“In this elevator,” said Reiko in a flat voice, breaking the silence at last as they were approaching the foot of the cliff, where a mercury lamp was burning, “how many men, do you think, have kissed me?”
“Well . . . ah . . .” Onodera hesitated.
“Just one.”
A plank walkway led from the edge of the narrow concrete elevator platform to a large yellow rectangular cork float, wet from the waves gently rocking it.
Without a backward glance, Reiko headed straight for the float and plunged into the sea. Onodera went in feet first. The water was warm, and there were almost no waves. After taking two or three tentative strokes to attune his muscles, he began to swim vigorously, kicking up the dark surface of the sea as he looked for Reiko’s head. She was swimming toward the open sea with an easy breast stroke. Concerned for her safety, Onodera pulled slightly ahead of her.
In the darkness there seemed to be a faint smile on Reiko’s face.
“Don’t you think it’d be wise to go back?” he said.
“Want to race?” she asked.
“We should stop.”
“I’ve got a strong heart.”
They swam on in silence. Reiko, instead of turning back to ward the float, veered off in the direction of a small sandy beach some fifty yards to one side of the deck. When she reached it, she lay on her stomach with the lower half of her body still in the water. Onodera, still feeling somewhat awkward, stopped some little way from her and sat in the shallow water.
“Do you intend to marry me?” said Reiko abruptly, catching him by surprise. “You’re not much interested?” she persisted when he did not answer.
“I don’t know yet,” he said, his voice subdued.
“Mr. Yoshimura wants to see me married,” she muttered, burying her hand in the sand. “My father begged him with tears in his eyes . . . please, please get his daughter married. And so now he’s come here with you.”
“Look, tonight is the first I’ve heard of this.”
“He’s a shrewd one, you know. He knows just what kind of man I go for. . . . And, then, I wonder what’s all involved.”
“How do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but... when he was trying so hard to convince me, I started to wonder.”
Onodera said nothing for a moment as he collected his thoughts. “You’re probably right,” he said finally.
Reiko turned to him. “If there was something else involved, you’d say no?”
“No, not necessarily . . .”he answered awkwardly.
“But how do you feel about me? Do you like me or not?”
“I can’t say. Unless we’re together for a longer time ...”
“I don’t need a longer time. I like you.” Reiko raised herself up on her elbows and spoke clearly. “But that doesn’t mean that I want to marry you. You’re set on marriage?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why? What advantage is there to it?”
“Children.”
Onodera sensed that Reiko was gazing fixedly at him in the darkness. The waves lapped gently over their bodies, dissolving the sand beneath them, which tickled their stomachs and legs as it flowed back into the sea. She suddenly heaved a long sigh. Then, with a quick movement, she rolled over on her back, bringing herself near to Onodera. He heard a faint click, followed abruptly by the sound of music.
“What’s that?” he asked, startled.
“A radio—it’s in my bracelet. It’s waterproof.”
Her chest was heaving violently. She spoke in a hoarse voice: “What are you going to do? Hold me.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here. Because we just met it’s too soon? You don’t have anything against sex, do you?”
Her passion was so intense that it choked her voice. In the darkness her broad breasts heaved. She stretched her arms up out of the water and wound them around his neck.
At the same moment a sudden flash, like a curtain of white brilliance, raced across the dark sky, silhouetting the mountains of the Izu Peninsula. But then the sound of music was directly in Onodera’s ear, and Reiko’s strong arms around his neck were pulling him down. Her lips were close to his in the darkness, and her breath smelled slightly of alcohol. She had loosened the top of her bikini, and her breasts, wonderfully soft, were crushed beneath his chest, the taut nipples caressing his skin. There was a taste of salt on Reiko’s lips. Her arms were incredibly strong. He loosened the fasteners on either side of the bottom of her bikini, and as he pulled it free, Reiko spoke in a hoarse whisper: “Don’t take your mouth away from mine . . . I always cry out.”
After it was over, Reiko, as though her body had gone rigid, kept on clinging to his neck.
Suddenly something alerted him.
“. . . the body . . .”
The voice was coming from Reiko’s radio: “. . . was identified as that of Rokuro Goh, thirty-one, employed by Nagatsuka Construction Company and missing for a week. Mr. Goh is reported to have been distraught recently over his responsibilities in connection with the new Super Express line. His death seems to have been suicide.”
“Look out!” Onodera tried to free himself from Reiko’s grip.
“No!” said Reiko, clinging to him as tightly as before, her breath harsh in his ear. “Not yet . . .”
“Let me go,” said Onodera.
It was at that moment that the shock hit them, rolling up from the depths of the earth, seeming to permeate their flesh. A sudden blast of wind struck their faces. Salt spray stung them. The beach upon which they lay trembled beneath them. Rocks came clattering down through the thick growth of grass covering the cliffside to strike close by them.
Onodera instinctively turned to look across the bay. Above the far-distant mountains of the Izu, black clouds had gathered, and slender streaks of lightning raced violently across the stretch of sky between cloud and peak.
“We’ve got to get up!”
Onodera shook himself free of Reiko. Then, with a swift movement, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.
“Put on your swim suit. Hurry up.”
At first orange flames flared up to illuminate the mountain peaks across the bay. Then a red column of fire thrust itself high into the sky. It was then that the muggy atmosphere of the night itself seemed to tremble as a booming roar came rumbling out of the depths of the earth, followed by what seemed like distant thunderclaps rolling across the water together with a continuous roar as though massed cannon were firing volley upon volley.
“What is it?” said Reiko hoarsely. “What happened?”
“An eruption,” he answered. It’s probably Amagi, he thought. How could it have happened so suddenly?
“Quick!” he shouted at Reiko, trying to hurry her along. The trembling earth beneath them creaked and groaned incessantly, and stones, sand, rock fragments kept clattering down from the cliff above.
Realizing they had to get out from beneath, Onodera took Reiko’s hand and rushed out into the water, but then a chilling thought took hold of him.
“Is there a path up the cliff to the villa?” he asked, turning to Reiko, his voice intense.
“On the other side of that rock there. But why?” said Reiko, her voice shaking. “It would be dangerous with all these rocks and stones. Let’s go back along the shore.”
Instead of answering her, he pointed down. A few moments before, the waves had been sweeping over their feet, but now the sand lay exposed several meters beyond them, and the dark sea was even then pulling back still farther, the tops of sub merged rocks jutting up into view. Reiko’s body stiffened. Onodera felt the girl gasp with terror. Somewhere out in the darkness, a tidal wave was mounting.
Across the water, the pillar of flame had tinged scarlet the volcanic smoke, and from the topmost peak a stream of lava had begun to flow like a thread of brilliance.
3
Sometime after midnight Onodera was at the wheel of a small hovercraft skimming over the surface of Sagami Bay. It be longed t
o the Abe family, and on board were all the guests who wished to get back to Tokyo at once.
Situated 150 feet above sea level, Reiko’s villa had suffered little, but since the electricity had been knocked out and the road below blocked by a landslide, everyone had been in a state of high excitement.
On Sagami Bay, ashes were fluttering softly down from the sky, and the falling rain, lit by the probing beams of the hover craft, seemed to merge with the surface of the sea. As the vessel skimmed over the water at a speed of forty miles an hour, Onodera’s eyes strayed now and then from the bright radar-scope to the distant view of Mount Amagi, where the night sky glowed red. A strange, indefinable foreboding rose up within Onodera like a dark, sinister tide. Somehow this foreboding seemed linked to what he had seen on the floor of the Japan Trench—down there, 24,000 feet below the surface of the sea, where the pressure squeezed the hull of his submarine at the rate of one ton per square inch—linked to what he had seen there, that massive, indescribable writhing.
“Onodera...” As they were rounding Aburatsubo, somebody called to him from the rear cabin. “It’s a call for you from Tokyo. Person to person.”
Though he heard, Onodera did not respond at once, still in the grip of the cold dread that was gnawing at him.
“Hello, hello . . .”
He knew he had heard that arrogant voice before.
“This is Onodera,” he said.
“This is Tadokoro. I’ve been looking for you. What does Amagi look like?”
“The eruption is still going on,” answered Onodera, glancing out the rain-streaked window. “Mihara, too. A lot of smoke is coming from it.”
“I heard from your general manager that you have the records of the undersea survey you made in Sagami Bay two weeks ago.”
“Yes. I was going over them at home before turning them over to the survey section.”
“Is there anything in the records about any depth changes in the deepest section of the bay?”
Onodera caught his breath sharply.
“There is,” he answered. “But since the previous surveys were not that accurate, all I could do was compare my previous impressions with what I saw and make an estimate. There seemed to be a lot of changes from a year and a half before. But that’s based upon things as I remember them.”
“Onodera, how soon can you get to Tokyo?” Tadokoro’s tone was imperious as usual. “I know you must be tired, but I want those records of yours just as soon as possible. Fm at my laboratory, in Hongo. Where do you live?”
“In Aoyama, sir.” He looked at his watch. It was 1:45 A.M. “At the earliest, I can probably be there by dawn. Where in Hongo?”
“Two Chome. When you get to the neighborhood, phone me.”
“This data, sir, will bear on the earthquake?”
“The earthquake?” Tadokoro’s voice became impatient. “There’s something far more important at issue than the earth quake.” There was a pause. “Or so it seems, at any rate. . . .”
Onodera seemed to lose Tadokoro’s voice. “Hello, hello . . . ” he said, fearing that they had been cut off.
“I’m still here. Onodera, I don’t know exactly what we ought to do.” Tadokoro’s voice had abruptly changed, startlingly so. It had become a voice heavy with weary disappointment. “Maybe it’s just a bad dream. But it’s gotten hold of me, and I can’t do anything about it. Fm obsessed. But, at any rate, please do what you can.”
“I understand, sir,” answered Onodera.
The emergency topic taken up at the regular meeting of the Cabinet on July 27 was the Izu Earthquake. The director general of the Prime Minister’s Office gave a brief report on the damage done, which was expected to amount to hundreds of billions.
“The eruptions, the earthquake—in neither case was there any sort of forecast or warning, was there?” the Prime Minister quietly observed. He had just returned from abroad and looked as though he was still suffering from the rigors of travel. “For some time now we’ve been putting a good amount from the budget into earthquake forecasting, and so one would expect that some research is under way.”
“Well,” said the director of the Technological Agency, the youngest member of the Cabinet, “according to what the scientists tell me, leaving aside the matter of volcanoes, it will take five or even ten more years before we reach the stage where we can predict earthquakes. It seems that now we can’t even say for sure why an earthquake occurs.”
“I suppose the construction of the new Super Express line is going to be held up because of all this,” said the Minister of Trade and Industry.
“The president of National Railways was raising a fuss even before,” said the bent old man who was Minister of Transportation. “The matter of earthquakes be as it may, the area selected for the right-of-way has turned out, time after time, to be land that provides but treacherous footing. I understand the firms involved are clamoring about having to raise their estimates. Both the National Railways and the private lines are going to be very much in the red this year.”
“Prescinding from the floods during the rainy season, because of these earthquakes, this is the third time this year that we’ve applied the Disaster Relief Act,” said the Minister of Finance with a sour expression. “At this rate, we’re going to have to have a supplementary budget.”
“It looks as though from now on we’re going to have to set aside a larger portion each year for damages from earthquakes and other natural catastrophes,” said the Minister of Construction as he wiped off his glasses.
A silence came over the room. The words of the Minister of Construction stirred a vague sense of foreboding in the heart of each member of the Cabinet. Small as Japan was, she was laden with plan upon plan—construction plans, regional plans, municipal plans, plans for the reorganization of industrial areas. This year, however . . . Within the space of the first four months of the calendar year, the vague, somber shadow of something heretofore unknown had begun to fall across all of these plans. On the face of it, it seemed merely a matter of the perennial conflict with nature having become somewhat intensified, but once the data had been viewed in perspective, one sensed that something like a still faint mosaic was beginning to emerge, something sinister, its outline still no more than a pale shadow.
“The problem is the panic that could arise,” the Prime Minister began and then stopped. He dropped his eyes to a teacup on the table. Sunlight from the window fell upon the now cold liquid within. Tiny circles of waves were forming, one after another, on its bright surface. “I’ll be damned! How long are these earthquakes going to go on? Let’s face it, gentlemen— we’ve had more earthquakes lately than ever before. Now are they going to keep on increasing? or what? If we knew, we could provide for them in the budget.”
“Suppose we hear what the scientists have to say,” said the Minister of Health and Welfare. “I, for one, would be interested in that.”
“A good idea,” said the Prime Minister, looking toward the director general of the Cabinet. “Let’s find out how much these earthquake specialists know. But, as always, let’s be circumspect about it. It wouldn’t do at all for reporters to raise a howl. Let’s get a few of them together and hear them out.”
At that moment the room began to rock back and forth. Dust fell from the ceiling, flecks dancing in the sunlight. There was a brief pause, and then a much stronger tremor took hold. The floor shook violently. The earth itself began to groan, and the walls and uprights creaked and swayed. Tea spilled from the cups on the table.
“This is really a big one,” someone murmured.
Then, just when the Cabinet members had risen from their chairs, their expressions tense, the vibrations stopped abruptly. The tea left in the cups was still trembling. The water in the flower vase still splashed back and forth with a noisy gurgle. Two or three acoustic tiles fell with a clatter from the ceiling.
“That was something!” said the Minister of Health and Welfare with a sigh.
There were wry smiles o
f relief as everyone began to talk a bit too loudly. Unnoticed in the uproar was a distant boom. A few moments afterward there was a knock at the door of the meeting room, and a secretary entered. He spoke into the ear of the director general, who nodded and turned to the others.
“Gentlemen, Mount Asama has just erupted.”
When the earthquake struck, Onodera felt it through the ragged couch on which he lay on the second floor of Professor Tadokoro’s private laboratory in Hongo. Such was his state of mind that he stared up at the swaying, soot-covered fluorescent light above his head as though he were dreaming. He vaguely heard the crack of a windowpane, the snap of something giving way inside the sofa. Finally he came to enough to wonder where he was. By the time he got up from the couch, the quake had stopped. He gave a wide yawn, and as he did so, he heard the clatter of footsteps on the stairs.
“Is there a fire?” he asked a young man running down the corridor.
“No. It looks like Asama’s erupted.”
Professor Tadokoro appeared in the corridor, wearing a wrinkled laboratory coat. When he came into the room, Onodera noticed that his eyes were bloodshot and he seemed completely worn out.
“Asama, uh?” said Tadokoro, his voice hoarse. “It’s not worth bothering about.”
“But, Professor,” Onodera protested, “the whole world seems to be blowing up.”
“Let it blow up,” said Tadokoro, stifling a yawn.
“Well, sir,” said Onodera, glancing at his watch, “I’m afraid I’ll have to be going now. I took too long a nap.”
“Onodera,” said Tadokoro, hit by an onset of yawning, “could we talk just a bit downstairs?”
“Talk, Professor?” said Onodera, stopping in the doorway. “What do you want to talk about, sir?”
“Let’s go downstairs,” said Tadokoro. He shouted to his young assistants, who were still talking excitedly: “Hey, down there! Instead of doing all that chattering, get a report on the Asama eruption.”
Japan Sinks Page 5
