The Big Wave: A Novel

by Pearl S. Buck

  “I will not wake him,” Old Gentleman said. “I only want to see him.”

  So Kino’s father led Old Gentleman tiptoe into the room where Jiya slept, and Kino went too. The servant held the light, shaded by his hand so it would not fall on Jiya’s closed eyes. Old Gentleman looked down on the sleeping boy. Jiya was very beautiful even though so pale and weary. He was tall for his age and his body was strong, and his face showed intelligence as well as beauty.

  Old Gentleman gazed at him and then motioned to the servant to lead him away. They went again to the dooryard and there Old Gentleman turned to Kino’s father.

  “It is my habit when the big wave comes to care for those who are orphaned. Three times the wave has come, and three times I have searched out the orphans and the widows and I have fed them and sheltered them. But I have heard of this boy Jiya and I wish to do more for him. If he is as good as he is handsome, I will make him my own son.”

  “But Jiya is ours!” Kino cried.

  “Hush,” his father cried. “We are only poor people. If Old Gentleman wants Jiya we cannot say we will not give him up.”

  “Exactly,” Old Gentleman said. “I will educate him and give him fine clothes and send him to a good school and he may become a great man and an honor to our whole province and even to the nation.”

  “But if he lives in the castle we can’t play together any more,” Kino said.

  “We must think of Jiya’s good,” Kino’s father said. Then he turned to Old Gentleman. “Sir, it is very kind of you to propose this for Jiya. I had planned to take him for my own son, now that he has lost his birth parents, but I am only a poor farmer and I cannot pretend that my house is as good as yours, or that I can afford to send Jiya to a fine school. Tomorrow when he wakes, I will tell him of your kind offer. He will decide.”

  “Very well,” Old Gentleman said. “But let him come and tell me himself, so that I will know how he feels.”

  “Certainly,” Kino’s father replied proudly. “Jiya will speak for himself.”

  How unhappy Kino now was to think that Jiya might leave this house and go and live in the castle! “If Jiya goes away, I shan’t have a brother,” he told his father.

  “You must not be so selfish, Kino,” his father replied. “You must allow Jiya to make his own choice. It would be wrong to persuade him. Kino, I forbid you to speak to Jiya of this matter. When he wakes I shall speak to him myself.”

  When his father was so stern Kino did not dare to disobey and so he went sadly to bed. He thought when he drew his quilt over him that he would not sleep all night, but being young and tired he slept almost at once.

  Yet as soon as he woke in the morning he remembered Jiya and the choice he had to make. He got up and washed and dressed and folded his quilt and put it into the closet where it stayed during the day. His father was already out in the field, and there Kino went and found him. It was a beautiful mild morning, and a soft mist covered the ocean so that no water could be seen.

  “Is Jiya awake yet?” Kino asked his father when they had exchanged morning greetings.

  “No, but he will wake soon, I think,” his father replied. He was weeding the cabbage bed carefully and Kino knelt down to help him.

  “Must you tell him about Old Gentleman today?” Kino pleaded.

  “I must tell him as soon as he wakes,” his father replied. “It would not be fair to let Jiya grow used to thinking of this as his home. He must make the choice today, before he has time to put down his new roots.”

  “May I be there when you talk with him?” Kino asked next.

  “No, my son,” his father replied. “I shall talk to him alone and tell him all the benefits that a rich man like Old Gentleman can give him and how little we who are poor can give him.”

  Kino could not keep from wanting to cry. He thought his father was very hard. “But Jiya will certainly want to go away!” he sobbed.

  “Then he must go,” his father said.

  They went into the house to have breakfast, but Kino could scarcely eat. After breakfast he went back to the field, for he did not want to play. His father stayed in the house, and he could hear Jiya getting up.

  For a long time Kino stayed in the field working alone. The warm tears dropped from his eyes upon the earth, but he worked on, determined not to go to the house until he was called. Then when the sun was nearing the zenith, he heard his father’s voice. He got up at once and walked along the path between the terraces until he reached the doorway. There his father stood with Jiya. Jiya’s face was still pale and his eyes were red. He had been crying today, although until now he had not cried at all.

  When he looked at Kino his tears began to flow again. “Jiya, you must not mind it that you cry easily,” Kino’s father said kindly. “Until now you could not cry because you were not fully alive. You had been hurt too much. But today you are beginning to live, and so your tears flow. It is good for you. Let your tears come and do not stop them.”

  Then he turned to Kino. “I have told Jiya that he must not decide until he has seen the inside of the castle. I want him to see all that Old Gentleman can give him for a home. Jiya, you know how our house is—these four rooms and the kitchen, this little farm, upon which we have to work so hard for our food. We have only what our hands can earn for us.”

  Kino’s father held out his two hard, work-worn hands. Then he went on, “Kino, you are to go with Jiya, and when you see the castle you must persuade him to stay there, for his own sake.”

  Kino heard this and felt the task laid upon him was very hard. But he only said, “I will go and wash myself, Father, and put on my good clothes.”

  “No,” his father said. “Go as you are—you are a farmer’s son.”

  So the two boys went down the mountainside, and avoiding the empty beach, they went to the castle. The gate was open and the garden was most beautiful. A gardener was sweeping the green moss.

  When he saw them he came over to them. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “My father sent us to see the honored Old Gentleman,” Kino faltered.

  “Are you the Uchiyama boy?” the gardener asked.

  “Yes,” Kino replied, “and this is Jiya, whom Old Gentleman wants to come and live here.”

  “Follow me, if you please,” the gardener said. He bowed to Jiya and made his voice polite.

  The two boys followed him along a wide, pebbled path. Over their heads the ancient pines leaned their crooked branches. In the distance beyond the forest the sun poured down upon a flower garden and a pool with a waterfall.

  “How beautiful it is!” Kino whispered sadly.

  Jiya did not answer. He walked along, his head held high. When they reached the house they took off their shoes and followed the gardener through a great door. Inside this the gardener paused, and a manservant came forward and asked what they wanted. The gardener whispered and the manservant nodded. “Follow me,” he said to the boys.

  So they followed him through wide passageways. The walls were of fine polished wood, unpainted, but smooth and silvery. Under their feet, fine woven, padded mats were softer than the moss beneath the trees. On both sides of this passageway panels slid back to show beautiful rooms, and in each room were a vase of flowers, an exquisite scroll, a few pieces of dark polished furniture. Neither Jiya nor Kino had ever seen such a house. Kino was speechless. How could he hope now that Jiya would not want to stay in the castle?

  Then far in the distance they saw Old Gentleman sitting beside a small table. The table was set in front of the open sliding panels that looked into the garden, and Old Gentleman was writing. He held a brush upright in his right hand and he was carefully painting letters on a scroll, his silver-rimmed spectacles sliding down his nose.

  When the two boys came near he looked up and took off his spectacles and laid down his brush. “Would you like to know what I have been writing?” he asked.

  Neither Kino nor Jiya could answer. The great house, the silence, the beauty, all of this fell i
nto place as the background for Old Gentleman himself. He was tall and thin, and his hair and beard were white. His face and hands were beautiful. The bones were delicate and the skin was smooth and brown. He looked as proud as a king, but his dark eyes were wise as an old scholar’s eyes are wise.

  “It is not my own poem,” he said. “It is the saying of a man of India, but I like it so much that I have painted it on this scroll to hang there in the alcove where I can see it every day.” He took up the scroll and read these words:

  “The Children of God are very dear, but

  very queer—

  Very nice, but very narrow.”

  He looked at the boys. “What do you think of it?” he said.

  They looked at one another. “We do not understand it, sir,” Jiya said at last. Since he was a little older than Kino, he felt he should speak.

  Old Gentleman shook his head and laughed softly. “Ah, we are all the children of God,” he said. Then he put on his spectacles and looked hard at Jiya. “Well?” he said. “Will you be my son?”

  Jiya turned very red. He had not expected to have the question put to him so suddenly and so directly.

  Old Gentleman saw he found it hard to speak. “Say yes or no,” he told Jiya. “Those are not hard words to say.”

  “I will say,—no!” Jiya said. Then he felt this was harsh. “I thank you but I have a home—on the farm,” he added.

  Ah, how Kino felt when he heard these words! He forgot entirely about the big wave and all the sorrow it had brought, and for a moment he was filled with pure joy. Then he remembered the small farmhouse, the four little rooms and the old kitchen.

  “Jiya,” he said solemnly, “remember how poor we are.”

  Old Gentleman was smiling a half-sad little smile. “They are certainly very poor,” he said to Jiya. “And here, you know, you would have everything. You can even invite this farm boy to come and play sometimes, if you like. And I am quite willing for you to give the family some money. It would be suitable, as my son, for you to help the poor.”

  “Where are the others who were saved from the big wave?” Jiya asked suddenly.

  “Some wanted to go away, and the ones who wanted to stay are out in the back yard with my servants,” Old Gentleman replied.

  “Why do you not invite them to come into this big house and be your sons and daughters?” Jiya asked.

  “Because I don’t want them for my sons and daughters,” Old Gentleman replied rather crossly. “You are a bright, handsome boy, and they told me you were the best boy in the village.”

  Jiya looked about him. Then he shook his head again. “I am no better than the others,” he said. “My father was a fisherman.”

  Old Gentleman took up his spectacles and his brush again. “Very well,” he said, “I will do without a son.”

  The manservant motioned to them and they followed, and soon they were out in the garden again.

  “How foolish you are!” the manservant said to Jiya. “Our Old Gentleman is very kind indeed. You would have everything here.”

  “Not everything,” Jiya replied.

  They went out of the gate and across the hillside again back to the farmhouse. Setsu was outside and she came running to meet them, the sleeves of her bright kimono flying behind her and her feet clattering in wooden sandals.

  “Jiya has come back home!” she cried. “Jiya—Jiya—”

  And Jiya, seeing her happy little face, opened his arms and gave her a great hug. For the first time he felt comfort creep into his sad heart, and this comfort came from Setsu, who was like life itself.

  Their noonday meal was ready and Kino’s father came in from the fields, and when he had washed they all sat down to eat.

  “How happy you have made us!” he told Jiya.

  “Happy indeed,” Kino’s mother said.

  “Now I have my brother,” Kino said.

  Jiya only smiled. Happiness began to live in him secretly, hidden inside him, in ways he did not understand or know. The good food warmed him and his body welcomed it. Around him the love of the four people who received him glowed like a warm and welcoming fire upon the hearth.

  Chapter Four

  TIME PASSED. Jiya grew up in the farmhouse to be a tall young man, and Kino grew at his side, solid and strong, but never as tall as Jiya. Setsu grew, too, from a mischievous, laughing little girl into a gay, willful, pretty girl. But time, however long, was split in two parts by the big wave. People spoke of “the time before” and “the time after” the big wave. The big wave had changed everyone’s life.

  For years no one returned to live on the empty beach. The tides rose and fell, sweeping the sands clean every day. Storms came and went, but there was never again such a wave as the big one. Then people began to think that perhaps there would never again be such a big wave. The few fishermen who had listened to the tolling bell from the castle and had been saved with their wives and children had gone to other shores to fish, and they had made new fishing boats.

  But as time passed after the big wave, they began to tell themselves that there was no beach quite so good as the old one. There, they said, the water was deep and great fish came close to the shore in schools. They did not need to go far out to sea to seek the booty. The channels between the islands were rich.

  Now Kino and Jiya had not often gone to the beach again, either. Once or twice they had walked along the place where the street had been, and Jiya had searched for some keepsake from his home that the sea might have washed back to the shore. But nothing was ever found. The surf was too violent above deep waters, and even bodies had not returned. So the two boys, now young men, did not visit the deserted beach very often. When they went to swim in the sea, they walked across the farm and over another fold of the hill.

  But Kino saw that Jiya always looked out of the door every morning and he looked at the empty beach, searching with his eyes as though something might one day come back. One day he did see something. Kino was at the door putting on his shoes and he heard Jiya cry out in a loud voice, “Kino, come here!” Quickly Kino went and Jiya pointed down the hillside. “Look—is someone building a house on the beach?”

  Kino looked and saw that indeed it was so. Two men were pounding posts into the sand, and a woman and a child stood near, watching. “Can it be that they will build again on the beach?” he exclaimed.

  But they could not rest with watching. They ran down the hill to the beach and went to the two men. “Are you building a house?” Jiya cried.

  The men paused and the elder one nodded. “Our father used to live here and we with him. During these years we have lived in the outhouses of the castle and we have fished from other shores. Now we are tired of having no homes of our own. Besides, this is still the best of all beaches for fishing.”

  “But what if the big wave comes back?” Kino asked.

  The men shrugged their shoulders. “There was a big wave in our great-grandfather’s time. All the houses were swept away, but our grandfather came back. In our father’s time the big wave came again, but now we come back.”

  “What of your children?” Kino asked anxiously.

  “The big wave may never come back,” the men said. And they began to pound the post into the sand again.

  All this time Jiya had not said another word. He stood watching the work, his face musing and strange. The big wave and the sorrow it had brought had changed him forever. Never again would he laugh easily or talk carelessly. He had learned to live with his parents and his brother dead, as Kino’s father had said he would, and he did not weep. He thought of them every day and he did not feel they were far from him or he from them. Their faces, their voices, the way his father talked and looked, his mother’s smile, his brother’s laughter, all were with him still and would be forever. But since the big wave he had been no longer a child. In school he had earnestly learned all that he could, and now he worked hard on the farm. He valued deeply everything that was good. Since the big wave had been so cruel, he could n
ot bear cruelty, and he grew into the kindest and most gentle man that Kino had ever seen. Jiya never spoke of his loneliness. He did not want anyone to be sad because of his sadness. When he laughed at some trick of Setsu’s, or when she teased him, his laughter was wonderful to hear because it was so whole and real.

  Now as he stood watching the new house being made on the beach, he felt a strong delight. Could it be true that people would gather once more on this beach to make a village? Was it right that it be so?

  At this moment there was a commotion on the hillside. They looked up and saw it was Old Gentleman, coming slowly down the rocky path. He was very old indeed now, and he walked with difficulty. Two menservants supported him.

  The elder builder threw down his stone mallet. “Here comes our Old Gentleman,” he told the others. “He is very angry or he wouldn’t have left the castle.”

  Anyone could see that Old Gentleman was angry. He grasped his long staff, and when he came near them he pulled his beard and moved his eyebrows. His body was as thin as a bamboo, and with the wind blowing his white hair and long white beard, he looked like an ancient god out of the temple.

  “You foolish children!” he cried in his high old voice. “You have left the safety of my walls and come back to this dangerous shore to make your home, as your fathers did before you. The big wave will come back and sweep you into the ocean again!”

  “It may not come, Ancient Sir,” the elder builder said mildly.

  “It will come!” Old Gentleman insisted. “I have spent my whole life in trying to save foolish people from the big wave. But you will not be saved.”

  Suddenly Jiya spoke. “This is our home. Dangerous as it is, threatened by the volcano and by the sea, it is here we were born.”

  Old Gentleman looked at him. “Don’t I know you?” he asked.

  “Sir, I was once in your castle,” Jiya replied.

  Old Gentleman nodded. “Now I remember you. I wanted you for my son. Ah, you made a great mistake, young man! You could have lived in my castle safely forever and your children would have been safe there, too. The big wave never reaches me.”