The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

by The Sailor Who Fell from Grace

  “This crap’s all lies,” the chief said angrily. Doubling his powerless white hand into a fist he pummeled the plywood wall. His small hand was for all of the boys a symbol of despair. Now they were rejected even by lies. But hadn’t the chief said once that there was a label called “impossibility” pasted all over the world, that they were the only ones who could tear it off once and for all?

  “What’s your hero been up to since last time? Well, number three? There’s a rumor going around that he’s come back. . . .” The chief felt every eye on him and his voice was cold, venomous. As he spoke, he pulled out of the pockets of his overcoat a pair of leather gloves and, smoothing them over his fingers, turned back the cuffs just enough so that the fluffy bright-red lining showed.

  “He’s back,” Noboru admitted, wishing the subject hadn’t come up.

  “And? Did he do anything terrific during this last trip?”

  “Well . . . yes! He ran into a hurricane in the Caribbean.”

  “Is that right! I suppose he got soaked like a drowned rat? Like that time he took a shower in the drinking fountain at the park?”

  With that everyone laughed and kept laughing. Noboru knew he was being ridiculed, but he quickly regained his pride and was able to report on Ryuji’s activities as though he were describing the habits of an insect.

  The sailor had lolled around the house until the seventh. When Noboru learned that the Rakuyo had sailed on the fifth, he was stunned. This man so at one with the Rakuyo’s existence, so inseparably a part of the receding luster of a ship, had sundered himself from that beautiful whole, willfully banished from his dream the phantoms of ships and the sea!

  Naturally Noboru stuck close to Ryuji during the vacation and listened to sea stories by the hour, gaining a knowledge of sailing none of the others could match. What he wanted, though, was not that knowledge but the green drop the sailor would leave behind when someday, in the very middle of a story, he started up in agitation and soared out to sea again.

  The phantoms of the sea and ships and ocean voyages existed only in that glistening green drop. But with each new day, another of the fulsome odors of shore routine adhered to the sailor: the odor of home, the odor of neighbors, the odor of peace, odors of fish frying and pleasantries and furniture that never budged, the odor of household budget books and weekend excursions . . . all the putrid odors landsmen reek of, the stench of death.

  Then began the laborious projects: Ryuji read the silly novels and art books Fusako recommended and he studied English conversation, a class each night on television and a text empty of nautical terms; he listened to Fusako lecture on problems of store management; he learned to wear the “smart” English clothes she lavished on him; he had suits tailored, and vests, and overcoats; and then, from the eighth of January, he began going in to the shop every day. That first morning, natty in a new suit of English tweed they had rushed to have ready in time, cheerful, expectant, eager. . . .

  “Eager.” Noboru spoke the word as though he had ice on the tip of his tongue.

  “Eager,” mimicked number two.

  The boys stopped laughing as they listened. Gradually they realized how grave the situation was. It seemed to indicate the end of a dream they shared, a bleak, dreary future. And maybe they had been wrong: maybe there was no such thing as the ultimate after all.

  Through a narrow gap between two crates, they glimpsed a motor launch knifing whitecaps as it angled across the harbor. The whine of the engine hovered over the water long after the boat was out of sight.

  “Number three,” the chief began, leaning languidly against the plywood wall, “would you like to make that sailor a hero again?”

  Suddenly Noboru felt cold; he crouched and began to toy with the pointed tips of his shoes. The answer when it finally came was an evasion: “But you know, he still keeps his sailor cap and his pea coat and even his dirty old turtleneck sweater folded away in his closet. You can tell he doesn’t want to throw them away.”

  “There’s just one way to make him a hero again,” the chief continued, giving no indication that he had heard Noboru, “but I can’t tell you what it is yet. The time will come, though, and soon.”

  The others were forbidden to probe for the answer when the chief chose to speak in riddles. Effortlessly changing the subject, he focused the conversation on himself.

  “Let me tell you about my vacation. On this trip we took, I was rubbing noses with my folks every day from morning to night for the first time in quite a while. Fathers! Just think about it for a minute—they’re enough to make you puke. Fathers are evil itself, laden with everything ugly in Man.

  “There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers—one’s as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they’ve never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they’ve never had the courage to live by—they’d like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it! Even the most neglectful fathers, like mine, are no different. Their consciences hurt them because they’ve never paid any attention to their children and they want the kids to understand just how bad the pain is—to sympathize!

  “On New Year’s Day we went to Arashi Yama in Kyoto and as we were crossing the Bridge of Moons I asked my old man a question: ‘Dad, is there any purpose in life?’ You see what I was getting at, don’t you, what I really meant? Father, can you give me one single reason why you go on living? Wouldn’t it be better just to fade away as quickly as possible? But a firstclass insinuation never reaches a man like that. He just looked surprised and his eyes bugged and he stared at me. I hate that kind of ridiculous adult surprise. And when he finally answered, what do you think he said? ‘Son, nobody is going to provide you with a purpose in life; you’ve got to make one for yourself.’

  “How’s that for a stupid, hackneyed moral! He just pressed a button and out came one of the things fathers are supposed to say. And did you ever look at a father’s eyes at a time like that? They’re suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn’t even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.

  “Fathers are the flies of this world. They hover around our heads waiting for a chance, and when they see something rotten, they buzz in and root in it. Filthy, lecherous flies broadcasting to the whole world that they’ve screwed with our mothers. And there’s nothing they won’t do to contaminate our freedom and our ability. Nothing they won’t do to protect the filthy cities they’ve built for themselves.”

  “My old man still won’t buy me an air rifle,” number two murmured, his arms around his knees.

  “And he never will, either. But it’s time you realized that a father who would buy you an air rifle is just as bad as one who won’t.”

  “My father beat me again yesterday. That makes the third time since New Year’s.”

  “Beat you?” Noboru repeated in horror.

  “He slaps me across the face. Sometimes he even punches.”

  “Why don’t you do something?”

  “’Cause I’m not strong enough to take him.”

  “Then you should—why don’t you”—Noboru’s face was bright red and he was shouting—“butter his toast with potassium cyanide or something like that!”

  “There are worse things than being beaten.” The chief’s thin red upper lip curled. “There are lots of things worse than that, only you don’t know about them. You’re one of the fortunate ones. When your father died your case became special. But you’ve got to know about the evil in the world too; otherwise you’ll never have any real power.”

  “My old man is always coming home drunk and bullying my mother,” number four
said. “And when I stood up for her one time he got white as a sheet and grinned and said: ‘Keep out of this. You want to take away your mother’s pleasure?’ But this time I’ve got something on him. He’s got three mistresses.”

  “All my father ever does is pray to God,” said number five.

  Noboru asked what he prayed for.

  “Well, the family’s safety, peace on earth, prosperity—stuff like that. He thinks we’re a model home or something. The bad part is he’s even got my old lady thinking the same thing. The whole house is spic and span and everybody’s supposed to be real honest and full of what he calls ‘the good.’ We even leave food out for the mice in the rafters so they won’t have to sin by stealing. And you know what happens when dinner’s over? Everybody hunches over and licks his plate clean so none of God’s grace will be wasted.”

  “Does your old man make you do that too?”

  “He never makes you do anything. He starts doing all this crappy stuff himself and everybody else is sort of in the habit of copying him. . . . You’re really lucky, Noboru. You should be thankful.”

  Noboru was vexed at his immunity from the germs that infected the others, but at the same time he trembled at the fragility of his chance good fortune. Some providence he couldn’t name had exempted him from evil. His purity was as brittle as a new moon. His innocence had sent an intricate net of feelers snaking toward the world, but when would they be snapped? When would the world lose its vastness and lace him in a strait jacket? That day, he knew, was not far away, and even now he could feel a lunatic courage welling within him. . . .

  The chief had turned away so as not to see Noboru’s face. He was peering through a narrow gap in the crates at the convolutions of the smoke and clouds above the gray offing. He bit with small sharp shiny teeth at the red lining of his leather gloves.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HIS mother’s attitude changed. She became more affectionate, devoted more time to looking after his needs. Obviously this was the prelude to something he was going to find difficult to accept.

  One evening Noboru had said good night and was on his way up to bed when Fusako climbed the stairs behind him, calling, with a key ring in her hand: “The key—I almost forgot the key!” In this he sensed something unnatural. She always came upstairs with him to lock his bedroom door and some nights she was gay and some nights sullen, but this was the first time she had ever made a speech about the key.

  And then Ryuji, who was sitting in the living room in a maroon checked bathrobe reading a book called The Reality of Merchandising, looked up as though he had just happened to overhear, and called his mother’s name.

  “Yes, Ryuji?” she said, turning on the stairs. Noboru shuddered at the fawning sweetness in her voice.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped locking the boy’s door? After all, Noboru’s not a child any more and he knows what he should do and what he shouldn’t. Isn’t that right, Noboru?”

  The large voice from the living room lumbered up the stairs. In the darkness at the top, Noboru froze like a small animal at bay, silent, his eyes gleaming. Fusako, who was maintaining a gentleness as smooth as oil, didn’t even scold him for not answering.

  “Well, I bet I know one happy young man around here,” she said as she led him into his room. She checked the textbooks on his desk against a schedule of classes for the next day and examined the points on his pencils. Ryuji had been helping him with math every night and his grades had improved. Fusako’s body, as she wandered around the room putting things in order, seemed so inordinately light and her movements so smooth that it was like watching an underwater dance. Finally she said good night and left. The long-familiar click of the lock never came.

  As soon as he found himself alone, Noboru was uneasy. He had seen through the deceit. But there was no comfort in that at all.

  It was a trap—a rabbit trap. The grownups expected the captive animal’s rage and the familiar odors of his lair to transform themselves into the resignation and tolerance of a creature who has confined himself. A hideously subtle trap: the rabbit, ensnared, was no longer a rabbit.

  His uneasiness at being in the unlocked room made him shiver even after he had buttoned his pajamas to the neck. They were beginning his education, a terrific, destructive education. Trying to force maturity on a thirteen-year-old boy. Maturity or, as the chief would call it, perversion. Noboru’s feverish brain was pursuing an impossibility: Is there no way that I can remain in the room and at the same time be out in the hall locking the door?

  A few days later he came home from school to find Ryuji and Fusako dressed for the evening and was told that they were all going out to see a movie. It was a seventy-millimeter spectacular Noboru had been wanting to see and he was very pleased.

  After the movie they went to a restaurant in Chinatown and had dinner in a small private room upstairs. Noboru loved Chinese food; and he liked the dish-laden wooden tray which spun around and around in the center of the table.

  When all the food had been brought to the table, Ryuji signaled Fusako with his eyes. Apparently she was not prepared to face the moment sober: she had been sipping Chinese Lao-chu wine and already her eyes were a little red.

  Noboru had never received such cordial treatment from the adults, nor had he ever seen them so ridiculously hesitant in his presence. It seemed to be some special adult ritual. He knew what they were going to say and it interested him very little. But he did enjoy watching them handle him from across the table as though he were a vulnerable, easily frightened, and all-unknowing little bird—that was a real spectacle. They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.

  Noboru didn’t really object to the darling image of himself he knew Ryuji and his mother entertained in their imaginations. He would just have to be careful to look victimized.

  “Noboru dear, I want you to listen carefully to what Mother is going to say because it’s something very important,” Fusako began finally. “You’re going to have a papa again. Mr. Tsukazaki is going to be your new father.”

  As he listened Noboru succeeded in keeping his face a blank, and he was confident that he looked utterly bewildered. So far, so good. But he hadn’t counted on the incredible nonsense that followed:

  “Your real papa was a wonderful man. You were eight years old when he passed away, so you must remember him and miss him very much. But I can’t tell you how lonely Mother has been these past five years, and I know you’ve been lonely too. And you must have thought lots of times that both of us needed a new papa. I want you to understand, dear, how much I’ve wanted a strong, gentle, wonderful papa for both our sakes. And it’s been all the harder because your father was such a fine, honest man. But you’re a grownup now, so I know you’ll understand: how hard these five years have been, and how lonely, with just the two of us. . . .” She fumbled an imported handkerchief out of her purse and began to cry: it was really very silly.

  “Everything I’ve done has been for you, dear—everything. There isn’t another man in this world as strong and as gentle and as wonderful in every way as Mr. Tsukazaki. Noboru, I want you to call Mr. Tsukazaki Papa now; we’re going to be married early next month and we’ll invite lots of friends and have a lovely party.”

  Ryuji had averted his eyes from Noboru’s impassive face and was engrossed in drinking, adding crystal sugar to the Lao-chu wine, stirring, tossing off the cup, and pouring himself another. He was afraid of seeming brazen to the boy.

  Noboru knew that he was being feared as well as pitied, and the gentle threat had made him drunk: when he leveled the full iciness of his heart at the adults, a smile was playing at the corners of his mouth. It was hardly more than a wisp of a smile, the kind you see on the face of a schoolboy who has come to class unprepared but cocksure as a man leaping off a cliff; and yet, on the other side of the red formica table, Ryuji saw it out of the corner of his eye and snatched it
up. Again, a misunderstanding. The grin he flashed back was the same brand of exaggerated glee as his smile that day near the park when, to Noboru’s intense disappointment and humiliation, he had appeared in a dripping-wet shirt.

  “Fair enough. Then I won’t call you Noboru any more. From now on, it’s Son. What do you say, Son. Shake hands with Dad.” Ryuji placed one hard open hand on the table; Noboru struggled toward it as though he were paddling under water. No matter how he stretched, Ryuji’s fingers seemed just beyond reach. At last their hands met, thick fingers grappled his own, and the hot, calloused handshake began. Noboru felt a whirlwind catch him up and spin him away toward the tepid, formless world he dreaded most. . . .

  That night, as soon as Fusako had left his room and closed the door without locking it, Noboru’s head began to swim. Hard heart . . . hard heart: he tried repeating the words to himself, but that only made him want to hold the genuine article in his hand. Hard as an iron anchor. . . .

  Before leaving the room, his mother had turned off the gas heater. Now heat and cold were mingled in a fold of tepid air. If he could just brush his teeth, put on his pajamas in a hurry, and bundle into bed, he would be all right.

  But an evasive languor made even removing his turtleneck sweater seem a wearisome task. Never had he waited so anxiously for his mother to reappear, to come back to his room, for example, to mention something she had forgotten to say. Nor had he ever felt such contempt for her.

  He waited in the gradually mounting cold. And, weary of waiting, he abandoned himself to an absurd fantasy. His mother had come back and she was shouting: It was all a lie. I’m so sorry to have made a game out of fooling you. Will you forgive me? We are most certainly not going to get married. If we did a thing like that the world would turn to chaos: ten tankers would sink in the harbor, and a thousand trains would be derailed; the glass in the windows all over the city would shatter, and every lovely rose would turn black as coal.