The Pearl Diver (13 page)
ARTIFACT Number 0668
A bottle of liquid Promin
It has been days since she has left the room. Her roommates ask her if she is all right, bring her a small bottle of Promin and a needle.
They step over her when they place their futons out at night, step over her when they put them away in the morning. She has always been the one to lay out and clear the futons each night and day, and there is some confusion at first, but the other patients manage helping one another fold and stack them.
There is talk that she has suffered a relapse, built up a resistance—like some of the patients have—to the Promin.
The disease reappearing out of its cave.
It is only after the second Saturday, when she hasn’t met Mr. Shirayama at Key of the Hand Island, that he becomes concerned and goes to check on her. Her thinness shocks him. He is horrified to find a bottle of Promin, not yet used, under her pillow.
She recognizes Mr. Shirayama but says nothing. Her stubbornness has hardly been weakened, as she refuses to be taken to the clinic. She can’t go there, and he sees this in her face, so he and her roommates tend to her. It takes a couple of weeks to bring her back, liquids and boiled rice, working up to fish and vegetables. After many days of refusing the drug, she has started receiving it again.
She barely talks. Mr. Shirayama knows how all of them at some time have teetered on this edge. For the next month, several of the healthier patients substitute for Miss Fuji up at Clinic B. Mr. Shirayama goes there and tells them that she has injured her ankle and can’t stand. A feeble excuse, but even more feeble is the response: none. So long as someone can work for her.
By the end
of July, the first swarm of cicadas have arrived. It is Miss Fuji’s first time over to Key of the Hand Island since her breakdown. Usually, they meet at the top; this day, they cross the stone path together. Today, she wants to go around to the other side of the island, not up to the top. There is little activity out on the water; the fishing boats are back at their docks until the next morning. The thrumming of cicadas can be heard here, everywhere, she imagines. She has never found their noise to be soothing; rather, it irritates her. She speaks, more out of need to distract the maddening sound of the insects than out of a wish to reveal what she has discovered.
“I don’t think we will ever get out of here. It has taken me all this time to realize this. I think we are here forever.”
“Would it be any better over there, on the main island or back home?”
“I’m not saying that things would be any easier. I know that I don’t ever want to return to Shodo Island. But sometimes I think I could survive away from here. Go somewhere where no one knows who I am. I think I could make it. I would like to find out if I can.”
“I know you could survive, Miss Fuji. You are fine.”
He looks at her, and she does look fine, he thinks, but since she started working in Clinic B, nearly four years ago now, she has aged; her eyes have a heaviness to them, still beautiful, he thinks, but a tired beautiful. The way she walks, not as deliberate as she once did.
“There are times when I want to let this thing totally devastate me; then maybe I would feel justified being here,” she says.
For the first time, she has spoken this thought. Neither of them talks. Mr. Shirayama wants to tell her that he knows how she feels, but he doesn’t. He knows that he couldn’t survive out there.
“Have you heard from Mr. Nogami?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Do you think we will?”
“I don’t know. That is one thing I can’t bring myself to think about.”
“So, what did we get from the uprising?”
“Small steps, Miss Fuji. They have given us mats to cover the dirt floor; they have given back our money.”
“But they are still trying to break us, trying to tame any power that we take from them.”
The heat devours her; the Inland Sea is breathless. Mr. Shirayama turns his back to the water and points to the top of the island.
“We need to start sharing this island with the others.”
“This island?”
“Here. Key of the Hand Island. It brings me, and I think you, too, Miss Fuji, so much solitude, allows us a brief escape from over there. We need to share this place.”
“It is not all that big. And what will the administration say of it?”
“The more I think of it, the closer I am to believing what Mr. Nogami said was correct. How we have to use their power and turn it on them, use it to our advantage.”
ARTIFACT Number 1830
Tide schedule for Nagashima, Okayama,
Japan: 34.70° N, 134.30° E
She begins paying more attention to who is on the table. Although it still pains her to look at their faces, she forces herself to do so while they are anywhere in that room. She remembers distinguishing marks on their bodies, a name that perhaps escapes from one of the nurses’ mouths, sneaks a glimpse at the patient’s chart. When she places the fetus in the garbage, she pays attention to which of the bins she puts it in, the blue one or the brown one. She locks away all of the information, repeats it to herself as she walks back to her room, writes it down in a little notepad she keeps under the floor mat. The same as she does with the tide tables.
When she sneaks out at night, she is more anxious than when she first began swimming across the channel. A much bigger risk. But after what happened to Mrs. Matsu and her nearly full-term baby boy, she doesn’t care; she will never forgive them for that, never forgive them for making her a partner in it. This is what pushes her, late at night, to go behind the clinic to the garbage bins. When she first started doing this several months back, she got some oil from Mr. Shirayama’s tool chest and lubricated the lids of the metal garbage bins so they wouldn’t creak. Now she only has to remember the color of the bin that she threw the fetus in.
On this night, she goes to the blue one, lifts the lid, pulls out the bag that she placed in the far right front corner so it wouldn’t be totally immersed in the day’s other garbage. She cradles the bag under her left arm while closing the lid, then hurries off to the northeast end of the island. Once she is away from the clinic, she takes a breath. She didn’t realize in those early days of doing this that she was holding her breath much of the time when retrieving the bag. Now she is keenly aware of it, and she keeps the breath within her for a little bit farther each night that she does this. Maybe, on this night, only a step farther, three steps. I could make it the whole way across the channel on one breath, she thinks to herself, which brings a smile to her face.
Mr. Matsu is there to meet her, as she knew he would be. This as much his idea, his passion, as it is hers. Certainly much more personal. She hands him the bag and leaves quickly. It is not unusual for him sometimes to be there late at night, but for her it is. On the way past the small shack where Mr. Oyama paints the urns, she ties a single green ribbon around the door handle and goes back to her room.
She feels nearly as alive as she did on those nights when she swam, the nights when she left the soap for the children. She goes over to Mrs. Matsu’s futon and touches her on the left shoulder, where she knows she still has some feeling, tells her it is okay, that it is done.
The next day
at work is long, longer because of the waiting, the wondering if it all worked out okay. When the clinic closes, she hurries across and down to where the gardens are, where Mr. Shirayama has his little work shed. She turns over the wheelbarrow, leaves it upright, picks up the small cloth sack with the urn in it. On her way up to Building A-7, she hides the sack among several large rocks. This evening, it is quite easy finding the woman—Mrs. Wakano—for she saw the nurse holding the chart yesterday morning before the procedure. Saw the name, even the building number. All she has to do is go there and ask for her.
A-7 is no different from A-10, where she lives, or any of the other dozens of buildings for the patients. She enters the building and takes a deep breath. This is the most difficult part for her.
“Where can I find Mrs. Wakano?” she asks the first person she sees.
“Straight down the hall, the second wing on the right.”
“Thank you.”
She goes to where the woman told her and immediately picks out Mrs. Wakano from the other patients in the room.
“Mrs. Wakano?”
She wonders if the woman recognizes her from the day before but imagines not, for she had on her mask.
“Yes.”
“I’m Miss Fuji from A-10. May I speak with you for a minute?”
“Yes.”
She stands there, hating this moment when fear rushes over the patient’s face. With some of them, the look disappears as quickly as it came; with others, it sits there heavily, impossible to move. She waits a few seconds before realizing that Mrs. Wakano thinks that she meant in the room, not in private.
“I’m sorry, but outside, if it’s not too much trouble.”
They walk down the hall, saying nothing. She wants to talk to her, reassure her that everything is okay, but she knows that she mustn’t say anything in order to protect both of them. When outside, Mrs. Wakano speaks first.
“What is it you want?” Her voice is guarded.
“I’m here to help, Mrs. Wakano. I was in the clinic yesterday.”
They continue on without talking, passing a cluster of patients.
“I have been assigned to Clinic B for the past few years and—”
“I know who you are, Miss Fuji. I remember you were the one swimming at night. It’s okay.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wakano.” She feels uncomfortable that instead of she consoling Mrs. Wakano, Mrs. Wakano is consoling her. This isn’t the first time that this has happened, but she hasn’t gotten used to it, may never get used to it. They walk up the small path and she removes the cloth sack from behind the rocks.
“This is for you. I know it isn’t much, but it is all we can do.”
Mrs. Wakano opens the sack, pulls out the blank white urn. She says nothing.
“I can’t keep it.”
“If you don’t want the ashes, we understand. Some people have scattered them in the sea, others around here; some don’t want them at all.”
“No, I want them, for both my husband and me, but it’s too much of a risk. I don’t want any more problems, Miss Fuji.”
“We know. We have started a shrine over there on that small island. Tomorrow night, there will be low tide at about eleven-thirty.
We can cross over, and then you can go there with your husband anytime and visit.”
Mrs. Wakano closes the cloth sack, hands it back to her.
“Thank you, Miss Fuji. I will meet you back here tomorrow night at eleven-thirty.”
She crosses over to Key of the Hand Island with Mr. Shirayama and Mrs. and Mr. Wakano. The late-May night is cool, the first night of the quarter moon; each of them has a small kerosene lantern to help them cross. When they climb the ninety-five steps and arrive at the top, she unlocks the small shrine that they have built while Mr. Shirayama holds her lantern. Mrs. Wakano grips the sack while her husband pulls the urn from it. They step to the shrine and place it inside, where the other sixteen same blank white urns rest. They light a stick of incense and a candle, then say a prayer. She and Mr. Shirayama pick up their lanterns and leave Mrs. and Mr.
Wakano alone, telling them only that they must go back across the path before one o’clock, when the tide will close for at least another twelve hours.
ARTIFACT Number 0735
A Nagashima wedding certificate
“Miss Fuji, I have to ask a big favor of you,” says Miss Min one night while receiving her massage.
“If I can help, I will try. What is it?”
“I shouldn’t be asking you to do something like this.”
“What is it, Miss Min?”
“It’s embarrassing to ask.”
“Please, just ask me.”
“I want to get married and I need your help.”
Her hands stop where they are, on Miss Min’s lower back. “I’m sorry, Miss Fuji, I knew that I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”