The Sound Of The Waves

by Yukio Mishima

  The wind came blowing, and the pine branches set up a clamor. It was a gust of wind that raised solemn echoes even in the dark interior of the shrine. Perhaps it was the sea-god, accepting the boy’s prayer.

  Shinji looked up at the star-filled sky and breathed deeply. Then he thought:

  “But mightn’t the gods punish me for such a selfish prayer?”

  4

  IT WAS some four or five days later and the wind was blowing a gale. The waves were breaking high across the breakwater of Uta-jima’s harbor. The sea, far and wide, was choppy with whitecaps.

  The skies were clear, but because of the high wind not a single fishing-boat had gone out.

  Shinji’s mother had asked a favor of him. The women of the village gathered firewood on the mountain and left it stored at the top in what had formerly been a military observation tower. His mother had marked hers with a red rag. Since he had finished by noon with the Young Men’s Association’s work of carrying stones for the road building, she asked him to bring her gatherings down from the mountain for her.

  . . .

  Shinji shouldered the wooden frame on which brushwood was carried, and set out. The path led up past the lighthouse. As he rounded Woman’s Slope the wind died as completely as though it had been a trick.

  The residence of the lighthouse-keeper was as quiet as though in a deep noonday sleep. He could see the back of a watchman seated at the desk in the watchhouse. A radio was blaring music.

  Climbing the pine-grove slope behind the lighthouse, Shinji began to sweat.

  The mountain was utterly still. Not a single human form was to be seen; there was not even so much as a stray dog prowling about In fact, because of a taboo of the island’s guardian deity, there was not a single stray dog on the entire island, let alone a pet dog. And as the island was all uphill and land was scarce, neither, were there any horses or cows for draft animals. The only domestic animals were the cats that came trailing the tips of their tails through the jagged shadows thrown in sharp relief in the lanes leading always downward in cobbled steps between the rows of village houses.

  The boy climbed to the top of the mountain. This was the highest point on Uta-jima. But it was so overgrown with sakaki and silverberry bushes and tall weeds that there was no view. There was nothing but the sound of the sea roaring up through the vegetation. The path leading down the other side to the south had been practically taken over by bushes and weeds, and one had to make quite a detour to reach the observation tower.

  Presently, beyond a sand-floored pine thicket, the three-story, reinforced-concrete tower came into view. The white ruins looked uncanny in the deserted, silent scene.

  In former days soldiers had stood on the second-floor balcony, binoculars to their eyes, and checked the aim of the guns that were fired for target practice from Mt. Konaka on the far side of Irako Cape. Officers had called out from inside the tower to know where the shells were hitting, and the soldiers had called back the ranges. This way of things had continued until mid-war, and the soldiers had always blamed a phantom badger for any provisions that were mysteriously short.

  The boy peeped into the ground floor of the tower. There was a mountain of dried pine needles and twigs tied into bundles. This floor had evidently been used as a storehouse, and its windows were quite small; there were even some with their glass panes still unbroken. The boy entered and, by the faint light of the windows, soon found his mother’s mark—red rags tied to several bundles, the name “Tomi Kubo” written on them in childish characters.

  Taking the frame off his back, Shinji tied the bundles of dried needles and twigs to it. He had not visited the tower for a long time and now felt reluctant to depart so soon. Leaving the load lying where it was, he was about to start up the concrete steps.

  Just then there was a faint sound from overhead as though of stone and wood striking together. The boy listened intently. The sound ceased. It must have been his imagination.

  He went on up the stairs, and there on the second floor of the ruins was the sea, framed desolately in wide windows which lacked both glass and casings. Even the iron railing of the balcony was gone. Traces of the soldiers’ chalk scribblings could still be seen on the gray walls.

  Shinji continued climbing. He paused to look at the broken flagpole out a third-story window—and this time he was certain he heard the sound of someone’s sobbing. He gave a start and ran lightly on up to the roof on sneaker-clad feet.

  The one who was really startled was the girl on the roof, having a boy suddenly appear before her out of nowhere, without so much as a footfall. She was wearing wooden clogs and was weeping, but now she ceased her sobbing and stood petrified with fear. It was Hatsue.

  As for the boy, he had never dreamed of such a fortunate meeting and could not believe his eyes.

  So the two of them simply stood there, startled, like animals that come suddenly face to face in the forest, looking into each other’s eyes, their emotions wavering between caution and curiosity.

  Finally Shinji spoke:

  “You’re Hatsue-san, aren’t you?”

  Hatsue nodded involuntarily and then looked surprised at his knowing her name. But something about the black, serious eyes of this boy who was making such an effort to put up a bold front seemed to remind her of a young face that had gazed at her fixedly on the beach the other day.

  “It was you crying, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was me.”

  “Why were you crying?” Shinji sounded like a policeman.

  Her reply came with unexpected promptness. The mistress of the lighthouse gave lessons in etiquette and homemaking for the girls of the village who were interested, and today Hatsue was going to attend for the first time. But, coming too early, she had decided to climb the mountain behind the lighthouse and had lost her way.

  Just then the shadow of a bird swept over their heads. It was a peregrine. Shinji took this for a lucky sign. Thereupon his tangled tongue came unloose and, recovering his usual air of manliness, he told her that he passed the lighthouse on his way home and would go that far with her.

  Hatsue smiled, making not the slightest effort to wipe away the tears that had flowed down her cheeks. It was as though the sun had come shining through rain. She was wearing a red sweater, blue-serge slacks, and red-velvet socks—the split-toed kind worn with clogs.

  Hatsue leaned over the concrete parapet at the edge of the roof and looked down at the sea.

  “What’s this building?” she asked.

  Shinji too went to the parapet, but at a little distance from the girl.

  “It used to be a target-observation tower,” he answered.

  “They watched from here to see where the cannon shells landed.”

  Here on the south side of the island, screened by the mountain, there was no wind. The sunlit expanse of the Pacific stretched away beneath their eyes. The pine-clad cliff dropped abruptly to the sea, its jutting rocks stained white with cormorant droppings, and the water near the base of the cliff was black-brown from the seaweed growing on the ocean floor.

  Shinji pointed to a tall rock just offshore where the surging waves were striking, sending up clouds of spray.

  “That’s called Black Isle,” he explained. “It’s where Policeman Suzuki was fishing when the waves washed him away and drowned him.”

  Shinji was thoroughly happy. But the time was drawing near when Hatsue was due at the lighthouse. Straightening up from the concrete parapet, she turned toward Shinji.

  “I’ll be going now,” she said.

  Shinji made no answer and a surprised look came over his face. He had caught sight of a black streak that ran straight across the front of her red sweater.

  Hatsue followed his gaze and saw the dirty smudge, just in the spot where she had been leaning her breast against the concrete parapet. Bending her head, she started slapping her breast with her open hands. Beneath her sweater, which all but seemed to be concealing some firm supports, two gently swelling mound
s were set to trembling ever so slightly by the brisk brushing of her hands.

  Shinji stared in wonder. Struck by her hands, the breasts seemed more like two small, playful animals. The boy was deeply stirred by the resilient softness of their movement.

  The streak of dirt was finally brushed out.

  Shinji went first down the concrete steps and Hatsue followed, her clogs making very clear, light sounds which echoed from the four walls of the ruins. But the sounds behind Shinji’s back came to a stop as they were reaching the first floor.

  Shinji looked back. The girl was standing there, laughing.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I’m dark too, but you—you’re practically black.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve redly been burnt by the sun, you have.”

  The boy laughed in meaningless reply and went on down the stairs. They were just about to leave the tower when he stopped abruptly and ran back inside. He had almost forgotten his mother’s bundles.

  On the way back toward the lighthouse Shinji walked in front, carrying the mountain of pine needles on his back. As they walked along, the girl asked him his name and now, for the first time, he introduced himself. But he went on hurriedly to ask that she not mention his name to anyone or say anything about having met him here: Shinji well knew how sharp the villagers’ tongues could be. Hatsue promised not to tell. Thus their well-founded fear of the village’s love of gossip changed what was but an innocent meeting into a thing of secrecy between the two of them.

  Shinji walked on in silence, having no idea how they could meet again, and soon they reached the spot from which they could look down upon the lighthouse. He pointed out the short cut leading down to the rear of the lighthouse-keeper’s residence and told her good-by. Then, purposely, he took the roundabout way on down to the village.

  5

  UNTIL NOW the boy had been leading a peaceful, contented existence, poor though he was, but from this time on he became tormented with unrest and lost in thought, falling prey to the feeling that there was nothing about him that could possibly appeal to Hatsue. He was so healthy that he had never had any sickness other than the measles. He could swim the circumference of Uta-jima as many as five times without stopping. And he was sure he would have to yield to no one in any test of physical strength. But he could not believe that any of these qualities could possibly touch Hatsue’s heart.

  Another opportunity to meet Hatsue simply would not come. Whenever he returned from fishing he always looked all along the beach for her, but on the few occasions when he caught sight of her she was busy working and there was no chance to speak.

  There was no such thing as that time when she had been alone, leaning against the “abacuses” and staring out to sea. Moreover, whenever the boy resolved that he was sick of it all and that he would put Hatsue completely out of his mind, on that very day he was sure to catch sight of her among the bustling crowd that gathered on the beach when the boats came in.

  City youths learn the ways of love early from novels, movies, and the like, but on Uta-jima there were practically no models to follow. Thus, no matter how he wondered about it, Shinji had not the slightest idea what he should have done during those precious minutes between the observation tower and the lighthouse when he had been alone with her. He was left with nothing but a keen sense of regret, a feeling that there was something he had utterly failed to do.

  It was the monthly commemoration of the day of his father’s death, and the whole family was going to visit the grave, as they did every month. Not to interfere with Shinji’s work, they had chosen a time before the boats set out, and before his brother’s school.

  Shinji and his brother came out of the house with their mother, who was carrying incense sticks and grave flowers. They left the house standing open: there was no such thing as theft on the island.

  The graveyard was located some distance from the village, on a low cliff above the beach. At high tide the sea came right up to the foot of the cliff. The uneven slope was covered with gravestones, some of them tilting on the soft sand foundation.

  Dawn had not yet broken. The sky was just beginning to become light in the direction of the lighthouse, but the village and its harbor, which faced northwest, still remained in night.

  Shinji walked in front carrying a paper lantern. Hiroshi, his brother, was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when he pulled on his mother’s sleeve and said:

  “Can I have four rice dumplings in my lunch today? Can I, huh?”

  “Such foolishness! Two you’ll get. Three’d more than give you the bellyache.”

  “Please! I want four!”

  The rice dumplings they made on the island to celebrate the Day of the Monkey, or on death-memorial days, were almost as large as the small pillows they slept on.

  In the graveyard a cold morning breeze was blowing fitfully. The surface of the sea in the lee of the island was black, but the offing was stained with dawn. The mountains enclosing the Gulf of Ise could be seen clearly. In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor. They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats’ anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised.

  Reaching their father’s grave, their mother arranged the flowers she had brought and, after striking many matches only to have them blown out by the wind, finally succeeded in lighting the incense. Then she had her sons bow before the grave, while she herself bowed behind them, weeping.

  . . .

  In their village there was a saying: “Never have aboard one woman or one priest.” The boat on which Shinji’s father died had broken this taboo. An old woman had died on the island toward the end of the war, and the Co-operative’s boat had set out to take her body to Toshi-jima for the autopsy.

  When the boat was about three miles out from Uta-jima it was sighted by a plane from an aircraft carrier. The boat’s regular engineer was not aboard and his substitute was unaccustomed to the engine. It was the black smoke from his sluggish engine that had given the plane its target.

  The plane dropped a bomb on the boat and then strafed it with machine-gun fire. The boat’s funnel was split open, and Shinji’s father had his head torn apart down to his ears. Another man too was killed instantly, hit in the eye. One was hit in the back by a bullet, which entered his lungs. One was hit in the legs. And one who had a buttock shot away died shortly after of the bleeding.

  Both the deck and the bilge became a lake of blood. The fuel tank was hit and kerosene spread on top of the blood. Some hesitated to fling themselves prone in this mess and were hit in the hips. Four persons saved themselves by taking shelter in the icebox in the forward cabin. In his panic, one man squeezed himself through the porthole behind the bridge, but when he tried to repeat the feat back in port he found that, no matter how he tried, he could not wriggle through that tiny opening a second time.

  Thus, of eleven persons, three were killed and a number wounded. But the corpse of the old woman, stretched out on the deck under a rush mat, was not so much as touched by a single bullet. …

  . . .

  “The old man was really something fierce when fishing for sand launce,” Shinji said reminiscently to his mother. “He’d beat me every day. Really, there wasn’t time for the welts to go down before he’d raise more.”

  Sand launce were found in the Yohiro Shallows, and catching them required unusual skill. A flexible bamboo pole with feathers on the tip was used to imitate a sea-bird pursuing a fish under the water, and the operation called for split-second timing.

  “Well, I guess so,” said his mother. “Sand-launce fishing is real man’s work even for a fisherman.”

  Hiroshi took no interest in the talk between his mother and brother but was dreaming of the school excursion that was to take place in only ten days more
. Shinji had been too poor to go on school excursions when he was Hiroshi’s age, so he had been saving money out of his own wages for Hiroshi’s travel expenses.

  When they had finished paying their homage at the graveside, Shinji went on alone directly to the beach to help with the preparations for sailing. It was agreed that his mother would return home and bring him his lunch before the boats put out.

  As he hurried toward the Taihei-maru along the busy beach, someone’s voice from out of the throng came to him on the wind and struck his ears:

  “They say Yasuo Kawamoto’s to marry Hatsue.”

  At the sound of those words Shinji’s spirits became pitch-black.

  Again the Taihei-maru spent the day octopus fishing.

  During the eleven hours they were out in the boat Shinji threw his whole soul into the fishing and scarcely once opened his mouth. But as he usually had very little to say, his silence was not particularly noticeable.

  Returning to harbor, they tied up as usual to the Co-operative’s boat and unloaded their octopuses. Then the other fish were sold through a middleman and transferred to the “buyer ship” belonging to a private wholesale fish dealer. The giltheads were flapping about inside the metal baskets used for weighing fish, flashing in the light of the setting sun.

  It was the day out of every ten when the fishermen were paid, so Shinji and Ryuji went along with the master to the office of the Co-operative. Their catch for the ten-day period had been over three hundred and thirty pounds and they cleared 27,997 yen after deducting the Co-operative’s sales commission, the ten per cent savings deposit, and maintenance costs. Shinji received four thousand yen from the master as his share. It had been a good take considering that the height of the fishing season was already past.