires lit on the shore. It was a ship of considerable size, and though the crew had jettisoned some of the cargo there was still a large amount left.

  ‘The people in the village were ecstatic, but they were shocked when they saw the crest on the sail,’ said Sahei, grim-faced.

  The sails had been taken down, but the large insignia on them indicated that it was a clan ship. The cargo on board was government property, and stealing it would of course invite harsh retribution. Terror-stricken, the villagers put out boats and rescued the captain and crew clinging to the wrecked ship. They waited for the sea to calm before they unloaded the cargo onto the beach and pulled the sails and the smashed pieces of ship’s timber up onto the shore. Also, they retrieved the bodies of two drowned clansmen, one crewman, and a galley boy who had been washed overboard and found at the foot of the cape.

  A messenger was sent to the next village over the ridge, and seven days later a young bailiff appeared, accompanied by two attendants. The village chief and the other people in the village prostrated themselves on the ground in the chief’s courtyard to greet the bailiff.

  The villagers were afraid that the bailiff would suspect that the fires under the salt cauldrons were for luring passing ships onto the rocks. Trembling with fear, the chief had kept his forehead to the ground, muttering simple replies to the bailiff’s questions.

  Fortunately the official did not catch on to the villagers’ secret. He thought it only natural that they should be making salt
on the beach and saw nothing strange in the fact that the sailors might mistake the fires for houses and turn their ship towards the treacherous rocks lining the coast. On the contrary, upon hearing the testimony of the rescued sailors, the bailiff was pleased at how the villagers had handled the clan ship. Everyone in the village helped to lay out the cargo and broken pieces of wood from the ship to dry in the sun, or piled them inside the village chief’s house or in the yard. Also, the four bodies that had been recovered were temporarily interred in one corner of the yard, and a black flag of mourning was put up.

  The bailiff seemed to think that the villagers were blameless, and left with the ship’s survivors. In due course, he appeared in the village again, this time with some men leading several oxen. They collected the ship’s cargo that had been stored at the village chief’s house, lashed it onto the oxen, and carried it away. They took the sailcloth but let the villagers keep what was left of the wrecked ship.

  Though the village benefited very little, the people were greatly relieved to have avoided punishment. But their fears were not easily allayed, and no more salt was made that year. They regained their composure with the first signs of spring. Soon, however, they were grey with fear again as they were tormented by another unexpected calamity.

  One day, three men leading some oxen appeared on the mountain path. One of these unsavoury-looking characters, wearing a sword in a faded scabbard, presented himself at the village chief’s house.

  Claiming to be a bailiff, he shouted angrily that people in the village were hiding cargo from the wrecked clan ship. Petrified, the village chief pleaded with him in a trembling voice. But the men paid no heed, and the next day they made everyone in the village, including the village chief, empty their larders of stored provisions and lash everything onto the pack animals, menacing the people with their swords as they drove the oxen back up the mountain path.