He switched to English. ‘I gave me to you.’ He pounded on his heart. ‘But you give you to father? I make mistake,’ he said bitterly.
‘Mistake? But you love me. I know you do.’
He pressed his face into the side of her neck. She could feel his tears.
‘I don’t belong here,’ she said. ‘Should I stay on the summer island even when I don’t belong?’
He lifted his face to her and she could see he did not understand what she had said.
‘I don’t belong here.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not you.’
She cried harder.
‘But you come to stay.’
‘I saw you at the shrine,’ Vera said. ‘I saw you in the procession.’ Crying, she was laughing too, thinking of his costume. But it was not funny. ‘You don’t belong here either.’
‘I hate this,’ he said. Swinging his arm around the whole world of the island, from their side to the other. ‘I hate.’
Now Vera understood. She was what made Tamio different, and she was going away. Who would he be, then?
Tamio pulled away from her and she heard hoarse sobbing as he climbed up the rocks. Then he was gone.
The night was very dark: there was no moon, and the stars were not out yet. The water lapped curiously below her; the pale green phosphorescence rose up to the surface. It was a sickly
colour, the colour of death. The little creatures had come. Or a spirit. Hana had made her tremble. She thought she heard Tamio returning behind her, and she was afraid.
Afraid that he would hurt her? It could not be true, and yet it was. Something had turned, had turned sharp and cold and ugly between them. She realised that they might never make love the way they had: how could they now, how could it be the same?
The men would drum all night. She heard the pounding carried on the wind. She heard voices gusting over the centre of the island, and then the voices were gone. She felt the wind behind her. If she felt it here, on the protected side, it must be a gale on the open side. Some day the waves would get so big that they would overtake the island, smash the lighthouse off its stone perch, flood the lost green lake, splash down the black-lipped rocks at her back and wash her into the sea.
She walked back along the path by herself. The grass was bent in graceful arcs and its light was just visible, though all else had vanished. The rain came then, heaving, like water thrown before her. It laid the grass, and drenched her, so that she was instantly cold, her hair stuck to her head and dripping.
In the village, the women had disappeared. This hour of the night belonged to the men. The drums were louder here, pounding and pounding in riffs, in rolls, four or five of them, speaking to each other. There were shouts and chants too but she did not see anyone. The wind was louder too. There was no rain here yet.
She walked along the beach looking for Tamio. It was not difficult to find him. It was as if they were the only two people left on the island, although that was not true at all: there were voices and fires, music from all directions. But here, she could feel his presence. He lay on the beach. He had drunk more sake; she could see the bottle.
Her sand-covered ankles rubbed against his cheek. He did not move. She knelt beside him, and placed a hand on his forehead. His cheek was dark; the pillar of the chariot had bruised it,
probably. He looked terrible. She thought he was not conscious until he spoke. When he spoke it was with the voice of the island men.
‘Go inside,’ he said. ‘It is not good for women to be outside now.’
‘Will you come to Vancouver with me?’ said Vera. ‘I will ask my father to bring you too. I want to be with you.’
He turned his face the other way. ‘Not true,’ he said.
She lay down beside him. She tried to hold him against her but he twisted aside. Her beautiful beautiful boy, his face in ruins, his body aching, his voice raw. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you, I love you.’
When she touched him he roared with rage. She was frightened then and ran away in the dark.
The next morning the old women were up at dawn. The wind had settled into a pure howl and grey clouds covered the sky in all directions. The men who put out the nets had taken the night off to celebrate. Instead of spreading them on the water, they had left the nets lying along the shore, twisted together, in long ropes. Yards and yards of them, like a long snake. With the men still sleeping off their long night of sake and drumming, the women came out to unroll them.
‘Aih, aih, aih!’ came the cry.
It was repeated all along the shore.
It rose up the path to each little house on the slope. Keiko woke, and came to the door, and looked and heard, and then began the alarm.
‘Aih, aih, aih!’
Vera woke too, in the empty room: she had half hoped, half feared that Tamio would come to find her. He had not. Instead, Keiko stood above her. Vera sat up. Keiko was telling her to get up.
‘Aih, aih aih!’
She pulled on her
yakata.
‘Ikkanshi-san?’ Vera said. ‘Tamio?’
‘He is not here,’ said Keiko.
They ran out into the street.
The old women who had raised the cry stood legs akimbo on top of the long thick snake of nets. There were a dozen of them or more staged along the length of the nets. They had pulled the nets open, wide. It was easy to see why they were screaming. Great jagged holes were ripped in the pattern. The careful knots of thin rope, fully mended and dyed, were cut apart. The expansive, intricate pattern was broken again and again. The nets had been slashed repeatedly, all through, with a sharp knife. They were destroyed.
Now the men emerged from the houses, dark-faced, hung over, and angry. They walked forward and backward along the stretch of tied strings. They poked their toes at a hole here, a rent there. Some raised their hands to the sky in lamentation. Some said nothing, disgusted.
The priest came panting down the path. Children ran to him.
‘The nets are cut. The nets are cut!’
‘Who would do such a thing?’
‘Who would endanger us this way?’
The cry moved like a storm through the assembled crowd. How could they fish? They would go hungry without the nets. The season was nearly over. They needed every pound of fish they could get. Who would have done this?
Now Vera saw Ikkanshi. He came up the path from the back beach. He stood, arms folded, expressionless.
She did not know where else to look. Could it have been he who cut the nets? Her breath came in short gasps. But Vera saw by the sword polisher’s face that he understood, as she understood, and as Keiko understood, but did not want to understand. It was not the sword polisher who had cut them.
The crowd gathered, as angry as it had been hilarious only hours before. There was crying and shouting. The priest tried to calm people but they would not be calm.
The Headman strode from his house at the top of the street. His sons trotted behind him. He saw everything at once, the nets,
the angry people, the white girl with Keiko, her face blanched, the
katanatogi
with his knowledge.
He roared words Vera did not understand, to quiet them. The people were beating the air with their fists.
‘Is it the dead who have done this? Who has angered them?’
‘I saw him,’ said an old woman. ‘I was not sleeping and I came to the well. He came out of the water. An evil spirit. He was wearing an awabi shell over his face, as a mask.’
The Headman turned on the old woman. ‘He came out of the water? He wore a mask? An awabi shell?’
‘He danced in front of the nets,’ an old man said, ‘calling down evil on us.’
The people all moved restlessly. Even Keiko stiffened, and murmured under her breath. She took Vera’s hand.
‘What has angered them?’ came another voice.
‘We do not know who has done this,’ the Headman began. ‘Who was it among the dead? Our dead have all been here and were well looked after.’
Panic seemed to take the old people.
The men shifted and mumbled. Vera felt the wind against her. It seemed to come from everywhere. She put out her hand to hold her hair down, as it was flying out in a stream. She was afraid. She did not understand what was happening.
‘It is not the dead,’ said Ikkanshi-san. He was the only one who spoke up to the Headman. ‘It is not a spirit.’
There were voices of assent.
‘Such spirits are not real.’ His voice was calm, and easy, a voice of reason.
‘It is true,’ said Keiko, and others agreed.
‘It is one among the living. Who is the one who is not here?’
No one answered. Perhaps they did not know. Perhaps they did.
‘Tamio is not here,’ said Ikkanshi-san.
Vera looked away. She hated the sword polisher then, for his betrayal of Tamio. But what the boy had done could not be hidden.
The old woman spoke again. ‘He came from the water. He was
lying in the sand. He put a shell on his face. He pulled out his knife and ran along stabbing into the nets, over and over. And then he ran away.’
‘You said you knew him.’
‘Who saw him?’
‘I saw him,’ said the old woman. ‘Even with the shell over his face, I recognised him. It was Tamio.’
Tamio! The word passed along the line.
The aunt and uncle’s faces were stopped with fear.
‘I do not believe it,’ said Keiko.
But others believed it.
No one spoke. The people seemed to close in on themselves. Then Hamilton Drew came down the path. Late, as always. His face was full of sleep. Everyone stared at him. His presence hung over them. Perhaps it was his fault. He had come from the other side of the ocean. He had come to disturb the peace. The fragile peace that his daughter had already disturbed. The peace that, years ago, Keiko had disturbed, when she went with the old Englishman and started it all.
The Headman appeared to consider all of this. And more and more, from the crowd, the name Tamio was spoken.
It had to be Tamio. He was angry enough. He was drunk enough. Where had he gone? His little boat was still in its place. He had not left the island.
Vera sat with Ikkanshi in the new room. They both looked out of the window at the beaten down grass on the path to the back of the island. In time, one of the Headman’s sons walked down it, through the indentations that had been Vera’s and Tamio’s footsteps.
‘Why did you say his name?’
‘I could not protect him,’ said Ikkanshi.
They waited.
In time the Headman’s son came back, leading Tamio. He was bruised and dirty. They did not touch his tear-stained face but
led him to the beach in front of them all. He stared sullenly away and did not look at Vera’s window.
The priest beat a gong, and it pealed insistently, summoning the people out of their houses. Vera held Ikkanshi’s arm. Keiko was on the other side, and stood with her head high, but her eyes did not meet anyone’s. The aunt and uncle were crying.
The Headman spoke to the young man who stood alone, hanging his head.
‘You have hurt us all and hurt the way we live. Cutting the nets has endangered us. Because of this you have lost your place with the people. You must go and live somewhere else. You may take your boat. Your parents may give you one parcel of food. Then you must go.’
And he turned to go back to his house.
Over the heads of all the people, he spoke: ‘And no one may help him.’
Tamio said nothing in his defence. He stared at them, and through them. He kicked the sand, and then turned toward his boat.
The rain began and fell like lead.
The basket maker came to the door of Ikkanshi’s house.
The sword polisher made certain that at the time of the messenger’s arrival he was sawing a board.
‘Greetings,’ said the basket maker. ‘I see you are at work.’
‘I am always at work but I am never too busy to speak with a friend,’ Ikkanshi replied. And he continued the long smooth strokes with his saw.
‘I have come to collect the
meito,’
the basket maker said. And he sat down.
‘Would you like to look at it?’
Ikkanshi stood in the beginning stance, with the sword at his left hip. He drew the blade out of its
saya.
He held it before his eyes, edge inward, and bowed to it. The blade was a sliver of sky light, its pattern a small, glowing landscape from a world he had never seen. The handle, the
hamon,
the woven wrapping, all of it was perfected. Then, with a quick flash of light, he replaced the sword in its
saya, noto,
bent to brush the skirt of his
hakama
away from his knees, and knelt.
In
seiza,
Ikkanshi placed his right hand forward, then his left, making between his forefingers of left and right and his thumbs, a small triangle. He bent his head then, and leant his forehead into that small space on the floor of his house. And he bowed. In a moment he sat up and with no expression at all on his face lifted the handle, sliding the ties alongside the blade, and tucking it to his left side. Then he stood.
The basket maker stood also; he had a long bundle in his hand.
And Ikkanshi bowed.
‘I bow to the inevitable,’ he said in English.
The basket maker did not understand. He made reference to the Emperor, and the cause of Japan.
Ikkanshi saw him to the door.
The sword must go to its fate.
The boy, and the girl too.
Hamilton Drew took Vera away with him. She said goodbye to Keiko at the ferry, each giving the other a strained, formal hug,
each one with her face over the other’s shoulder, and devoid of expression. Ikkanshi stood back, with his arms folded in front of him.
They left the island on the ferry, with all the people lined up waving to them. Keiko stood alone on the dock. Her eyes were red but she was not crying. Vera was confused, because now she was leaving, and she mourned it, when all the while she had longed to go. Hana was gone. Tamio was gone too. He had vanished across the sea, in his boat, with his packet of food.
‘He will survive,’ Ikkanshi-san had said. ‘He is good in that boat. He will go to another island. Or he will go to a city, and get work. There are many jobs he can do.’