The Pearl Diver Read online

  It was this way five years before, when the man’s skin burst out in blisters—the prau worked then—only the man died, and the village was spared. Six years before that, when a young woman returned from the jungle, foaming at the mouth and crazed, then, too, they had begun to build a prau, but they stopped when her mother found the puncture wounds of the viper on her daughter’s left shoulder. The demons hadn’t sent disease their way, only the normal strides of nature. But with this girl and the fever, they knew they had to get the prau built and sent off as soon as possible.

  As the women work on the image of the man, creating him from husks, tree bark, palm leaves, the men hollow out the insides of the tree. Children feed the workers, whose hands are too busy to stop. They turn their heads away from the work only long enough to have some water poured down their throats, atop their heads. The village elder comes to the shore.

  “Fever’s getting higher.”

  He turns and heads back to the hut where the girl burns away. Hands mold the man-doll faster; machetes fling the red insides of the tree onto the sand; children stack fruit and gourds of water alongside.

  It isn’t until the banana of a moon has crawled halfway across the roof of the island that the village elder reappears.

  “The demons have taken her.”

  The workers pause to offer a prayer for the girl. The fires made by the children light the way for the finishing touches on the prau.

  They wait until the tide begins to walk away from the shore, then launch the boat, running alongside, pushing it until the water reaches their necks. Several boats follow the prau, urging it along, making certain that it doesn’t turn back to Buru Island. On the shore, the villagers are chanting: “O sickness, go from here, turn back. What do you want here in this poor land?”

  In three days, they will return to the shore and kill a pig, offering part of the flesh to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun, and the village elder will recite a prayer: “Old sir,

  I beseech you make well the grandchildren, children, women, and men, that we may be able to eat pork and rice and drink palm wine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share and make all the people in the village well.”

  But on this night, after the long day, the villagers, when the prau is out of sight, still do not rest. They go back to the village and prepare to bury the young girl whom the demons have stolen from them.

  Miss Min stops and takes a drink of water handed to her by Mr. Yamai. She straightens herself in her chair and begins the second story:

  Awake, before the call to prayers, the naked young boy is looking at the prau, which has washed ashore during the night. The once-recognizable man-doll is wet and beaten, but still intact. The two-month journey has left the sail in tatters; the anchor lies next to the toppled prau; somewhere in the Seram Sea the oars have been lost. The boy picks at the seaweed caught up in the large doll.

  The sky to the east of Manipa begins to lighten ever so slightly. This is when the screams of the village elder shatter the sleep of every villager. Not like the call to prayers, but haunting, deep from the guts. Screams, the villagers know before they are even out of their thatched huts, that will leave things different for quite a while, maybe for their lifetimes.

  The village elder is dragging the boy away from the prau when the others arrive. There is enough light now to see the outline of the prau, to know what has happened, what has to be done. Whatever sickness has been sent away from one of the surrounding islands, whatever has been sent, will have come on this prau, has maybe already spread to the villagers while deep in their sleep.

  No one goes near the young boy. Not even his parents, his sister held back by them. Before the morning sun kisses the sea, the villagers have the prau burning, huge sparks flying off into the sky, the villagers standing back but looking, hopeful that the demons will be chased away by the flames, chased away from the village, the island.

  Alone, later that morning, the village elder questions the boy.

  “When did you first see the prau?”

  “When the morning star was still bright.”

  “Do you feel sick?” He is touching the boy, feeling his head, neck.

  “I feel fine. A little hungry.”

  Staring into the boy’s eyes, he asks, “Did you touch anything in the prau?”

  “Only the doll.”

  “Tonight, and for many nights, you and I must sleep away from the village.”

  And that night, while small pieces of the charred remains of the prau are being carried away by the high tide, the villagers try to sleep. But once again, the village elder wakes them from their restlessness. It is not the terrorfilled screams of that morning that awaken them. It is the village elder, who sleeps with the boy away from the beach, near the jungle; it is his hacking cough, which he tries to smother in his sleeping mat, that keeps them up on this night.

  ARTIFACT Number 0487

  A tube of burn cream

  She isn’t sure why, but she knows beforehand that she will do it. Maybe for attention, but to her that seems too obvious an answer. To understand the patients more maybe, but that seems too noble. It is in the middle of her two-hour night shift to keep watch and she is the only one in her wing of the building who is awake. She knows that in each of the rooms all over Nagashima there is at least one patient awake at this hour—closer to dawn than dusk—a stick or pipe in hand. A candle burns on the windowsill and she gazes at it. She has had a bad day, all the massages, the humidity, the homesickness for the sea. It is mid-June; the water has begun to warm for the divers.

  In each of the rooms, there is a carpet of futons at night. Six in her room, seven patients. Not enough futons to go around, but also not enough floor. She is startled out of her thoughts when she sees the two green dots reflected in the light of the candle. She is quiet as she crawls in the direction of the beady, glowing eyes. It isn’t on any of the futons, but at the entranceway, so if she does it correctly, she will not have to wake any of the patients in the room. She is about five feet away, holding her breath, making sure of which way the candle throws her shadow, a piece of the cardboard box beside her. She reminds herself to aim behind the eyes, she does, and when the large stick comes swooshing down, she knows that she has at least stunned the rat, if not killed it outright. She hits it again, prods it to see if it is alive, and when it doesn’t move, she guides it onto the piece of cardboard with the stick and carries it outside. In the wooden box, there are two other rats; she drops this latest, along with the cardboard, into the box, which will be burned in the morning.

  The end of her shift is near when she goes back inside, but even when she is replaced by one of her roommates, she knows she will not sleep deeply. It isn’t because of any fear of the rats that she can’t sleep, but the killing of it has now sparked her senses. She knows that what has happened to some of the other patients will never happen to her, or if it does, it will never get too far. There have been only two cases of rabies since she has been here, and she knows that the minute that she would feel the biting, she would awaken, scare the rat away. But it isn’t rabies that has started them doing night watches; it is for the other patients, the ones who came to Nagashima before her, those years before the Promin, those whose nerves in their limbs have lost feeling. It is for them that they sit awake and protect.

  The night watches began not long after she arrived— when Miss Furato, two buildings down from hers, had two fingers on her rotting left hand eaten away by a rat while she slept. This happened even after the prior winter, when they started sewing stones into the corners of the worst-off patients’ blankets, weighing them down, keeping their hands and feet from slipping out from under the blanket while asleep, not so much to protect them from rats as to keep them from being exposed to the below-freezing temperatures. Winter nights knife through the futons, settling like cold, cold tofu. If she stays in the exact place, her body warms up a little, but an inch outside of the fringe of her body’s imprint, ice, freezing her all over again.


  No matter how bad the winters are, she hates summers the most; how the futons get all moldy. She can’t remember a time at Nagashima when they were ever like they were supposed to be. Can’t remember a time when they were like they were after a day hanging out in the sun to dry, beaten to a fluff with a stick, sinking into one at night, her body an inch or two higher off the floor.

  Besides the futons, the bugs are the big problem in spring, summer, and autumn. Of course there are cockroaches and those microscopic ticks that invade a futon and leave you with itchy, painful bites all over your body, but it is the centipedes that trouble her most. Finger-long, with pincers that leave a poisonous bite behind—some of the bites swelling up to the size of a tangerine. And on her night shifts, she keeps an eye out for them as much as for the rats, has whittled one end of the yard-long stick into a sharp point with which to stab the centipedes. Difficult to kill, have to chop them into three separate pieces.

  It is time now to awaken Miss Kato to replace her on night watch. She reaches over, takes the candle from the windowsill, tilts it over her arm, drips the hot wax onto the spot on her forearm, keeping inside the numbness of its borders. The wax hardens and she peels it off, careful not to break the waxy mirror of her spot. She sets the hardened mold on the windowsill, bends over the candle, this time holding her forearm over the flame, playing with the flame, making it stretch, lunge at her arm. She allows the flame to touch the spot, smells the singeing of the skin. How long can she hold it there before she feels something? How deep does this numbness go? Could I burn a hole all the way through my arm and out the other side without feeling anything? she wonders.

  The stench of the burning flesh, not pain, makes her pull her arm away. Her forearm is a mess, the color of the inside of a dried fig. She places the candle back on the windowsill, next to the waxy fossil of her spot, then goes over and rouses Miss Kato awake.

  ARTIFACT Number 0400

  A map of the town of Mushiage

  She has lived through four winters at Nagashima and it is her fourth summer here when the first of the two visitors she will ever have arrives. The young woman sitting across from her bears little resemblance to her. If one looks closely enough, there is something in the shape of their mouths, the slightly protruding upper lip, that hints at family. Nothing more.

  The older sister talks in a soft but high-pitched voice. Perhaps constricted by her nervousness, or maybe that is how her voice is. Miss Fuji sits there, knowing that this will be the last time that she will ever see her sister.

  “You’ve ruined my life. You deserve to be with all these freaks here.”

  “There are no freaks here, only people who are sick.”

  “Sick freaks.”

  “How are Mother and Father?”

  “They are no longer any part of you. None of us are. How could you do this to us?”

  “Do what?”

  “Humiliate us. People won’t speak to us. Everywhere I go, people whisper, point. Father and Mother may have to move. We don’t get half of the normal price for our rice. The value of our land has gone down. Like it’s infected.”

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t want this sickness. I never asked for it.”

  “Neither did we. It’s like we have it. Last year, I was supposed to marry Yukihiro, and now his family has put a stop to it. Because of you. And you made it all the worse when you went and hid. Then everybody found out, the whole island. The police came and searched our house and the fields. Came back many times.”

  “And what if I had returned that day? What would all of you have done?”

  “At least we could have maybe sent you here quietly, told the neighbors that you went away to live in Tokyo or that you died or something.”

  They glance at each other for a fleeting moment.

  “That’s what Father said.”

  Another glance.

  “And I agree with him. Better one dead than the whole family.”

  “Well, it is as if I am dead. You will never hear from me again.”

  “Too late for all that. I will never come back here. They made me bathe in disinfectant before I came in here and they made me wear this bodysuit, like I’m the one who’s sick. I told them your name and they asked me to describe you. Where were you from? When did you come? As if I haven’t been humiliated enough by you, and then they make me go through all that.”

  Those are the final words the sisters will ever speak. The older sister stands up, leaves the room, and goes back through the disinfectant bath before getting on the boat that will take her over to the mainland, from where she will catch another boat to take her the seven miles to Shodo Island.

  Late that night, after her sister’s visit, she does it for the first time. That first trip across to Key of the Hand Island, almost three years before, has given her courage to expand as much as possible the perimeters of Nagashima. It is August. The water is the warmest it will be all year. It’s late; she stands at the edge of the dock, her dock. It is dark; even the outline of Key of the Hand Island, four hundred yards away, is difficult to pick out. She stares to where she knows it is and, in time, finds it. But when she turns her eyes away and then tries to relocate it, once again she must search. The moon has already long ago followed the sun over to the rest of Asia.

  She slips off her sandals and, without thinking, she’s in the water. Hardly a splash or ripple left behind. Within half a second, not a trace. She stays underwater for a third of the way—it isn’t all that far—the shore not much more than one hundred yards at its farthest point, and at other places, half that. A few years ago, she could have made it the whole way across on a single breath.

  Twice more she goes under; her lungs have lost much of their strength, not because of the disease so much as that she is out of practice. She tries judging the shore by the sound of the scallop farms clicking in the water, but she doesn’t do a good job of it, scraping her chest and stomach against the bottom of the shore. The other shore. The shore of Honshu. The town of Mushiage.

  She walks the stony beach, sits at the edge of a wooden dock. She has to catch her breath, not only from the swim but also from the realization of where she is. The other shore. How easy it was. The realization that she could run away is nearly too much for her. Run as fast as she can. She has about five hours before dawn. How far away could she be in five hours? Twelve, fifteen miles? She does a quick calculation, then laughs at herself. Where does she run? Whom does she run to? She has no clothes other than the thin cotton robe she wears, no shoes—her sandals are back on the dock—no money. No chance. Like the few others who have tried. One patient, three years ago, drowned in this very channel. Several others were caught, and after spending a long time in the isolation building, they were paraded past the other patients, searing, mocking into their memories not to try it.

  It isn’t all that long before she is dry. August, even past midnight, is hot enough to dry her. Across the way, only darkness, barely a trace of Nagashima. Everybody is deep in sleep over there. The fishermen are still an hour or two from awakening, over here. She is alone. No one in this country knows where she is. This thought alternates from ecstasy to anxiety. The most freedom she has felt since her diving days. Lifetimes ago.

  The dock moans and groans, following her all the way to the land. She feels the sting on her stomach and chest from where she brushed the rocky bottom of the shore.

  It is a small town; she can tell that even in the dark, even after walking only a couple of minutes. Her bare feet are tender against the cement. It is not any different from other fishing towns she’s been to. Except now, at this hour, there are no people. She goes along the main street. She hears to her right the soft lapping of the tiny waves. She passes a noodle shop, a market, which, she can tell from the smell, is for seafood, a couple of other little shops, a few houses. Everything asleep, all within hearing and smelling distance of the inlet of the sea. So quiet here. Up the street, there are two buses parked—MUSHIAGE BUS CENTER reads a sign. She check
s the small schedule in front, a bus every hour and forty-five minutes. One to Oku Station, the other to Hamanaka.

  She goes to the port, sees dozens of fishing boats nudged by the water, dancing out of rhythm with one another. Small boats, for two or three people. The whiteness of their skin glows in the night. On one of the boats, a man looks like he has just awakened. Ten yards from her, a small kerosene lantern showing the outline of his frenzied hair. He looks at her; she’s not sure how much he can see, but he is looking. She doesn’t budge. When the flame of the lantern is jiggled by the wind, she realizes that she shouldn’t be here. She starts to run, away from the man, his boat, lantern, his wild hair. When she gets to the main street, she has to stop and think which way to turn. Left and down the street, passing, she’s certain, the houses, market, noodle shop—sees none of them. She is at the small dock, not sure how far from the man. Hundred yards. Three feet. Can’t be all that far. She doesn’t pay any attention to the creaks she is awakening on the wooden dock, she gets to the end of it, slips herself into the August water, goes under, and points her head toward Nagashima.

  ARTIFACT Number 0243

  A photo of the Mushiage-Nagashima ferry

  He, as was true with so many of the patients, had had his last moment of freedom on this shore of Mushiage, the same dock, not far from where she now sits on this late night, where the ferry brought them across the channel. The same dock that he would have stood at on the day he arrived in Mushiage at the age of fifteen. The dock where an official from the leprosarium marked his footprints, preventing others from stepping where he had walked.

  She has learned not to ask Mr. Shirayama of the days before his arrival, because, although he talks openly about every detail of his years here, he is guarded, protective of his days before Nagashima. As if he has dripped water on that salty mound of his memory and allowed it to dissolve grain by grain. Once, she asked him what his real name was, and when he didn’t respond, she thought he hadn’t heard, so she repeated the question. He glared at her and still said nothing. He glared at her until she turned away.