The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea

by Yukio Mishima

  Her nose was perfect; her lips exquisite. Like a master ringing a go stone onto the board after long deliberation, he placed the details of her beauty one by one in the misty dark and drew back to savor them.

  Her eyes were quiet, and icy, and their chill was lewdness itself, indifference to the world become reckless lechery. Her eyes had haunted Ryuji since they had agreed to meet for dinner the day before; they had kept him awake all night.

  And what voluptuous shoulders! Like the shoreline, they began with no real beginning, to slope gently downward from the cape of her neck; gracious, dignified shoulders fashioned so that silk might slip and fall away. When I hold her breasts they’ll nestle against my palms with a marvelous, sweaty heaviness. I feel responsible for all this woman’s flesh because it teases me softly like other things that are mine. I’m trembling with the sweetness of her being here, and when she feels me tremble she’ll tilt up like a leaf in a wind-tossed tree and show the white backs of those eyes of hers.

  An odd, silly story thrust abruptly into Ryuji’s mind. Once the Captain had told him about going to Venice and visiting a beautiful little palace at high tide; and being astounded to find when he got there that the marble floors were under water. . . . Ryuji almost spoke the words aloud: small beautiful flooded palace.

  “Please talk some more,” Fusako begged, and he knew it would be all right to kiss her. The smooth, inflamed play of their lips altered subtly with every contact and clinging release as from angle after angle they poured each other full of light, spinning into a single luminous thread all of softness and of sweetness. The shoulders under his rough hands now were more real than any dream.

  Like an insect folding in its wings, Fusako lowered her long lashes. Happiness enough to drive a man crazy, Ryuji thought. Happiness that defied description. At first Fusako’s breath seemed to climb from somewhere in her chest, but gradually its heat and odor changed until it might have issued from some unfathomable depth within her. Now the fuel firing her breath was different too.

  They clutched at each other and collided in frenzied, awkward movements like beasts in a forest lunging at a ring of fire. Fusako’s lips softened and became smoother; Ryuji was ready to die happily that very moment. Only when the cool tips of their noses brushed did he realize with a chuckle that they were two firm, separate bodies.

  He didn’t know how much time passed before, pointing toward a slate roof jutting above the cypress trees at the edge of the park, she said: “Why don’t you stay with us tonight? That’s our house over there.”

  They stood up and looked around. Ryuji jammed his cap on his head and put his arm around Fusako’s shoulders. The park was empty; the red-and-green beacon in the Marine Tower swept across stone benches in the empty square, the drinking fountain, flower beds, and white stone steps.

  Out of habit, Ryuji glanced at his watch. He could just see the dial in the light from the street lamp outside the park: a few minutes past ten. Ordinarily, he would have two hours until night watch. . . .

  He couldn’t take any more of the noonday heat. The sun was in the west now, frying the back of his head: he had left his cap on the Rakuyo.

  The First Mate had given Ryuji a two-day leave, assigning his watch to the Third Mate with the understanding that Ryuji would stand in for him at the next port. He had changed clothes on the ship and had with him a sport jacket and tie he planned to wear that evening, but already sweat had bedraggled his dress shirt.

  He looked at his watch. It was only four o’clock. His date with Fusako was for six. The coffee shop where they had arranged to meet apparently had color television—but there wouldn’t be anything interesting on at this hour of the day.

  Ryuji walked over to the park railing and looked out at the harbor. The warehouse roofs below were extending their three-cornered shadows toward the foreshore. One white sail was tacking back to the yacht basin. He watched the sun sculpture a brace of tensed muscles in marvelous detail in the snow-white blocks of cloud piled above the offing. They were storm clouds all right, but not swollen enough for an evening squall.

  The memory of a mischievous game he had often played as a child drew him across the lawn to the drinking fountain. Closing the mouth of the fountain with his thumb, he squirted a fan of water at the dahlias and white chrysanthemums languishing in the heat: leaves quivered, a small rainbow arched, flowers recoiled. Ryuji reversed the pressure of his thumb and doused his hair and face and throat. The water trickled from his throat to his chest and belly, spinning a soft, cooling screen—an indescribable delight.

  Ryuji shook himself all over like a dog and, carrying his sport jacket over his arm, moved toward the entrance of the park. His shirt was drenched but he didn’t bother to take it off: the sun would dry it quickly enough.

  Ryuji left the park. He marveled at the serenity of the houses that lined the streets, at the sturdy roofs and rooted, unbudging fences. As always, the details of shore life appeared abstract and unreal. Even when he passed an open kitchen and glimpsed the glitter of polished pots and pans, everything lacked concreteness. His sexual desires too, the more so because they were physical, he apprehended as pure abstraction; lusts which time had relegated to memory remained only as glistening essences, like salt crystallized at the surface of a compound. We’ll go to bed together again tonight—this one’s the last: we probably won’t sleep at all. I sail tomorrow evening. I wouldn’t be surprised if I evaporated faster than a damn memory, thanks to these two fantastic nights. . . .

  The heat wasn’t making him sleepy. But imagination whetted his lust as he walked along and he narrowly avoided a large foreign car that came roaring up the hill.

  Then he saw a group of boys break onto the main road from a footpath near the bottom of the hill. Seeing him, one of them stopped short—it was Noboru. Ryuji noticed the boyish kneecaps below the shorts tighten abruptly, saw tension cramp the face peering up at him; and he recalled what Fusako had said: There was something about Noboru this morning; almost as if he knew. . . . Battling with a part of himself that threatened to be flustered in front of the boy, Ryuji forced a smile and yelled: “Hey! Small world, isn’t it? Have a good swim?” The boy didn’t answer; his clear, dispassionate gaze was fixed on Ryuji’s shirt.

  “Why—how did your shirt get sopped like that?”

  “What, this?” The artificial smile spread over his face again. “I took a little shower at the fountain up there in the park.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RUNNING into Ryuji near the park worried Noboru. He wondered what he could do to keep the sailor from telling his mother about the meeting. In the first place, he hadn’t gone swimming at Kamakura as the adults supposed. Besides, one of the boys in the group Ryuji had seen was the chief. But that wasn’t so bad. No one would be able to tell him from the others just by looking—not a chance.

  That morning, the boys had left the city with packed lunches and gone all the way to Yamauchi Pier in Kanagawa. For a while they had roamed around the railroad siding behind the sheds on the wharf, and then held the usual meeting to discuss the uselessness of Mankind, the insignificance of Life. They liked an insecure meeting place where intrusion was always a possibility.

  The chief, number one, number two, Noboru (who was number three), number four, and number five were all smallish, delicate boys and excellent students. In fact most of their teachers lavished praise on this outstanding group and even held it up as an encouraging example to poorer students.

  Number two had discovered that morning’s meeting place and all the others had approved. In back of a large shed marked “City Maintenance A” a rusty railroad siding, apparently in long disuse, crawled through high wild chrysanthemums and old abandoned tires across an unkempt field. Far away in the small garden in front of the warehouse office, canna flowers were blazing in the sun. They were dwindling, end-of-summer flames, but so long as they were visible the boys didn’t feel free of the watchman’s eye, so they turned away and followed the siding back from the shed
. The track stopped in front of a black heavily bolted warehouse door. They discovered to one side of the warehouse a patch of grass hidden by a high wall of red and yellow and deep-brown drums, and sat down. The garish sun was edging toward the summit of the roof but the little lawn was still in shade.

  “That sailor is terrific! He’s like a fantastic beast that’s just come out of the sea all dripping wet. Last night I watched him go to bed with my mother.”

  Noboru began an excited account of what he had witnessed the night before. The boys kept their faces blank, but he could feel every eye on him and the straining to catch every word, and he was satisfied.

  “And that’s your hero?” the chief said when he had finished. His thin red upper lip had a tendency to curl when he spoke. “Don’t you realize there is no such thing as a hero in this world?”

  “But he’s different. He’s really going to do something.”

  “Oh? Like what, for instance?”

  “I can’t say exactly, but it’ll be something . . . terrific.”

  “Are you kidding? A guy like that never does anything. He’s probably after your old lady’s money; that’ll be the punch line. First he’ll suck her out of everything she’s got and then, bang, bam, see you around, ma’am—that’ll be the punch line.”

  “Well even that’s something isn’t it? Something we couldn’t do?”

  “Your ideas about people are still pretty naïve,” the thirteen-year-old chief said coldly. “No adult is going to be able to do something we couldn’t do. There’s a huge seal called ‘impossibility’ pasted all over this world. And don’t ever forget that we’re the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.’ Awe-stricken, the others fell silent.

  “How about your folks?” the chief asked, turning to number two. “I suppose they still won’t buy you an air rifle?”

  “Naw—I guess it’s hopeless,” the boy crooned to himself, arms hugging his knees.

  “They probably say it would be dangerous, don’t they?”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “That’s crap!” Dimples dented the chief’s cheeks, white even in summer. “They don’t even know the definition of danger. They think danger means something physical, getting scratched and a little blood running and the newspapers making a big fuss. Well, that hasn’t got anything to do with it. Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it’s a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won’t find another job as dangerous as that. There isn’t any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it. And society is basically meaningless, a Roman mixed bath. And school, school is just society in miniature: that’s why we’re always being ordered around. A bunch of blind men tell us what to do, tear our unlimited ability to shreds.”

  “But how about the sea?” Noboru persisted. “How about a ship? Last night I’m sure I caught the meaning of the internal order of life you talked about.”

  “I suppose the sea is permissible to a certain extent.” The chief took a deep breath of the salt breeze blowing in between the sheds. “As a matter of fact, it’s probably more permissible than any of the few other permissible things. I don’t know about a ship, though. I don’t see why a ship is any different from a car.”

  “Because you don’t understand.”

  “Is that right? . . .” An expression of chagrin at this blow to his pride appeared between the chief’s thin, crescent-shaped eyebrows. Their artificial look, as though they were painted on, was the barber’s fault: he insisted, despite the chief’s protestations, on shaving his brow and above his eyelids. “Is that right? Since when is it your place to tell me what I understand and what I don’t?”

  “C’mon, let’s eat.” Number five was a quiet, gentle boy.

  They had just unwrapped their lunches on their laps when Noboru noticed a shadow fall across the lawn and looked up in surprise. The old watchman from the warehouse, his elbows propped on a drum, was peering in at them.

  “You boys sure picked a messy place for a picnic.” With admirable poise, the chief beamed a scrubbed, schoolboy smile at the old man and said: “Would it be better for us to go somewhere else? We came down to watch the ships, and then we were looking for a shady place to have lunch. . . .”

  “Go right ahead; you’re not doing any harm. Just be sure not to leave any litter around.”

  “Yes, sir.” The smiles were boyish, innocent. “You don’t have to worry about that—we’re hungry enough to eat the wrappings and everything, right, you guys?”

  They watched the hunchback shuffle down the path, treading the border between sunlight and shadow. Number four was the first to speak: “There are plenty of that type around—about as common as you can get, and he just loves ‘the youngsters.’ I’ll bet he felt so generous just now.”

  The boys shared the sandwiches and raw vegetables and little cakes in their lunches and drank iced tea from small thermos bottles. A few sparrows flew in over the siding and alighted just outside their circle, but no one shared even a crumb with the birds. Matchless inhumanity was a point of pride with every one of them.

  These were children from “good homes,” and their mothers had packed them rich and varied lunches: Noboru was a little ashamed of the plainish sandwiches he had brought. They sat cross-legged on the ground, some in shorts, some in dungarees. The chief’s throat labored painfully as he wolfed his food.

  It was very hot. Now the sun was flaming directly above the warehouse roof, the shallow eaves barely protecting them.

  Noboru munched his food in nervous haste, a habit his mother often scolded him for, squinting upward into the glare as he ate as if to catch the sun in his open mouth. He was recalling the design of the perfect painting he had seen the night before. It had been almost a manifestation of the absolutely blue sky of night. The chief maintained that there was nothing new to be found anywhere in the world, but Noboru still believed in the adventure lurking in some tropical backland. And he believed in the many-colored market at the hub of clamor and confusion in some distant seaport, in the bananas and parrots sold from the glistening arms of black natives.

  “You’re daydreaming while you eat, aren’t you? That’s a child’s habit.” Noboru didn’t answer; he wasn’t equal to the scorn in the chief’s voice. Besides, he reasoned, getting mad would only look silly because they were practicing “absolute dispassion.”

  Noboru had been trained in such a way that practically nothing sexual, not even that scene the night before, could surprise him. The chief had taken great pains to insure that none of the gang would be abashed by such a sight. Somehow he had managed to obtain photographs picturing intercourse in every conceivable position and a remarkable selection of pre-coital techniques, and explained them all in detail, warmly instructing the boys about the insignificance, the unworthiness of such activity.

  Ordinarily a boy with merely a physical edge on his classmates presides at lessons such as these, but the chief’s case was altogether different: he appealed directly to the intellect. To begin with, he maintained that their genitals were for copulating with stars in the Milky Way. Their pubic hair, indigo roots buried deep beneath white skin and a few strands already strong and thickening, would grow out in order to tickle coy stardust when the rape occurred. . . . This kind of hallowed raving enchanted them and they disdained their classmates, foolish, dirty, pitiful boys brimming with curiosity about sex.

  “When we finish eating we’ll go over to my place,” the chief said. “Everything’s all ready for you know what.”

  “Got a cat?”

  “Not yet, but it won’t take long to find one. Nothing will take long.”

  Since the chief’s house was near Noboru’s, they had to take a train again to get there: the boys liked this sort of unnecessary, tro
ublesome excursion.

  The chief’s parents were never home; his house was always hushed. A solitary boy, he had read at thirteen every book in the house and was always bored. He claimed he could tell what any book was about just by looking at the cover.

  There were indications that this hollow house had nourished the chief’s ideas about the overwhelming emptiness of the world. Noboru had never seen so many entrances and exits, so many prim chilly rooms. The house even made him afraid to go to the bathroom alone: foghorns in the harbor echoed emptily from room to empty room.

  Sometimes, ushering the boys into his father’s study and sitting down in front of a handsome morocco-leather desk set, the chief would write out topics for discussion, moving his pen importantly between ink-well and copper-engraved stationery. Whenever he made a mistake, he would crumple the thick imported paper and toss it carelessly away. Once Noboru had asked: “Won’t your old man get mad if you do that?” The chief had rewarded him with silence and a derisive smile.

  But they all loved a large shed in the garden in back where they could go without passing under the butler’s eye. Except for a few logs and some shelves full of tools and empty wine bottles and back issues of foreign magazines, the floor of the shed was bare, and when they sat down on the damp dark earth its coolness passed directly to their buttocks.

  After hunting for an hour, they found a stray cat small enough to ride in the palm of Noboru’s hand, a mottled, mewing kitten with lackluster eyes.

  By then they were sweating heavily, so they undressed and took turns splashing in a sink in one corner of the shed. While they bathed, the kitten was passed around. Noboru felt the kitten’s hot heart pumping against his wet naked chest. It was like having stolen into the shed with some of the dark, joy-flushed essence of bright summer sunlight.

  “How are we going to do it?”

  “There’s a log over there. We can smack it against that—it’ll be easy. Go ahead, number three.”