The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea Page 12

  “We’ve never done anything about it before,” interrupted number one.

  “That doesn’t mean we’re never going to,” the chief answered adroitly, his voice benign. “But getting back to Ryuji Tsukazaki,” he continued, “he’s never meant much to the group as a whole, but for number three he was a person of considerable importance. At least he’s credited with having shown number three some luminous evidence of the internal order of life I’ve mentioned so often. But then he betrayed number three. He became the worst thing on the face of this earth, a father. And something has to be done. It would have been much better if he’d just stayed the useless sailor he started out to be.

  “As I’ve said before, life consists of simple symbols and decisions. Ryuji may not have have known it, but he was one of those symbols. At least, according to number three’s testimony it seems that he was.

  “I’m sure you all know where our duty lies. When a gear slips out of place it’s our job to force it back into position. If we don’t, order will turn to chaos. We all know that the world is empty and that the important thing, the only thing, is to try to maintain order in that emptiness. And so we are guards, and more than that because we also have executive power to insure that order is maintained.”

  The chief stated the conclusion simply: “We’ll have to pass sentence. In the long run it’s for his own good. Number three! Do you remember that day on the pier when I said there was only one way to make him a hero again, and that soon I’d be able to tell you what it was?”

  “I remember,” Noboru answered, trying to keep his legs from trembling.

  “Well, the time has come.”

  The other boys sought each other’s faces, then sat motionless and silent. They understood the grave importance of what the chief was about to say.

  They gazed into the empty, dusk-shadowed pool. White lines were painted on the chipped blue bottom. The dry leaves in the corners had sifted in like dust.

  At that moment, the pool was terrifically deep. Deeper and deeper as watery blue darkness seeped up from the bottom. The knowledge, so certain it was sensuous, that nothing was there to support the body if one plunged in generated around the empty pool an unremitting tension. Gone now was the soft summer water that received the swimmer’s body and bore him lightly afloat, but the pool, like a monument to summer and to water, had endured, and it was dangerous, lethal.

  The blue steel ladder crept over the edge and down into the pool and, still far from the bottom, stopped. Nothing there to support a body, nothing at all!

  “Classes are over at two tomorrow; we can have him meet us here and then take him out to our dry dock at Sugita. Number three, it’s up to you to lure him down here somehow.

  “I’m going to give the rest of you instructions now. Please remember what you’re supposed to bring. I’ll take care of the sleeping pills and the scalpel myself. We won’t be able to handle a powerful man like that unless we knock him out first. Adults are supposed to take one to three tablets of that German stuff we’ve got at home, so he should go out like a light if we give him about seven. I’ll make powder out of the tablets so they’ll dissolve quicker in tea.

  “Number one, you’re to bring some six-foot lengths of strong hemp rope; you’d better have—let’s see—one, two, three, four—make it five lengths just to be sure. Number two, you prepare a thermos of hot tea and hide it in your briefcase. Since number three has the job of getting him down here, he doesn’t have to bring anything. We’ll need sugar and spoons, and paper cups for us and a dark-colored plastic cup for him—that’ll be your job, number four. Number five, you get some cloth for a blindfold and a towel we can use for a gag.

  “You can each bring any kind of cutting tool you like—knives, saws, whatever you prefer.

  “We’ve already practiced the essentials on a cat and this’ll be the same, so there’s nothing to worry about. The job’s a little bigger this time, that’s all—and it may stink a little worse.”

  The boys sat dumb as stones and stared into the empty pool.

  “Are you scared, number one?” Number one managed a slight shake of his head.

  “How about you, number two?” As though suddenly cold, the boy stuffed his hands into his overcoat pockets.

  “What’s wrong, number three?” Noboru was gasping for breath, his mouth utterly dry as if stuffed with straw: he couldn’t answer.

  “That’s what I was afraid of. You’re all great talkers, but when the chips are down you haven’t got one thimbleful of nerve. Well, maybe this will make you feel better; I brought it along just in case.” The chief produced from his briefcase an ocher lawbook and deftly flipped it open to the page he wanted.

  “I want all of you to listen carefully: ‘Penal Code, Article Fourteen,’” he read. “‘Acts of juveniles less than fourteen years of age are not punishable by law.’ I’ll read it again as loud as I can: ‘Acts of tuveniles less than fourteen years of age are not punishable by law.’”

  The chief had the others pass the book around while he continued: “You might say that our fathers and the fictitious society they believe in passed this law for our benefit. And I think we should be grateful to them. This law is the adults’ way of expressing the high hopes they have for us. But it also represents all the dreams they’ve never been able to make come true. They’ve assumed just because they’ve roped themselves so tight they can’t even budge that we must be helpless too; they’ve been careless enough to allow us here, and only here, a glimpse of blue sky and absolute freedom.

  “This law they’ve written is a kind of nursery tale, a pretty deadly nursery tale, I’d say. And in a way it’s understandable. After all, up to now we have been nursery kids, adorable, defenseless, innocent kids.

  “But three of us here will be fourteen next month—myself, number one, and you, number three. And you other three will be fourteen in March. Just think about it a minute. This is our last chance!”

  The chief scrutinized their faces and saw tension easing out of their cheeks, fear dwindling away. Awakening for the first time to society’s sweet cordiality, the boys felt secure in the knowledge that their enemies were actually their protectors.

  Noboru looked up at the sky. Afternoon blue was fading into the sifting grays of dusk. Suppose Ryuji tried at the height of his heroic death throes to look up at this hallowed sky? It seemed a shame to blindfold him.

  “This is our last chance,” the chief repeated. “If we don’t act now we will never again be able to obey freedom’s supreme command, to perform the deed essential to filling the emptiness of the world, unless we are prepared to sacrifice our lives. And you can see that it’s absurd for the executioners to risk their own lives. If we don’t act now we’ll never be able to steal again, or murder, or do any of the things that testify to man’s freedom. We’ll end up puking flattery and gossip, trembling our days away in submission and compromise and fear, worrying about what the neighbors are doing, living like squealing mice. And someday we’ll get married, and have kids, and finally we’ll become fathers, the vilest things on earth!

  “We must have blood! Human blood! If we don’t get it this empty world will go pale and shrivel up. We must drain that sailor’s fresh lifeblood and transfuse it to the dying universe, the dying sky, the dying forests, and the drawn, dying land.

  “Now! The time is now! In another month they’ll have finished clearing the land around our dry dock and then the place will fill up with people. Besides, we’re almost fourteen.”

  The chief glanced through a black frame of evergreen branches at the watery gray sky and observed: “Looks like tomorrow will be a nice day.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ON the morning of the twenty-second, Fusako went with Ryuji to City Hall to ask the Mayor of Yokohama if he would be toastmaster at their wedding dinner. He said he would be honored. On the way back, they stopped at a department store and ordered engraved wedding announcements. Reservations for the reception had already been made at the New Grand H
otel. After an early lunch downtown, they returned to Rex.

  Just after one, Ryuji left the shop to keep an appointment he had mentioned earlier in the day. A high-school classmate who was now a First Officer had docked that morning at Takashima Pier and was free to meet him only in the early afternoon. And Ryuji didn’t want to appear in an expensive English suit. He didn’t like the idea of flaunting his new circumstances in front of an old friend; at least not until after the wedding. He would stop at the house on his way to the dock and change into his old seaman’s clothes.

  “Are you sure I don’t have to worry that you’ll get on that ship and disappear?” Fusako teased as she accompanied him to the door.

  Noboru, pretending to need help with homework, had summoned Ryuji conspiratorially to his room the night before and entrusted him with a mission which he was discharging faithfully:

  “Dad, all the guys are looking forward to hearing some of your sea stories tomorrow afternoon. We’re going to meet on that hill above the pool when school gets out at two. Everybody’s been wanting to meet you and I promised you’d come. You will, won’t you? And tell them some of your adventures? And would you wear your sailor clothes like you used to, and your sailor cap? Only it’s got to be a secret from Mom. You could tell her you’re going to meet an old friend or something and get off work early.”

  This was the first son-to-father favor Noboru had ever asked and Ryuji was determined not to betray the boy’s trust. It was a father’s duty. Even if the truth got out later it would only mean having a good laugh together, so he had fabricated a plausible story and left the shop early.

  Ryuji was sitting on the roots of a giant oak near the top of the hill when the boys appeared just after two. One of them, a boy with crescent eyebrows and red lips who seemed particularly bright, thanked him politely for having come, and then suggested that a more suitable spot for his talk would be what he called their dry dock. Supposing they were headed somewhere near the harbor, Ryuji agreed to go.

  It was a mild midwinter afternoon. The shade was chilly but in the sun, which reached them through a wispy layer of cloud, they didn’t need their overcoats. Ryuji was wearing his gray turtleneck sweater and carried his pea coat over his arm; the six boys, each with a briefcase, anticked around him as he walked along, now surging ahead, now falling behind. For this generation, they were smallish boys: the scene reminded Ryuji of six tugboats laboring futilely to tow a freighter out to sea. He didn’t notice that their frolicking had a kind of frenzied uneasiness.

  The boy with the crescent eyebrows informed him they were going to take a streetcar. Ryuji was surprised, but he made no objection: he understood that the setting for a story was important to boys this age. No one made a move to get off until the last stop at Sugita, which was far south of the city.

  “Say, where are you guys taking me?” he asked repeatedly, as though amused. He had determined to spend a day with the boys and it wouldn’t do to appear annoyed, no matter what happened.

  Though careful not to draw attention to the fact, he was observing Noboru constantly. As the boy mingled happily with his friends, Ryuji saw the piercing look of cross-examination go out of his eyes for the first time. It was like watching motes of dust dance into color in the winter light streaming through the streetcar window: borders between Noboru and the others became blurred, and he confused them. That had hardly seemed possible, not with a boy so different from everyone else, a lonely boy with a peculiar habit of eying adults furtively. And it proved that Ryuji had been right to take off half a day in order to amuse Noboru and his friends. Right, he knew, in terms of a father’s moral obligation. Most books and magazines would agree. Noboru had approached voluntarily and offered in this excursion a providential opportunity to cement their relationship. It was a chance for a father and son originally strangers to forge a bond of deep and tender trust stronger than mere blood ties could ever be. And since Ryuji could very well have become a father when he was twenty, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Noboru’s age.

  As soon as they were off the streetcar, the boys began tugging Ryuji toward a road which wound into the hills. “Hey, wait a minute,” he protested. “I never heard of a dry dock in the mountains!”

  “No? But in Tokyo the subway runs up above your head!”

  “I can see I’m no match for you guys.” Ryuji winced, and the boys howled, thoroughly pleased with themselves.

  The road skirted the ridge of Aoto Hill and entered Kanazawa Ward. They passed an electric power plant with its webs of power lines and gnarled porcelain insulators thrown up against the winter sky, then entered Tomioka Tunnel. Emerging on the other side, they saw glinting along the ridge to the right the tracks of the Tokyo-Yokohama express; bright new housing lots covered the slope to the left.

  “Almost there now. We go up between those lots. All this used to be an American Army installation.” The boy who seemed to be their leader tossed the explanation over one shoulder and stepped ahead; his manner and language, in a matter of minutes, had become brusque.

  Work on the lots had been completed; there were even stone boundary fences and the skeletons of more than a few houses. Surrounding Ryuji, the six boys marched straight up the road that ran between the lots. Near the top of the hill, the road abruptly disappeared and there began a terrace of uncultivated fields. It was like clever sleight of hand: a man standing at the bottom of the hill would never guess that the straight, well-graded road gave way at this point on the slope to a grassy wilderness.

  There wasn’t a person in sight. The heavy droning of bulldozers echoed from the other side of the hill. Sounds of automobile traffic ascended from the tunnel road far below. Except for the echoes of engine noise, the vast landscape was empty and the sounds themselves only heightened the bright desolation.

  Here and there wooden stakes thrust up from the meadow: they were beginning to rot. A footpath buried under fallen leaves skirted the ridge of the hill. They crossed the withered field. Just off to the right, a rusted water tank surrounded by a tangle of barbed wire lay half buried in the ground: bolted lopsidedly to the tank was a sheet of rusting tin lettered in English. Ryuji stopped and read the notice:

  U. S. Forces Installation

  Unauthorized Entry Prohibited and Punishable

  under Japanese Law

  “What’s ‘punishable’ mean?” the leader asked There was something about the boy Ryuji didn’t like. The flicker of light in his eye when he asked the question suggested that he knew the answer perfectly well. Ryuji forced himself to explain politely.

  “Oh—but this isn’t army property any more, so I guess we can do whatever we want. Look!” Even as he spoke the boy appeared to have forgotten the subject, as though it were a balloon he had abandoned to the sky.

  “Here’s the top.”

  Ryuji stepped to the summit and gazed at the panorama stretching below. “You’ve got yourselves quite a place here.”

  The hill overlooked the northeastern sea. Away to the left, bulldozers were cutting a red-loam slope into the side of a cliff and dump trucks were hauling the earth away. Distance dwarfed the trucks but the roar of their engines battered endless waves into the choppy air. Further down in the valley were the gray roofs of an industrial laboratory and an airplane factory: in the concrete garden in front of the central offices, one small pine was bathed in sun.

  Around the factory curled an isolated country village. The thin winter sunlight accented the highs and lows in the rows of rooftops and corrected the files of shadow cast by countless ridgepoles. The objects glinting like seashells through the thin smoke covering the valley were automobile windows.

  As it neared the sea, the landscape appeared to fold in on itself and assumed a special quality of rust, and sadness, and clutter. Beyond a tangle of rusted machinery discarded on the beach, a vermilion crane swung in wobbly arcs, and beyond the crane, there was the sea, the piled white of stone breakwaters and, at the edge of the reclaimed foreshore, a green dredger smok
ing blackly.

  The sea made Ryuji feel that he had been away from it a long, long time. Fusako’s bedroom overlooked the harbor but he never went near the window any more. The water, with spring still far away, was Prussian blue except where the shadow of one pearly cloud turned it pale, chilly white. The rest of the midafternoon sky was cloudless, a bleached, monotone blue fading where it neared the horizon.

  The sea spread from the dirtied shore toward the offing like a huge ocher net. There were no ships close in to shore; several freighters were moving across the offing, small vessels and obviously, even at this distance, antique.

  “The ship I was on was no little tug like that.”

  “I’ll say—the Rakuyo had a displacement of ten thousand tons,” Noboru affirmed. He had spoken hardly a word all afternoon.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” the leader urged, tugging at Ryuji’s sleeve. Descending the footpath a short distance, they came to a segment of land miraculously untouched by the surrounding devastation, a vestige of the mountaintop as it must once have been. The clearing, on one of a twisting series of slopes sheltered from the east wind by a stand of oak and protected to the west by the heavily wooded hilltop, merged into a neglected field of winter rye. Withered vines snaked through the underbrush around the path; sitting at the tip of one was a shriveled, blood-red gourd. Sunlight out of the western sky was thwarted the moment it descended here: a few pale beams flickered over the tips of dead leaves.

  Ryuji, though he remembered having done similar things in his own youth, marveled at a young boy’s unique ability to discover this sort of hiding place and make it his own.

  “Which one of you guys found this place?”

  “I did. But I live right over in Sugita. I pass by here lots of times on the way to school. I found it and showed the other guys.”

  “And where’s this dry dock of yours?”

  “Over here.” The leader was standing in front of a small cave shadowed by the hilltop, smiling as he pointed at the entrance.