Dark Water

by Kōji Suzuki

  ‘What is it that you want in life?’

  It was clear that the answer Ushijima was seeking was something that required a fortune to buy, like a yacht or a Mercedes. Enoyoshi chose a different sort of thing. He could have picked anything, so long as it couldn’t be bought.

  ‘Now that you mention it, I suppose I’d like a child.’

  Enoyoshi wasn’t married, nor was he even remotely engaged. He was single and had told Ushijima so.

  The couple exchanged surprised glances.

  ‘Are you married?’ asked Minako in wide-eyed puzzlement. As she turned toward her husband, her look turned fierce, conveying annoyance at having been misinformed.

  Ushijima, nettled, peered at Enoyoshi. ‘I thought you said you were single?’

  ‘Sure, I’m single. But I’m living with this girl, and if I could get her in the family way, that’s all it’d take to get her to marry me.’

  It was a lie. There was no woman in his life. As pious a lie as it was, he began to loathe himself. His inability to just say no to anyone was pathetic and made him feel like some kid who was never going to grow up. All he could do was be inconsistent in the hope that the others would realize that he wasn’t interested.

  His wish wasn’t granted, and Minako began to address the lie. ‘Suppose you did have a child and it led to marriage. You’ll need money. There’ll be the cost of the wedding and you’ll have to find somewhere to live. And your child, of course. Do you realize how much it costs to raise kids?’

  The Ushijimas were childless, but this didn’t make them feel any less qualified to lecture Enoyoshi. They insisted that the salary earned from an ordinary company job wasn’t enough to raise a family. Always struggling to make ends meet, he’d never be able to realize his own dreams…

  The Ushijimas were trying to get him interested in a pyramid-type sales scheme funded by foreign capital.

  Enoyoshi was well aware that the organization in question was not involved in anything illegal. The concept of cutting costs through non-store retailing and handing the margin to the salespeople was not a bad one. The salespeople belonged to different echelons of a pyramidal hierarchy – the higher the level, the greater the performance bonus. The Ushijimas were apparently on the third rung from the bottom and were eager to move up. To do so, they had to recruit salespeople by hook or by crook. Persuading new blood to sell the products manufactured by the company, training the rookies to become great sales reps, was the only way to improve their ranks. A car salesman no doubt familiar with marketing techniques, Enoyoshi would be a great catch for the Ushijimas. In fact, the products manufactured by the company included a car-care line.

  Rising in rank meant making more money, enough to buy an apartment in just one year. The Ushijimas claimed they were making double what they made as civil servants from the pyramid scheme. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have the yacht. The yacht was an absolutely indispensable tool for their recruitment efforts. Once they were out at sea, they could hammer their victim with their recruitment pitch without worrying about the victim escaping. The yacht also served as proof that the scheme could indeed make your dreams come true. For the Ushijimas, yachting was like holding one of those home parties where the host peddled some product.

  ‘Imagining it is key. Imagine it long enough and hard enough and it will come true.’

  Ushijima argued his case fervently, but Enoyoshi would have none of it. The world that Ushijima was painting held no interest at all for Enoyoshi. He wasn’t indifferent to making money, but he simply wasn’t ready to pursue it at the price of wrecking relationships. He could indeed imagine where it would all lead if he went after ever-increasing sales bonuses. He’d find himself in a sort of religious cult, a clique of similarly minded fanatics with one goal and one ideal, and it would be impossible to break away.

  The Ushijimas reacted with clear displeasure and irritation. They spoke disapprovingly of Enoyoshi’s lack of imagination, calling him a fool, even hinting that he was an inferior human being. With their vaunted imagination, they predicted that Enoyoshi would live and die as a pathetic man working all lifelong just to eke out a living, without worthwhile dreams.

  Enoyoshi could not even be bothered to argue with them. Of course, spending his entire life as a mere salesman was a distinct possibility. It would have been pointless to tell them that the idea didn’t really upset him. It would have been tedious. All Enoyoshi wanted was to get off the yacht as soon as possible. He’d had enough of not having solid ground beneath him and being aboard someone else’s yacht. He loathed the craven subservience that the unaccustomed setting was inducing in him.

  The yacht was moving steadily northward about a hundred yards east of the Wakasu Golf Links, which stretched north to south on a slender tract of land. It was only another mile and a half to the Ara River Bay Bridge, and beyond it was the entrance to the Dream Island Marina. He wouldn’t have to put up with them much longer now. Once off the yacht, he would never have anything to do with them again.

  His prayers for haste notwithstanding, the engine of the MINAKO sputtered and came to a stop. So strangely that Ushijima stopped in mid-sentence and gulped. He looked over at the outboard motor.

  ‘Odd, very odd.’

  Enoyoshi glanced unconsciously at his watch. 6:27 p.m., that was when the yacht came to a standstill. A Keio line train was crossing the iron bridge ahead of them, making a distinctive sound. The light from the train windows formed a stream of white in the evening sky above the mouth of the river. Lights were lit in almost every building that lined the bay. The yacht had stopped just as the black surface of the sea began to glimmer with the reflections of these lights.

  * * *

  The area where the yacht had stopped ruled out the possibility of having run aground. They were several hundred yards west of the sandbar known as Sanmaizu that extended due south of the Kasai Coastal Park near the mouth of the former Edo River. Iron poles marked such shallow stretches of water to indicate the hazard. At night the tips of these poles were illuminated. There was little risk of accidentally running aground on sandbars unless there were strong winds or a dense fog. The Dream Island Marina staff had warned them repeatedly about the shallows outside the entrance, and for all his faults as a sailor, Ushijima had been steering the yacht with particular attention to avoiding the shallows.

  ‘The engine’s stopped, hasn’t it?’ Enoyoshi noted incuriously, making no move to get up from his bench.

  With a dubious look, Ushijima unscrewed the cap on the gasoline tank and peered in to check that it wasn’t empty. He gingerly pulled the hand starter. The engine started immediately. The Ushijimas looked relieved, but only for a brief while. As soon as the skipper shifted into forward gear, the engine sputtered and died once more.

  Now, instead of trying to restart the engine, Ushijima tilted up the drive unit out of the water.

  ‘What is this?’ Ushima exclaimed wildly, making Enoyoshi spring up. All three of them looked at the propeller.

  In the evening darkness, soaked with seawater, the thing looked almost black. Ushijima reached toward the drive unit and retrieved, from in between the trim tab and the propeller, a child’s blue canvas shoe. It had probably been floating nearby when the laces got tangled in the shaft and the whole shoe ended up being wound in to the propeller.

  It was one of those Disney products, with a Mickey Mouse motif. Ushijima turned the shoe upside down to check the size. It was small and probably belonged to a young boy.

  Shrugging his shoulders, Ushijima handed the shoe to Enoyoshi and made a face. His attitude suggested that he wanted Enoyoshi to get rid of it one way or another. With all kinds of objects floating in the sea, it wasn’t strange to find a child’s shoe. Yet, Ushijima seemed to find the thing somewhat sinister and seemed even afraid of it. After handing the shoe to Enoyoshi, he used a towel to wipe the palm of his right hand meticulously.

  Ushijima prodded with a look, and Enoyoshi was about to throw the shoe back into the sea when he noti
ced a name on the heel. Kazuhiro, it said in black marker pen.

  ‘Little Kazuhiro,’ Enoyoshi muttered to himself.

  ‘Just throw it away, okay?’ Ushijima commanded rather menacingly.

  Rather than hurl it away, Enoyoshi set it on the surface like a little boat and gave the heel a gentle shove.

  The virtually brand-new left shoe bobbed unsteadily as it floated away. The current in this area was pretty swift, close as it was to the mouth of the River Ara. The shoe floated south and soon melted into the blackness of the sea. Enoyoshi pictured a little boy hopping about on his right foot.

  Ushijima lowered the drive unit back into the water and started the engine. They’d removed the shoe that had caused the engine trouble; they ought to be ready to go. Enoyoshi’s watch read 6:35. They’d lost five minutes but it looked like they’d return on schedule at seven.

  ‘Let’s be off,’ said Ushijima, putting the boat into forward gear. This time the engine didn’t stall and churned steadily.

  The feeling they got in the next few moments was hard to describe in words. A gurgling sound could be heard from behind the drive unit and there was a rush of tiny bubbles to the surface. It was clear that the propeller was turning to drive the boat forward. Yet the yacht was not moving. It felt like being in a dream, or rather, a nightmare, where no matter how hard you try to run away from the monster, your feet can’t get traction and only your heart speeds off. All three aboard felt more or less like that. Although the hull and deck of the yacht lay between them and the water below, it was as if their own feet had become entangled in some piece of rope that floated up from the seabed.

  Enoyoshi and Ushijima remained absolutely speechless, while Minako nervously kept standing up and sitting down on the bench. She demanded in a strident tone that verged on a scream, ‘What’s up? Why aren’t we moving?’

  Ushijima fiddled with the gears and tried putting the engine in reverse. The yacht refused to move in either direction.

  ‘Could you try leaning over port?’ asked Ushijima.

  As requested, Enoyoshi and Minako leaned overboard the left side of the vessel. As it tipped, Ushijima put the engine into forward gear, to no avail. They tried motoring forward with the weight on starboard, then backwards weighted on starboard, and finally backwards weighted on port, but the yacht refused to budge, as though it’d taken root.

  Ushijima switched off the engine. Minako started to say something, but he waved her silent.

  ‘Hold it, will you?’ Saying so, he plunged in thought, probably sifting through his limited experience regarding what to do to get an immobilized yacht moving. Enoyoshi had been longing to return to the marina and be rid of the couple, but given the situation, he had no intention of rushing Ushijima. The man’s expression was not just serious, but grave. Recruiting for a sales scheme must have been the last thing on his mind just then.

  ‘Right,’ Ushijima said as if to rally himself, and stood up. He announced the next step they needed to take. ‘Let’s take a sounding.’

  Ushijima opened a foot locker and pulled out an anchor tied to a piece of rope. He gradually lowered the anchor into the water. When it had sunk a few dozen feet into the water, Ushijima stopped feeding out the rope and was still for about seconds. Then he heaved a big sigh and began pulling the rope back up. There was no problem with the water depth. The yacht hadn’t stopped because its long keel was stuck in some sandbank. They had not run aground, it was certain now.

  ‘Weird, isn’t it?’ expressed Enoyoshi. There was nothing else to be said about the situation. The unease of having such a precarious footing was something he’d never had to experience on land.

  Returning the rope and anchor to the locker, Ushijima banged it shut and sat down on top of it. He clearly wasn’t in any mood to talk. Minako turned on the cabin and navigating lights and opened the hatch. The light from the cabin made the clean white surface of the cockpit gleam as though it was coated in fluorescent paint.

  The sense of crisis that Enoyoshi was beginning to feel was probably mild compared to what the Ushijimas must have been going through. After all, Enoyoshi was not crew, just a guest on the yacht, and as such he was not responsible for what was happening. It would have been another matter entirely if they’d been stranded far out at sea with no land in sight. As it was, they were a mere hundred yards or so east of Wakasu Golf Links, whose lights were clearly visible. On the north and the east, too, land was not far away. The shoreline appeared as a belt of light and a murmur of evening activity blended with the puttering of car exhaust.

  Meanwhile, the Ushijimas became more morose with every passing minute. Ushijima looked dumbfounded about the yacht having come to a standstill, while Minako, manifestly resenting her husband for his incompetence, snorted and sighed loudly to pressure him to get the thing moving again. The whole situation was a painful slap in the face for Minako, who’d been raving to Enoyoshi about the joys of having a yacht, who’d been trying to entice him to join her in relishing a clearly superior level of life. Well? Don’t you think it’s just marvellous? It was like seeing your pet do something totally stupid when you’ve bragged about its clever tricks and invited people over for a little show.

  Quite apart from feeling anxious about his footing, Enoyoshi was getting quite curious as to how Ushijima meant to get them out of the fix.

  Clueless though he was, Enoyoshi offered a theory. ‘Maybe some rope got tangled around the keel?’

  Ushijima raised his face and nodded rather eagerly. ‘That’s just what I was thinking. It could have caught on a fixed net or something.’

  ‘Is this where they set nets?’

  Ushijima shook his head. ‘Actually, no. This is a shipping lane.’

  ‘So–’

  ‘Some clump of rope, from a fixed net or something like that, could’ve drifted over and caught on the keel.’

  It was obvious even to Enoyoshi that if that was the problem, the other end of the rope was still embedded securely on the sea floor. Such a coincidence seemed too far-fetched. He had to force back a smile as he envisaged a piece of rope forming a noose and rising up from the seabed to ensnare the keel of the yacht the way a cowboy would lasso a steer.

  ‘In that case, what are we going to do?’ the yacht’s namesake broke in. Contorting her thick lips, she glared at her husband. Enoyoshi somehow couldn’t get on with that jowly face of hers. Her vanity showed in the contours of her face and her make-up. It was probably she who’d first dabbled in the sales scheme, then sucked in her husband. She probably goaded him on as his sales partner.

  ‘Get the rope off the keel, I suppose.’

  Enoyoshi could imagine with ease what Ushijima had to do now. It was quite simple. Dive down under the yacht, feel for the rope, and get it off the keel. Yet the mere sight of those black waters below was enough to give him the jitters. With the sun now completely set under the horizon, the always dark water of the bay appeared even blacker, reflecting the inky night sky. The very thought of holding his breath and diving into the murky depths was enough to choke him.

  The boat was not equipped with a mask or an underwater light, and Ushijima would have to grope around in the dark to get the job done. Even if he had a mask, there would be near zero visibility in the sludgy waters of Tokyo Bay.

  But Ushijima stayed silent, unmoving. Pensively biting his lower lip, he shot laden glances at Enoyoshi, who did not wonder why Ushijima wasn’t showing any sign of making a move when what needed to be done was clear. Enoyoshi understood. Ushijima didn’t want to go. He wanted Enoyoshi to go, but instead of asking, he was silently hoping Enoyoshi would offer to go.

  …Slim chance.

  Enoyoshi had absolutely no intention of obliging him. To communicate this to Ushijima, he got to his feet and turned his back on him gloweringly. He was under no obligation whatsoever to work for the benefit of MINAKO, let alone risk his life.

  ‘Enoyoshi.’ Just as he was heading toward the cabin, Ushijima called him back.

  En
oyoshi turned to see that Ushijima was unbuttoning his shirt. The skipper appeared to have decided that there was nothing to do but handle the job himself. ‘Well, good,’ Enoyoshi remarked inwardly.

  Winding a rope around himself several times and tying it in a bowline knot, Ushijima handed the loose end to Enoyoshi.

  ‘I’m counting on you,’ said Ushijima, giving Enoyoshi a slap on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re in safe hands,’ Enoyoshi assured him, gripping the rope tightly for his host to see.

  Ushijima entered the water feet first and lowered himself up to the shoulders. With his hands on the rim at the stern, he bent and stretched his arms as if chinning himself up on an iron bar, and regulated his breathing. It was still early September, so the water could not be that cold. As he bobbed up and down in the water, Ushijima’s face appeared gray in the light from the cabin. His reluctance to just go ahead and do the job was painfully evident from his expression. Yet, in the next instant, Ushijima thrust himself up out of the water, held his breath, and plunged down under the surface.

  A yacht’s keel is a board that protrudes straight down into the water from the center of the hull. The keel of MINAKO was three feet wide and four feet long. Hence, Ushijima’s dive, if it could be called a dive, involved nothing more than a descent of several feet at most. The length of rope that needed to be extended was negligible. Even so, Enoyoshi hurled out a couple of dozen feet out into the sea so that Ushijima would have plenty to spare if he needed it.

  Half a minute later, Ushijima plopped his head out of the water. He tried to get a grip on the yacht but failed, and treaded water with just his head above the surface.

  ‘How’s it look?’

  Ushijima shook his head vigorously in response. His face looked even grayer than before. Most probably, on his first dive, all he could do was locate the keel itself.

  Ushijima regulated his breathing in preparation for a second attempt. He hadn’t been down there a minute before Enoyoshi felt a bump at his feet, and the hull reverberated in a way that suggested that Ushijima was struggling down there. The sensation from the length of the rope conveyed the same. Ushijima had to be there right underneath, but Enoyoshi felt a pang of anxiety and tried pulling in some rope.