Dark Water

by Kōji Suzuki

  With all his remaining strength, he forced his head under the water and lunged downwards. In an instant, he saw a three-foot-square opening cut out in the darkness beneath him. A faint light filtered through from below. The opening of the well was right in front of him.

  ‘Nothing to it,’ he thought as he placed his hands on the edge of the opening and thrust his head through. He thrust out his chest, and then his waist, and right when his body formed a V shape, Hiroyuki felt something pull at his foot. Though the upper part of his body was now outside the well, his legs refused to follow. He was fast losing what breath he had. He gathered his remaining strength and tried to yank his foot free. To no avail. There was no choice but to go back. Any more hesitation, and he’d die like that in a V shape.

  As much as he hated to, he pulled back the upper half of his body and came up where he had been before. His head emerged from the water with such force that he bumped it hard on the floor of the boat. A bolt of searing pain shot through him. The sliver of air had shrunk in size; the boat was slowly sinking. Now, to get any air at all, Hiroyuki had to bend his head and thrust just his nose and mouth out of the water.

  He bent his leg and groped around with his hand to find out what had caught. A moment before, he could have sworn that his foot was tangled up in rope. Yet, now, his hand detected nothing there at all. Maybe something had decided to hold his foot…

  But this was no time for speculation. Filling his lungs with what little air remained at the top, he lunged down headfirst once more.

  No sooner had he thrust his head downward than a spectral human form drifted toward the hazy opening. Its hair fanned out around the head. As though to block the exit, his wife’s corpse had wandered out from the side, and it danced like a dark shadow in the faint light from-below.

  The sight made Hiroyuki gulp seawater. Terrified by his wife’s movement, which seemed wilful, he used up all the air in his lungs.

  …Exit’s blocked.

  There was nothing to do but surface again.

  This time, he had almost to lick the bottom of the boat to get any air. He let out a silent scream. The smell of fuel, which must have leaked from the engine, assailed his nostrils.

  It was all up with him, all over.

  He pissed himself, and started crying. Above, the boat floor. Below, the sea. The only exit was occupied by his wife. Hiroyuki had no space left to live.

  He was like a conger eel caught in a trap. His wife’s corpse was the rubber flap at the opening of the eel tube. With arms and legs akimbo, she clung with grim tenacity to the opening to prevent his passage.

  Hiroyuki didn’t have the strength left to laugh at the irony. A man who’d trapped countless conger eels in dark tubes was now snared himself and waiting for death.

  With the pounding of the waves, the roar should have been a lot more thunderous, but it was strangely calm all around. Death was approaching with a steady tread. There was no escaping it.

  As he thought of his imminent death, a notion popped into his mind. Twenty years ago, around when his mother disappeared, Hiroyuki’s father had narrowly escaped death. Hiroyuki had never doubted his father’s story. But now, with death staring him in the face, he understood the truth. Just as Hiroyuki had done, his father had killed his wife and used his fishing as an alibi for disposing the body out at sea. His father’s mental troubles had nothing to do with having hit his head. His terrible deed had slowly driven him mad.

  The same blood ran in his veins, and the past was repeating itself. Even if Hiroyuki were to return home alive and somehow manage to bring up his son single-handedly, Katsumi would no doubt end up doing exactly the same thing. Where to sever the awful chain?

  In death. All he had to do was die. With the death of both his parents, his son would grow up in a new environment. The thought made it a little easier for Hiroyuki. Perhaps he could meet death with composure.

  Then he heard two sounds coming from above, with a brief interval between them. There it was again, two sounds. It was not the waves striking the boat; it sounded more artificial.

  At first he listened vacantly. But when he fathomed the meaning of the sound that was penetrating his brain, he became alert and thrust his face upwards. There was still a little air left. A few more knocks came from the exterior of the keel.

  His body reacted reflexively, his right hand clenching into a fist and banging against the bottom. As if in response, two sounds from above. And now Hiroyuki, thumping the bottom twice. From above, another answer of two knocks.

  He was saved!

  Just when he’d given up hope of ever getting out alive, he was given a second chance. Hiroyuki had witnessed a similar scene a few years ago. A rescue boat from the Maritime Safety Agency was rushing to the aid of a fishing vessel that had capsized as a result of poor handling. Hiroyuki, who’d been fishing, interrupted his work to pull alongside and watch. The rescue squad used the same procedure to check if anyone had been trapped in the cabin. They straddled the keel of the overturned boat and knocked on its bottom, reassuring any survivors that help was on the way; they would send down their divers if anyone responded. The divers took an extra regulator down with them to insert in the mouth of the survivor. Other fishing boats had also gathered around to watch the operation, and when the trapped fisherman emerged safely from the sinking boat, there was some wild cheering.

  The sounds he now heard raining down from above were to let him know that the Maritime Safety Agency had come to his rescue. Hiroyuki had lost all sense of time. He wondered how long ago the boat had capsized. It was just conceivable that a patrol boat had discovered him by chance.

  Hiroyuki roared with joy at his good fortune. He had been granted a new lease on life; he’d be able to breathe real air once more.

  He thrust his face under the water and looked down. He expected to see his wife blocking the opening, but she wasn’t there. She had vanished. Perhaps a wave had caught her and washed her out of the well. She was probably sinking deep just then. Hiroyuki tried hard to believe that this was the case. Without his wife’s body, no criminal charge could be proved against him.

  Just when everything had looked so desperate, his fortune had suddenly changed for the better. Almost as soon as his wife’s body had disappeared, effectively disposing of itself, the rescue team had found him. Hiroyuki could not wait for the divers to come get him.

  Suddenly, his body was hugged by powerful arms. They were here!

  He could hear no voices, but he felt the reassuring words in his stomach: ‘You’re all right now.’

  Hiroyuki felt for the diver’s arm and clung to him. The diver put his arm around Hiroyuki’s shoulder and inserted a regulator snugly into his mouth. Holding the mouthpiece tightly between his teeth, he drew in air. It had the aroma of a highland plateau; never had air tasted so sweet. Determined to never let go of it, he bit deeper into the mouthpiece, sucking in the air over and over again.

  He was ecstatic. Once back in the land of the living, he would be able to love them all, his son, his daughter, even his senile father. The shell that encased him was cracking and breaking off like the lie it had always been. He was sorry not everything could be the same again. He was going to beg for his wife’s forgiveness. He had no idea how to apologize to the dead. His desire to do so, however, was genuine.

  Hiroyuki had taken it for granted that the diver would escort him in a downward dive. But he felt himself suddenly floating up instead. In an instant, he was gazing at the keel of the Hamakatsu, which was now barely afloat.

  Resembling nothing more permanent than a leaf on the water, the boat looked as if it would go under at any moment. The patrol boat made its way towards them. People jostled about on the deck; they all seemed to be shouting things, but Hiroyuki couldn’t hear their voices.

  He could see all around him, all of the sea and the sky. Bursting through the clouds, shafts of light poured down onto the crests of waves as they broke and spewed their foam. Catching the light, the spray scintil
lated like jewels hurled in every direction. This was the sea he had known from childhood. Cape Futtsu stretched straight toward him. The wind and waves were strong. Never had he seen the sea so sublime, it shimmered. A sense of relief enveloped him, and his body felt lighter and lighter.

  A phrase he’d never once uttered in his life came to him now: All clear!

  He spoke the words and they felt good. He spoke them once more.

  * * *

  The patrol ship retrieved the two bodies simultaneously. It was obvious that one was that of a woman who’d been dead for two or three days. The other was that of a man who’d just breathed his last. What this meant would be understood in due course.

  What they would never understand, however, was why the man had died with the woman’s cadaver locked in his embrace. He certainly didn’t look like he’d clutched at a straw in panic-stricken desperation. Far from anguished, the man’s expression was serene. Something else that troubled the rescue team was that the woman’s right thumb was plunged down to its base in the man’s mouth. How on earth could the dead woman insert her thumb into the man’s mouth? Nonetheless, that was how it looked to those who saw the corpses.

  The man must have bitten down hard on the thumb, for his jaws refused to unclamp even after the recovered bodies had been laid on the deck of the patrol boat. When they pried his mouth open and removed the thumb, they found that it’d nearly come off. They tried giving the man artificial respiration to see if he could be revived. It was useless. He showed no signs of returning to life. He was dead. They could have saved him if they’d reached him just a few minutes earlier.

  The man’s serene expression, however, soothed the rescuers’ feelings. It wasn’t easy to bite down so fiercely and at the same time wear such a serene expression. But this man had accomplished the contradiction.

  IV – DREAM CRUISE

  Masayuki Enoyoshi sat against the mast with his feet stretched out on the bow hatch. In this sloppiest of postures, he seemed to be deliberately facing away from the cockpit. It was not possible to sit on the bow hatch when the main and jib sails were set; anyone sitting there would obstruct the sail whenever the boat changed direction. At that particular moment, however, the small yacht, twenty-five feet long, was motoring out into Tokyo Bay along a sea-lane. Bordered on both sides by landfills, the sea-lane was like a little bay within a larger one. All the yacht’s sails were down. Yachts were prohibited from crossing this patch of sea with their sails set. Any yacht being powered by its sails was likely to obstruct the heavy maritime traffic that plied this part of the bay.

  Enoyoshi guessed what the Ushijimas, the couple who owned the boat, were up to. They were going to use this time with the sails down to talk to him. Still inexperienced, Ushijima was far from proficient at using the sails to steer the yacht. It’d been annoying just to watch. Apparently unable to gauge the direction of the wind, Ushijima kept fussing about in the cockpit working the sails in and out with an uncertain look on his face. The way he glanced windward and shook his head, it was obvious the yacht wasn’t sailing how he wanted it to. Enoyoshi had felt more uneasy watching Ushijima’s expression than from the lurching of the boat and had wondered whether they’d make it safely back to the marina.

  Yet Ushijima it was who had his hand on the tiller now in the cockpit just behind Enoyoshi. When it came to steering with the nine horsepower outboard motor, the helmsman was finding it easy enough to manoeuvre the yacht. Leaving a trail of white foam in its wake, the yacht silently made its way between the landfill that served as the central breakwater and the pier of the Ariake Ferry. A trip around the tip of Wakasu Marine Park and slightly up the Ara River brought you back to the Dream Island Marina. With renewed confidence in his ability to handle the boat, Ushijima self-consciously placed a foot up on the bench and struck a pose at the tiller. Ushijima’s wife Minako did not appear on deck. She was probably in the cabin down below looking for something to drink. Enoyoshi did not miss her talkative presence. He was only too grateful for the peaceful interlude.

  Enoyoshi glanced at his watch. It was a little before six in the evening. This mini-cruise was only intended to provide a superficial sampling of the crannies of Tokyo Bay and was due to return to the Dream Island Marina by evening.

  The sun was setting on the western horizon. If this were the open sea, they would have beheld the majestic sight of an evening sun quenching itself on an unobstructed horizon. Here the view was not all that different from what you could get from the pier, but the inexperienced skipper had neither the skill nor the courage to get the boat out into the open sea. A cluster of super-high-rises under construction in the secondary coastal development area rose in the western sky like a clump of bamboo shoots springing from the buried nutrients of the landfill.

  A thin evening mist began to envelop the black, steel framed skeletons of the unfinished skyscrapers silhouetted against a crimson background. Although one would not have expected construction to be in progress on a Sunday, thunderous booms could be heard. It was difficult to determine exactly where these sounds were coming from, but each massive reverberation only served to exacerbate Enoyoshi’s feelings of unease. Though he could not pinpoint the source of his anxiety, it was there all the same. The booms echoing up from the seabed to the bottom of the boat reached Enoyoshi’s very guts.

  Emerging from the cabin, Minako pointed excitedly in the direction opposite the sunset. ‘Say, look over there!’ she chirped with affected youthful gaiety.

  At that moment, the yacht, named MINAKO after the woman, was about to pass the tip of Wakasu Marine Park. The instant the boat shifted course, Disneyland immediately came into view. It was just that time of evening and lights were beginning to come on in the distance. What Minako was urging the men to look at with her Betty Boop squeak was Disneyland and the lights from the hotels that lined the nearby coast. The girlish tone had little childish innocence about it, conveying more of a selfish insistence that the others get involved. Enoyoshi reacted with nothing more than a quick glance and otherwise resolved to ignore her.

  But she called over to him, ‘What are you doing musing over there, come get some beer!’

  Clasping the mast, Enoyoshi turned to look at her. She stood holding up a can of beer.

  Enoyoshi made a noncommittal grunt and wondered what to do. He felt pathetic that he couldn’t just say no. So, should he refuse to have anything to do with her inane chatter by staying put in his sanctuary, or should he get his hands on a beer and pay the price of enduring her ‘sales talk’? There was no denying his thirst, and beer was appealing.

  With one hand still on the mast and the other on the boom, he crawled towards the cockpit to take the beer offered by Minako.

  ‘Thank you. It’s just what I needed.’

  He bobbed his head in appreciation, roughly popped the pull tab open, then gulped down the beer. It was chilled and tasted delicious. Detecting contentment on Enoyoshi’s face, Minako ventured, ‘Well? Don’t you think it’s just marvellous?’

  The moment he heard her start, the beer seemed to lose some of its savour. How many times had he had to endure this spiel that day? Her tone suggested that she was not so much asking for an opinion as forcing him to accept her own. He made another noncommittal grunt in response.

  In an attempt to change the subject, he vainly wracked his brain for another topic. The three of them on the yacht had precious little in common to talk about. This was the third time that Enoyoshi had met Ushijima. As for Minako, he had only met her that morning.

  Ushijima, who’d been quiet, chimed in, ‘You can do it. It’s all yours for the taking.’

  Enoyoshi didn’t reply. If only they set the sails again. That would shut them up. They wouldn’t have the leisure to harass him if they had to trim the jib sail and main sail. They’d be flailing about in utter confusion. But while they cruised the calm waters of the evening sea using the outboard motor, it was all too easy for Ushijima to stand there beer in hand minding just the tiller.


  Enoyoshi had met Ushijima at a high-school reunion in July, two months ago. It hadn’t been a class reunion but rather a grand reunion of all the old boys. Hundreds of them attended the annual event. In the ten years since Enoyoshi graduated he’d never once attended a reunion. That year, he happened to have the weekend free and decided to go for a change. Disappointed not to find as many old classmates as he’d expected, Enoyoshi milled around the room searching for familiar faces. In the process he made small talk with Ushijima and they ended up exchanging business cards. Ushijima had graduated seven years before Enoyoshi and his card said Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. A month later, Ushijima asked Enoyoshi out for a drink and proposed the current outing.

  Now that he thought about it, Enoyoshi should have suspected Ushijima’s motives and been altogether more circumspect. In the past, there’d been acquaintances who’d contacted him out of the blue, asking to meet up for old times’ sake, only to approach him then with some dubious scheme. It now seemed only natural that, graduates of the same school or not, the act of inviting a stranger involved an ulterior motive. If they were still fellow students, that would have been one thing. In the adult world, however, any relationship usually revolved around an eye to some sort of gain.

  ‘First picture whatever it is that you desire, that you want to have.’

  Ushijima’s face was close by and the voice came from right behind Enoyoshi’s ears. The dim light of dusk revealed the lines of age etched on Ushijima’s brow. Whenever Ushijima looked down, his thinning hair also became apparent. Enoyoshi felt that the man, who’d initially appeared young for his age, had suddenly gained many years.