by Kōji Suzuki
Kensuke managed to sit up but remained in a state of disbelief. The boy was howling, not in any human language, but like a wild beast. The shrieks contained a frantic appeal but were totally incomprehensible and filled Kensuke with terror. The boy had no doubt bitten him. There were drops of blood on the arm where he’d felt the pain. Kensuke stood up, pressing down on the spot with his hand. Just then, Kano and Naito came dashing out of the woods behind. No sooner had Kano caught sight of the boy in Sasaki’s restraining arms than he fetched his receiver to get through to the captain of the cruiser.
‘Prepare to depart… Contact the police…’ The instructions Kano issued in rapid succession registered only as fragments with Kensuke.
He felt dizzy. He tried to reason out what had just happened. The boy must have been glancing behind him as he ran. Not noticing Kensuke’s presence right ahead, he’d banged his head into Kensuke’s jaw. But why a boy, on this island? Kano and the others were asking him for his name and address. Tossing his head wildly, he only let out inchoate shrieks and supplied no information. Hearing the cries, which weren’t in Japanese nor any foreign language, Kensuke felt dizzy again.
7
The boy sat on the cruiser’s deck floor with just his head poking above the side. He was gazing intently at the island. There was no expression on his face. Leaving your natal land usually elicited a special surge of emotion, but the boy didn’t seem to know how to express such sentiments. The moment they’d taken him aboard the cruiser, he’d quieted down, and now for some time he’d sat there without once budging.
There was nothing to do but call off the survey. Their top priority was to take the boy back to the city and to hand him over to the proper authorities. Unable to conceal their excitement at the unexpected catch, Naito and Kano exchanged theories about the boy’s provenance and stared unabashedly at him as at a wild child who’d been reared by wolves.
No one else had a clue. But Kensuke could paint a reasonably good picture of what had transpired on Battery No. 6 in the last nine years. One look at the child’s face was enough to make everything clear. The refined small nose, the clear glacial eyes, the thin lips – though obscured by a mass of overgrown hair, all of the boy’s features bore an irrefutable resemblance. It was in third grade that Kensuke and Aso had first met and gotten to know each other. The profile of the boy who sat before Kensuke now was the living image of his former classmate. Without a shadow of a doubt, this was Aso’s son by Yukari Nakazawa.
Aso had lied. He hadn’t stripped Yukari naked and deserted her on Battery No. 6. The absurd scheme of turning an uninhabited island nearby into a paradise on earth had no doubt been Yukari’s suggestion; Aso, while horrified by the inanity of it, must have helped her out. How else could the vegetables and fruits growing on Battery No. 6 be explained? Moreover, the boy wasn’t naked; they were rags by now, but he was clothed. The bare essentials for survival must have been prepared at the outset and brought to the island.
Where, then, was Yukari, the boy’s mother? Probably dead and buried. If she were alive, she’d have to be somewhere other than Battery No. 6. In any case, she wasn’t a living inhabitant of the island. Assuming Aso hadn’t lied about absolutely everything, Yukari had become pregnant that summer nine years ago – and given birth the following year. That made the boy eight years old. If he’d been living with his mother for the whole time, he’d know how to speak. Instead he must have lost his mother when he was around five, and forgotten, during the solitary years that followed, even the little he’d learned from her. Whether Yukari had died on Battery No. 6 or abandoned the child and escaped alone would be clear if and when they dug up the mound under the wooden tablets.
Kensuke’s hunch was that Yukari rested in peace under that mound of earth.
The satisfied expression on Aso’s face as he lay at death’s door… At long last, Kensuke understood. Aso had smiled to himself for secretly having disseminated his seed here on earth. The force that aided the strange seedling from afar didn’t work for plants alone. Kensuke was looking at the proof.
Sensing that Kensuke was staring at him, the boy met his gaze. Almost no expression appeared on the boy’s face as he turned it back toward Battery No. 6 shrinking in the distance.
III – THE HOLD
1
There is an observation platform shaped like a five-needle pine at the tip of Cape Futtsu. A climb to the top reveals a panoramic view that encompasses Yokosuka and Cape Kannon. Hiroyuki Inagaki had brought his son with him to the observation platform for the first time in a while.
The tide was visibly rapid between Breakwater No. 1 and Breakwater No. 2. A sandbar extended like an arc from the promontory in front, falling only a little short of Breakwater No. 1. Shortly after the war, you could cross over as far as Breakwater No. 1 in a jeep at low tide, but these days that was no longer possible. A mere row of dots, the sandbar was now barely visible above the water, making the crossing extremely difficult even on foot. As a child, Hiroyuki had heard how someone had tried to walk across only to become stranded when the tide shifted. The unfortunate man was said to have been washed away by the current, and his body was never recovered.
It was a windy Saturday afternoon in early summer. For some time now, Hiroyuki had been staring intently at the rapid current between the two breakwaters. From their position on the observation platform, the ships looked as small as peas on the water. Indeed, that very stretch of sea was where he worked. Hiroyuki was a fisherman. He fished for Futtsu conger eels between the breakwaters for twenty-five days a month.
He’d inherited the job from his father fifteen years ago. During that time, the face of Tokyo Bay had changed dramatically. The sandbar that stretched out to sea now pointed much further to the north than before. Landfills had been created and the seabed dredged to widen the sea-lanes. These changes wrought by man had disrupted the balanced rhythm of the tides, resulting in sand being washed away and the sandbar being eroded at its south end.
For all the changes that had taken place, however, Hiroyuki did not feel particularly concerned. As long as his catch brought in the monthly target of no less than one million yen, he could not have cared less how much the face of Tokyo Bay changed. He wanted to slap down that million yen on the table in front of his wife every month. As long as he did that, she had no reason to complain.
‘Okay, let’s be off.’
Hiroyuki playfully pushed his son’s head down. Katsumi was a very quiet and withdrawn child. He made no response and continued to gaze wistfully toward the Miura Peninsula. But the moment he saw his father going down the stairs, he chased after him in a hurry.
There was a man selling roasted corn on the cob in a stall at the bottom of the stairway.
‘Want some?’
Not waiting for his son to answer, Hiroyuki bought a cob from the vendor whom he seemed to know.
‘Have you seen the wife round here?’ he asked as he took his change.
The vendor only laughed and shook his head.
Hiroyuki handed his son the corn and beckoned with his soy sauce stained hand to follow after him:
‘Come.’
Katsumi didn’t really want the corn, but knew that refusing something offered by his father would invite his wrath. His father might even strike him. Katsumi took the corn without a word and spied his father’s expression to gauge his mood. He began to nibble at the cob and tagged along behind his father. His mother had strictly forbidden him to eat snacks between meals. His father, however, would buy Katsumi sweets and candy, not out of carelessness but in wilful defiance of his wife’s wishes. Every time this happened, Katsumi felt himself to be in an impossible position. He would earn a tongue-lashing from his mother if he ignored her but would get his ears boxed if he refused what his father offered. The worse part of it was that his father always bought him things he didn’t want.
Katsumi dawdled several yards behind his father as they walked along the beach on the north side of the cape. The cape jutted out int
o the sea and divided the waves into the raging and the calm. Rough waves broke on the southern shore, while gentler waves washed the northern side of the cape. The calmer shore was host to hordes of four wheel drive vehicles from Tokyo. The drivers and passengers of these cars that lined the shore had come to spend an enjoyable Saturday afternoon by the sea. Young people sped about on jet-skis in the water, while on the beach families barbecued fish, the adults drinking beer. Every corner of the beach teemed with summer fun and resounded with happy peals of laughter.
Hiroyuki stopped walking and looked around. His son now lagged more than thirty feet behind him. The boy shambled unsteadily this way and that, eating the piece of corn with a plain expression of disgust. As he watched, Hiroyuki was overwhelmed by a surge of irritation.
Unaware of his father’s annoyance, Katsumi was watching a jet-ski speeding over the water and spraying a shower of seawater in its wake. Yet this was no look of envy; Katsumi was terrified of water. He would always find some excuse not to take part in school swimming lessons. He was also averse to taking baths. This was no doubt the reason why he could hardly swim, even though he was already eleven years old. As far as his father was concerned, the inability to swim was tantamount to betrayal in the son of a fisherman.
Hiroyuki bellowed out his son’s name. The roaring engines of the jet-skis drowned out his voice, however, as the riders sped around in circles. Still looking out to the sea, Katsumi dawdled along the beach, kicking up sand. Hiroyuki shouted his name again and started walking toward his son. As a shadow loomed over him, Katsumi became aware of his father’s presence. He flinched instinctively. He thought he was in for a beating.
‘Give it here!’ roared his father.
He took the corn from his son and finished it off.
‘Now that’s the way to eat corn. Got that, lad?’
He tossed the corncob away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Hiroyuki was startled by a shriek from down by his side. Katsumi was holding his stomach and groaning in pain. At first, Hiroyuki couldn’t tell what was the matter.
‘We’re sorry!’
The apology came from a father and his son as they came running up. They had their hands stuffed into baseball gloves.
Hiroyuki looked down and saw a ball at his son’s feet. The boy and his father had been playing catch in front of the nearby pine grove and the ball must have been overthrown, hitting Katsumi in the ribs.
The two approached Hiroyuki and Katsumi, both bowing apologetically. ‘Sorry! Are you all right?’
‘Can’t you be more damned careful?’ yelled Hiroyuki, throwing the ball back in their direction.
Katsumi was still squatting down on the sand. Hiroyuki took his hand, pulled him to his feet, and started examining the side of his chest where the ball had struck. He found nothing much wrong, just a faint red bruise under his T-shirt.
‘It’s nothing at all. You’ll be okay.’ Patting his son reassuringly on the ribs, Hiroyuki pronounced a clean bill of health.
Katsumi began to walk, but his pace was even slower than before. He still held his side, his face distorted in an exaggerated look of misery. He shortly began to drag his feet, his tongue dangling from a half-open mouth, and he let out deep sighs. This served to irritate Hiroyuki badly enough that he felt the need to take his anger out on someone or something.
The boy and his father whose ball had struck Katsumi had returned to the area by the pine grove to resume their game of catch. Both wore matching polo shirts of a well-known brand, and both reeked of the city from head to toe. The little boy was about Katsumi’s age and extraordinarily agile for a kid from the city.
Picking them as the target to vent his anger on, he strode over to where they were playing and called to them in a thick, menacing voice.
‘Say, you two over there!’
They stopped playing catch and turned to face Hiroyuki with anxious expressions that only fuelled the flames of his resentment. The timid, nervous look in their eyes strengthened his resolve to vent his spleen on them to his heart’s content.
He stopped within a few paces of them and growled, ‘I want your name and address.’
‘Huh?’ The father looked at once puzzled and contemptuous.
‘My boy says it hurts so much he can’t walk. What you gonna do if he’s broken a rib or something?’ Hiroyuki held out his left arm and pointed behind him to where his son was; only his son wasn’t there.
Katsumi had pretended it had hurt more than it did, to get a little sympathy from his father. Yet when he realized that he had only incited his father’s wrath, his throat parched with fear. On this particular occasion, his father’s anger just happened not to be directed at him. Nonetheless, Katsumi was terrified. As his father walked away, his back radiated malevolence. Left to run its natural course, it could well develop into violence. Katsumi wanted to avoid such a scene at all costs. What terrified him more than calling his father’s wrath upon himself was seeing him beat up others. It was particularly horrifying when the victim was his mother. At such times he could hardly breathe.
It was not until he felt Katsumi tugging his hand that Hiroyuki realized that his son was standing by his right side.
‘Dad,’ the boy appealed in a trembling voice. He had apparently been calling for some time now, but his father had been too wound up to notice.
Hiroyuki saw that his excuse for a fight was being snatched from under his nose. ‘What,’ he said, forcefully shaking off his son’s hand.
‘I’m all right. I’m fine…’
Katsumi tugged at his father’s hand again, trying to get him to step back. He was telling his father to let things be and just go home, to stop taking his anger out on other people.
‘You’re fine? Then what was that face back there?’
Hiroyuki’s anger had found a different target. Their gloved hands now dangling at their side, the boy and the father who’d been playing catch remained motionless, waiting to see which way things would go. The muzzle of Hiroyuki’s anger was now directed at someone else. Their anxious looks revealed that they still saw this as no reason to feel relieved.
I’m sorry, Dad,’ Katsumi apologized to his father, his face creasing up, on the verge of tears.
‘Fool, don’t apologize so easy!’ Hiroyuki’s hand rose.
The moment his father’s eyes changed colour rarely escaped Katsumi. Immediately before an eruption of anger, his father’s eyes would go from black to white, with the black part suddenly rolling up. Katsumi instinctively squeezed his eyes shut and covered his head with his hands.
When hitting his son failed to assuage his anger, Hiroyuki started kicking him around on the sand.
His tear-sodden face thick with sand, the boy kept on apologizing, I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry.’ Where had his son learned to beg for mercy in such a craven, pathetic, snivelling way? It was enough to drive Hiroyuki insane with anger.
The eruption did not last long. Hiroyuki suddenly reined in his hands and reached out to pull the boy up to his feet. It wasn’t that he was concerned that others were looking at them. It was simply that a passing storm had convulsed his frame and blown itself out in an instant. Once the storm had passed, he didn’t even remember what had caused his anger in the first place. It had been a ludicrous sequence: baseball hits son in ribs, son exhibits a painful expression, father sets out to get even with the culprits who threw the ball, son suddenly claims there’s nothing wrong, hence father gives son something real to cry about. Hiroyuki was at a loss to describe the absurdity of it in words. He slowly shook his bowed head and muttered to himself.
…I’m beginning to be like pop.
His son sobbing convulsively before him reminded him of himself at that age. He had been exactly the same. As the one wielding angry fists now, he’d become the spitting image of his father. Realizing this made him no more capable of altering what he had become. Knowing where the violence in his veins originated didn’t help him resist the impulse. The mas
s of emotion just surged up to shake him.
He lifted his gaze to discover that the father and son who had been playing catch were gone. The city types that filled the beach always had the fanciest equipment. The ball and gloves had certainly been nothing more than just another fancy possession. Having lost their interest in playing catch, they must have returned to their car to find other fancy things to play with.
He lightly cuffed his son’s head as they made their way along the beach towards the park. Though they had more time to spare than they knew what to do with, he felt strangely tense, almost afraid.
‘Stupid bitch!’ he said out loud.
His wife’s absence was at the root of his uncontrollable vexation. Every aspect of the scenery struck him as detestable. Normally so pleasant, the sound of the waves now jarred his nerves.
‘Where can that stupid bitch be?’
* * *
Most Futtsu fishermen did not work on Saturdays because the market was closed on Sundays. It was their only day off. He had awoken that morning on his day off to find his wife gone.
It being his day off, he got up several hours later than usual. It was shortly before nine o’clock when the parching thirst of a hangover disrupted his sleep. He rolled over and shouted for water. No matter how many times he shouted, there was no reply.
He got out of bed, and as he made his way to the kitchen, he noticed that the house was somehow different than usual. Normally, at this time, his wife would be sitting on the sofa in the living room watching television after having finished her morning household chores. His breakfast would have been there on the table, the dishes and pots all washed and stacked to dry near the sink, the laundry done and the house cleaned. That’s how it was every Saturday morning.
