The Pearl Diver Read online

  “Let’s go outside for a walk,” he finally says to her.

  And they do, walking around and down to the shore and out onto the dock, where you can see Shodo Island in the distance.

  “Every birthday, I want you to come here to this same spot at eight o’clock and I will give you your birthday present.”

  She gives him a strange look, but smiles a little, not knowing what he means, but knows him enough to trust what he says.

  “This is your birthday present this year.” He hands her a small, flat bag.

  She unwraps it and turns her eyes to the cement of the dock.

  “Thank you, Uncle Jiro.”

  “You’re welcome. I must be going now. Don’t forget, next year on the same day, be here at eight o’clock.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Still, she can’t look at him, her eyes on the map of their trip to Mount Fuji; the ink has splotched a little. The map she had on her wall at home, the map that she will go and place on the wall of her room, which she shares with six other patients. And she will move this map to her private room when they are built more than three decades later.

  The following year, on her twenty-fifth birthday, she awakes early and goes down to the dock, which faces south, but if she turns ninety degrees to the left, it is Shodo Island that she sees. Her uncle had said eight o’clock, and it isn’t much past seven.

  It’s a nice morning, a little overcast and cool for May. A fishing trawler slips on by. A single fisherman, but she is too far away to read the boat’s name painted on the side. If she were on Key of the Hand Island, over on the far side of it, she could read it, but not from here. Maybe it is the man she sees on her late-night swims. If it is, can he see her clearly enough to tell it is she? She turns her back and waits this way until she can no longer hear the boat.

  Time passes, with the workers heading down to their gardens; the fishermen of Nagashima have already hauled in their nets, their catch, their journey out into the Inland Sea not as far as most—a few years ago, the local fishermen complained that the Nagashima fishermen were contaminating the waters, and now they are banned from fishing beyond one hundred yards off the shore.

  It is past eight o’clock, well past, and still she sees nothing over on Shodo Island. Maybe he forgot, she thinks. But no, Uncle Jiro isn’t a person who forgets. He remembers every little detail—dates of all his climbs to Mount Fuji, typhoons that have ravaged the islands of the Inland Sea, earthquakes. He remembered her birthday last year, so why would he forget this year?

  Then, she is so embarrassed that she denies that it could be true, denies it, although she knows it is true. Hopes that it is true. Uncle Jiro, while standing here on this very dock last year, never said morning or night, only eight o’clock. She stands there for a few minutes, as if all the patients know what she has done and she is trying to make it appear as if she didn’t make a mistake.

  The day is long, everything crawls by. Her hands, while giving the massages, feel like stone; the scrub brush on the sinks is like pushing through sand. She gets to the dock early and she has to sit, all the pacing making her even more anxious. Maybe he will come to visit her, maybe bring her family, but she knows this would never happen, and she doesn’t want it to. Rarely has she thought of her family, and in those times that she has, it is usually something negative. The sun has long since set; she is feeling chilled, wondering if she has enough time to go back to her room and get a blanket. She probably does, but decides against it, afraid that she will miss whatever birthday present her uncle has in store for her.

  The stars have taken their places, the waves sidle against the dock, the water is still May cold. Remembering the beginning of diving season sends a chill tumbling through her. She wraps herself in her arms, studies the almost-vanished silhouette of Shodo Island. And suddenly, there is a spark of light on top of the mountain. While watching the growing flicker, she tries thinking of the mountain’s name. Did she ever know it? Does it have one? She doesn’t ever recall being atop it. The fire grows larger, and soon it appears as if the bald spot on top of the mountain suddenly has a fiery tuft of red hair. For the flames to reach her here, she knows that the fire must be large, very large.

  She can’t help but think of the large fire they have on top of the mountain over in Kyoto every August 16, at the end of Obon holiday, when for three days the spirits of one’s ancestors return home to visit. Many families light little fires in front of their houses at the beginning of the holiday to help guide the spirits home, and again at the end of the holiday for their trip back to the heavens.

  And now she has a fire, burning on her home island of Shodo, her own personal fire, which will be there for her every May 12. She stands watching it as its light peaks and diminishes slowly until being devoured by the night. Her eyes remain on the place where the fire had been, and now, she imagines her uncle is dousing the hot coals with water and perhaps even sleeping the night up there, making certain that none of the coals escapes and sets fire to the mountain.

  ARTIFACT Number 0536

  A roll of gauze

  It is on a Tuesday, after receiving her injection, that she goes to get a new bandage for her leg, which has again become infected. There is a strange feeling in the room; the younger patients are rolling and mending the used bandages and gauze as usual, but she feels as if their eyes are following her as she passes. And the strangeness continues when she collects another bandage and Mr. Yamai isn’t there to greet her, to hand her another one secretly, as if it were a gift. She wishes he were here; she wants to tell him that she enjoyed his reading and that she is looking forward to next week’s tanka poetry night and the second half of Snow Country. She walks out of the room, and before she is down the steps, there is a soft voice.

  “Miss Fuji.”

  Turning to where the voice comes from, she sees a young girl, one of the high school students. She walks to the side of the building and the girl looks around nervously before speaking.

  “They took Mr. Yamai away last night.”

  “Who?” she asks, although she doesn’t need to.

  “Some administrators,” the young girl says. “I’m not sure who.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure, but some people said that he asked for rubber boots for the laundry workers.”

  “He had told me he wanted them. The skin on the workers’ feet was tearing from the water they were always standing in.”

  Their eyes meet, then break away.

  “It’s not because of the boots,” she tells the girl. “They don’t like him and his stories; his mind scares them. Thank you for telling me. I have to go now.”

  The young girl grabs her by the arm.

  “Here.”

  The girl holds out her hand and in it there is a clean bandage.

  “I saw Mr. Yamai sneak you an extra one each morning.” The girl blushes.

  “Thank you.” She stuffs the extra bandage in her pocket and hurries away.

  ARTIFACT Number 0438

  The large bell atop the Hill of Light

  She is shaken from her sleep.

  “Miss Fuji. Miss Fuji.”

  She turns over on her left side, away from the person who is shaking her, thinking it is one of the patients, wanting some medicine.

  “Miss Fuji.”

  When she opens her eyes, she is surprised to see Miss Min leaning over her.

  “Miss Min, what is it?”

  There are others awake in the room.

  “It is Mr. Yamai. Mr. Yamai has died, Miss Fuji.”

  “But . . .” And she stops there.

  She goes into the washroom, throws water on her face, and even when she dries off, it feels as if it is still there. While brushing her teeth, she turns and sees several of her roommates near her. She spits into the sink. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  They give her quick apologetic bows and go back down the hallway. She rinses her mouth, throws more water on her face, runs it through her sh
ort hair, more on her face and through her hair. She takes a deep breath, releases it slowly, like she used to do before beginning her dives, thinks of the way Mr. Yamai read that night less than two months ago, the way he held the book with such care, such sacredness. Not sure why, but a line from Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country comes to mind: “Moths, how many kinds he could not tell, dotted the screen, floating on the clear moonlight.”

  Back down the hallway, carrying the kerosene lantern low, she passes other rooms with people still sleeping. Quickly, she changes her clothes, leaves the building with Miss Min. Mr. Shirayama is outside with another dozen patients. There is no moon; she has no idea if it is yet to come up or has already set. She has no idea of the time. It could be midnight as easily as five in the morning. So quiet as they walk away from the buildings, down toward the Inland Sea, then turning right before they get to it, heading up the small, winding path leading to the top of the Hill of Light. She follows, knowing where they are going but not sure why. It takes about three minutes to get atop the hill and there, in the clearing, is the large bell—the Bell of Blessing.

  “Miss Fuji, do you want to get us started?”

  Her eyes pass over everybody; she hesitates before approaching the bell, which towers over her, over the hill, the island. She grabs the wooden pole hanging from two large chains, holds on to it for a while before throwing it forward against the giant bell, the sound exploding through the night, devouring the whole country’s sleep. And she does it again and again, giving the bell little time to finish before making it bellow out over the Inland Sea. Again and again, she throws the pole at the bell, hoping that the sound reaches Shodo Island, wakes up every last person over there. Wakes them and doesn’t let them back to sleep until she herself goes to sleep. She continues pushing the pole into the bell until she no longer can. Covered in sweat, she steps aside, and it is Miss Min who takes over the ringing.

  There is a line halfway down the hill, and she goes to the end of it and stands. Miss Min joins her in line and they wait, listening to the bell and to one of the patients reading aloud from Snow Country.

  And for the next three days, the line never shrinks, only lengthens, and the bell rings. Rings while they sleep and stand in line waiting for their injections and eat and while the high school students mend and roll the bandages and gauze.

  ARTIFACT Number 0596

  A bar of soap

  If, at low tide, she stands up to her knees in the water, she can get within fifty yards of the boy and girl. She comes here to forget about the aches within her aches, forget about all the massages she has given, all the patients she has helped over to the toilets, held there, cleaned up after. She comes here sometimes to remember that she, too, is a patient, not that she ever feels like one. The medicine that she takes reminds her of this, but little else.

  Like most days, her arms feel like they did after a day of diving, only this tiredness has come from someone else’s doing, not from her choosing. Two very different kinds of tired. So when she has some time, here in early summer, she goes to the western shore of Nagashima, the closest point to the main island and the town of Mushiage. The shore, which is covered with large rocks, pieces of wood from the docks that were shattered by a typhoon years back. She has even skipped lunch so as to make time to come here.

  Again, today, as she has for the past month, she sees the children playing among the stones, searching for crabs or water bugs or shells. Laughing. From what she can tell, they must be no more than five or six, certainly not any older, for they would be in school otherwise, still a month before summer holiday.

  The little boy pulls down his shorts and pees in the water, his sister or friend never distracted from what she is doing. The beauty of it, she thinks, the innocence of peeing without shame. She remembers how for so long when she began diving, she hated, dreaded the time when they all showered after the dives. But in time, she got over it, for the most part.

  The boy pulls up his shorts, and before rejoining the girl, he looks across the water at her. Without thinking, she waves. She is stunned, excited by this. He waves back, then returns to his digging. She keeps her eyes on him, hoping that he will again look her way. And in a short time he does, and both he and the girl join in waving. Back and forth, taking turns, as if it is a game, neither of them wanting to let the other be the last to wave. Wave wave. She feels good, giddy almost, and although she knows that as the adult she should let the children win this game, she can’t. Can’t let that happen.

  Almost like those late-night swims and when she sees the wild-haired man on his fishing boat. Fear at first, but then each time she sees him, she will stand and look his way a little longer before running off—if for only a second longer. Someday, she believes, she will speak to him, knowing the enormous risk involved, but also the possibility of the enormous payback of human interaction, whether it be only a couple of words, a smile, a wave. Wave. And she is still waving even after the children have turned their backs to her, still waving as she herself turns her back to the shore of Honshu, waving as she pulls herself out of the knee-deep water.

  No matter how sleepy she is each night, she works on the bars of soap. If the moon is up, like tonight, she has a little light. Other times, she does it by feel. Maybe only for five minutes, but a little every day. Waiting until the other six patients in the room are off to sleep. She has smuggled the soap out of the storage room, keeps it inside the cover sheet of her futon. She saves the shaved flakes, molds them into a ball of soap so it can be used later.

  One night, not long before she is finished with the bars of soap, one of the patients—Miss Morikawa—is lying there, two futons away, watching her. She isn’t sure how long she has been doing so, isn’t even certain that Miss Morikawa is seeing, with her eyesight so bad, or maybe she is sleeping with her eyes half-open. But she believes that Miss Morikawa is only staring, as she so often does. She turns her back to her and works on the soap a little longer, glancing around, and each time that she does, Miss Morikawa’s eyes remain planted on her.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  Still nothing, the eyes on her. Maybe Miss Morikawa wants a painkiller, and she is about to go over to the building across the way and get her one, but changes her mind, deciding that if Miss Morikawa wants it, she at least has to ask. She shaves a few more pieces from the soap, but now she has lost all her concentration and knows that her distraction will lead to a mistake. Miss Morikawa has always been a busybody, and she knows that tomorrow the woman will tell somebody about the soap. In love with being at the beginning of a rumor, throwing it out there, letting someone else take and expand on it. Someone stealing soap, a good rumor.

  There are other patients like Miss Morikawa, and on bad days, when she is giving them their massage, she wants to rip their skin apart. Miss Morikawa is in that group of patients that is religious, and that is fine, she has always thought, but it is when they push the religion on her that she has trouble with it. It happens nearly every time she gives her a massage.

  “You should find Christ, Miss Fuji.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t need religion, Miss Morikawa.”

  “He will show you the light through all these horrible times.”

  “Religion is fine for some people and it helps them, but for me, I don’t need it. Diving is my religion.”

  “But you don’t have that here.”

  She was tempted to tell Miss Morikawa that she has more than she thinks. Wanted to tell her of the night swims, of the children across the way, of Key of the Hand Island. She didn’t dare.

  “Maybe I don’t have diving here, but I have its memories and what it did for me.”

  “But how do you deal with all that pain you have caused your family? This place, Miss Fuji, is our penance for all of that we have done wrong to our families.”

  “I have done nothing wrong, Miss Morikawa. We have done nothing wrong. Your massage is over.”

  And it is this conversation that the two of them had a fe
w weeks ago that she is thinking of while carving the soap, and when she checks on Miss Morikawa and she is still staring, she tells her, “Go back to sleep!”

  This time, she speaks too loudly, awaking another patient.

  “Are you okay, Miss Fuji?” the patient asks.

  “Yes, I’m fine, just telling Miss Morikawa to go back to sleep.”

  She hides the two pieces of soap under the top corner of her futon, tries to go to sleep herself, but it takes awhile before she does, feeling that Miss Morikawa is still watching her, and waiting until she can tell someone of the soap that has been stolen.

  The next morning, she is awakened by one of the patients.

  “Wake up, Miss Fuji.”

  She does, and when she turns over, she sees the other five patients who share the room crowded over Miss Morikawa’s futon; her eyes are still open, staring into space. The patients all wait on her for what to do next. She, at times like this, feels burdened by the patients’ dependence on her, wants to tell every one of them that she is also a patient. Some of them truly need her, but there are others who use her. She peels the cover of the futon off herself, hating to lose the warmth that she has created in the night, and goes over, bends down, and closes Miss Morikawa’s eyelids as far as they can be closed.

  Three nights after the cremation, she finishes the soap figures—a fish and a scallop shell. She wishes that she had something to give them some color, but she knows that this is a useless thought. And now that she has finished with them, she knows that tomorrow night she must go.

  And she does. To keep the water off the pieces of soap, she wraps them in a plastic bag and laughs at the irony— keeping soap out of water. When she arrives, she doesn’t go through town, staying only on a large rock on the shore. She sets the fish and shell on a stone near where she has seen the boy and girl playing. She walks around the shoreline, hunched over, looking for something the children may have left behind, any hint of them that she could take back with her.