“The only thing that really counts in a man is his get-up-and-go. If he’s got get-up-and-go he’s a real man, and those are the kind of men we need here on Uta-jima. Family and money are all secondary. Don’t you think so, Mistress Lighthouse-Keeper? And that’s what he’s got—Shinji—get-up-and-go.”
16
SHINJI COULD now visit the Miyata house openly. One night after returning from fishing he called Hatsue’s name from the front door. He was wearing freshly laundered trousers and a clean white sport shirt, and from each hand there dangled a big red-snapper.
Hatsue was ready and waiting. They had made a date to go to Yashiro Shrine and the lighthouse to announce their engagement and express their thanks.
The dusk in the earthen-floored room became lighter when Hatsue entered. She was wearing the light summer kimono with large-patterned morning-glories on a white background that she had bought on that occasion from the peddler, and its whiteness was brilliant even at night.
Shinji had been leaning against the door waiting, but when Hatsue came out he suddenly looked down, waved one clog-shod foot as though to drive away insects, and mumbled:
“The mosquitoes are terrible.”
“Aren’t they though?”
They went up the stone stairs leading to Yashiro Shrine. They could easily have run up them at a single breath, but instead, their hearts filled to overflowing with contentment, they ascended slowly, as though savoring the pleasure of each separate step. When they reached the hundredth step, they paused as though reluctant to end this happy climb by going on to the top. The boy wanted to hold her hand, but the red-snappers prevented him.
Nature too again smiled on them. When they reached the top they turned around and looked out over the Gulf of Ise. The night sky was filled with stars and, as for clouds, there was only a low bank stretching across the horizon in the direction of the Chita Peninsula, through which soundless lightning ran from time to time. Nor was the sound of the waves strong, but coming regularly and peacefully, as though the sea were breathing in healthy slumber.
Passing through the pine grove, they reached the unpretentious shrine and stopped to worship. The boy was filled with pride by the loud and clear sound his formal handclap made, ringing out far and wide. So he clapped his hands again.
Hatsue had bowed her head and was praying. Against the white background of her kimono collar, the nape of her suntanned neck did not look particularly white, and yet it charmed Shinji more than the whitest of white necks could have done.
In his heart the boy reminded himself again of his happiness—the gods had indeed given him everything he had prayed for.
They prayed for a long while. And, in the very fact of their never once having doubted the providence of the gods, they could feel that providence around them.
The shrine office was brightly lit Shinji called out and the priest came to the window.
Shinji’s words were rather vague, and for a while the priest could make neither head nor tail of what the two had come about. But at last he understood, and Shinji presented him with one of the red-snappers as their offering to the gods. Receiving this splendid gift from the sea, the priest was reminded that presently he would be officiating at their wedding rites. He congratulated them heartily.
Climbing the path through the pine grove behind the shrine, they again savored the night’s coolness. Though the sun was completely set, the cicadas were still singing. The path leading up to the lighthouse was steep. One of his hands was now free, so Shinji held the girl’s hand.
“Me,” said Shinji, “I’m thinking I’ll take the exam and get a first mate’s license. You can after you’re twenty, you know.”
“Oh, that’d be wonderful.”
“If I got my license, I guess it’d be all right to have the wedding then.”
Hatsue made no reply but only smiled shyly.
They rounded Woman’s Slope and approached the residence of the lighthouse-keeper. The boy called out his greetings as always at the glass door, where they could again see the mistress’s shadow moving about as she prepared supper.
The mistress opened the door. There in the darkness she saw the boy and his betrothed standing hesitantly.
“Oh, here you both are, and welcome,” the wife called out in a loud voice, finally taking in both hands the large fish that was thrust out to her. Then she called back into the house:
“Father, here’s Shinji-san with a fine red-snapper for us.”
Taking his ease in one of the inner rooms, the lighthouse-keeper called back without getting up:
“Thanks as always. And this time it’s congratulations too. Come in, come in.”
“Please do come in,” the mistress added. “Tomorrow Chiyoko’s coming back, too.”
The boy had not the slightest idea of all the emotions he had aroused in Chiyoko, nor of the mental anguish she had experienced because of him, and he heard the mother’s abrupt remark without attaching any significance to it.
Having been almost forcibly made to stay for supper, they stayed on for nearly an hour longer, and then it was decided that the lighthouse-keeper would show them around the lighthouse on their way home. Hatsue, having only recently returned to the island, had never seen the interior of the lighthouse.
First the lighthouse-keeper showed them the watchhouse. To reach it from the residence they walked along the edge of the small vegetable garden, where radishes had been planted just the day before, and climbed a flight of concrete steps. At the top there was the lighthouse, standing back against the mountain, and the watchhouse at the edge of the cliff that fell to the sea.
The beacon of the lighthouse, like a shining column of fog, was sweeping from right to left across the top of the watchhouse gable on the side facing the sea. The lighthouse-keeper opened the door of the watchhouse and, preceding them, turned on a light. They saw the drafting triangles hanging on a window frame, the scrupulously tidy desk with its log for recording ships’ movements, and, on a tripod facing the windows, the telescope.
The lighthouse-keeper opened a window, adjusted the telescope, and lowered it to the right height for Hatsue.
Hatsue took one look through the telescope, stopped and wiped the lens with her kimono sleeve, looked again, and gave a shout of joy:
“Oh, beautiful!”
Then, as Hatsue pointed to the lights in various directions, Shinji picked them out with his phenomenally keen eyes and explained them to her.
Keeping her eye to the telescope, Hatsue pointed first to the scores of lights dotting the sea to the southeast.
“Those? They’re the lights of the drag-net boats. They come from over in Aichi Prefecture.”
It seemed as though each of the vast number of lights out over the sea found its counterpart somewhere among the vast number of stars in the sky. Directly opposite was the beam from the lighthouse on Cape Irako. Behind it were scattered the lights of the town of Cape Irako, and to the left the lights of Shino Island were faintly visible.
At their extreme left they could see the Cape Noma lighthouse on the Chita Peninsula. To its right were the clustered lights of the port of Toyohama. That red light in the middle—that was the light on the port’s break-water. And, far to the right, there flickered the aircraft beacon on top of Mt. Oyama.
Hatsue gave a second cry of admiration. A large ocean-liner had just come into the field of the telescope. It was scarcely visible to the naked eye, but as the ship made its stately way across the telescope’s field of view, its delicate reflection was so splendid and clear that the boy and girl compromised by taking turns at the telescope.
It seemed to be a combined cargo and passenger ship of two or three thousand tons. In a room off the promenade deck they could plainly see several tables spread with white cloths, and a number of chairs. Not a single person was visible. The room was apparently the dining-salon, and as they were examining its walls of white asphalt-tile, suddenly a white-uniformed steward entered from the right and passed in front
of the windows. …
Presently the vessel, carrying green lights at bow and stern, passed out of the telescope’s range and sailed away through the Irako Channel, bound for the Pacific.
The lighthouse-keeper took them next to the lighthouse itself. On the ground floor the electric generator was making a rumbling noise, surrounded by the odor of oil—oil cans, oil lamps, and tins of oil. Ascending the narrow spiral staircase, they found, housed in a small and lonely round room at the top, the source of the lighthouse’s light, living its life away in silence.
Looking from the window, they watched the beam of light making its vast sweeps from right to left across the black, clamoring waves of the Irako Channel.
Tactfully, the lighthouse-keeper went back down the spiral staircase, leaving the two of them alone there.
. . .
The small round room at the top of the tower was enclosed in walls of polished wood. Its brass fittings gleaming, the thick glass lens revolved leisurely around the five-hundred-watt electric bulb, magnifying this source of light to sixty-five thousand candle power and maintaining a speed that produced a constant series of flashes. Reflections from the lens moved around the circular wooden wall and, to the accompaniment of the squeak-squeak-squeak revolving sound characteristic of lighthouses built before the turn of the century, these same reflections played across the backs of the boy and his betrothed, who had their faces pressed against the window.
They felt their cheeks so close together that they could touch at any moment, felt too the flaming heat of each other’s cheeks. … Out in front of them stretched the unfathomable darkness, where the beam from the lighthouse was making its vast, regular sweeps. And the reflections of the lens kept circling around inside the little room, their patterns disrupted only at the spot where they crossed the backs of the white shirt and the flower-patterned kimono.
Once again it came to pass that Shinji, little given to thinking as he was, was lost in thought. He was thinking that in spite of all they’d been through, here they were in the end, free within the moral code to which they had been born, never once having been estranged from the providence of the gods … that, in short, it was this little island, enfolded in darkness, that had protected their happiness and brought their love to this fulfillment. …
Suddenly Hatsue turned to Shinji and laughed. From her sleeve she took out a small, pink shell and showed it to him.
“Remember this?”
“I remember.”
The boy flashed his beautiful teeth in a smile. Then, from the breast pocket of his shirt, he took out the snapshot of Hatsue and showed it to her.
Hatsue touched the picture lightly with her own hand and then returned it. Her eyes were full of pride. She was thinking it was her picture that had protected Shinji.
But at this moment Shinji lifted his eyebrows. He knew it had been his own strength that had tided him through that perilous night.
BY YUKIO MISHIMA
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The Sound of Waves Page 15
