Jiya looked about him. Then he shook his head again. “I am no better than the others,” he said. “My father was a fisherman.”
Old Gentleman took up his spectacles and his brush again. “Very well,” he said, “I will do without a son.”
The manservant motioned to them and they followed, and soon they were out in the garden again.
“How foolish you are!” the manservant said to Jiya. “Our Old Gentleman is very kind indeed. You would have everything here.”
“Not everything,” Jiya replied.
They went out of the gate and across the hillside again back to the farmhouse. Setsu was outside and she came running to meet them, the sleeves of her bright kimono flying behind her and her feet clattering in wooden sandals.
“Jiya has come back home!” she cried. “Jiya — Jiya—”
And Jiya, seeing her happy little face, opened his arms and gave her a great hug. For the first time he felt comfort creep into his sad heart, and this comfort came from Setsu, who was like life itself.
Their noonday meal was ready and Kino’s father came in from the fields, and when he had washed they all sat down to eat.
“How happy you have made us!” he told Jiya.
“Happy indeed,” Kino’s mother said.
“Now I have my brother,” Kino said.
Jiya only smiled. Happiness began to live in him secretly, hidden inside him, in ways he did not understand or know. The good food warmed him and his body welcomed it. Around him the love of the four people who received him glowed like a warm and welcoming fire upon the hearth.
Chapter Four
TIME PASSED. Jiya grew up in the farmhouse to be a tall young man, and Kino grew at his side, solid and strong, but never as tall as Jiya. Setsu grew, too, from a mischievous, laughing little girl into a gay, willful, pretty girl. But time, however long, was split in two parts by the big wave. People spoke of “the time before” and “the time after” the big wave. The big wave had changed everyone’s life.
For years no one returned to live on the empty beach. The tides rose and fell, sweeping the sands clean every day. Storms came and went, but there was never again such a wave as the big one. Then people began to think that perhaps there would never again be such a big wave. The few fishermen who had listened to the tolling bell from the castle and had been saved with their wives and children had gone to other shores to fish, and they had made new fishing boats.
But as time passed after the big wave, they began to tell themselves that there was no beach quite so good as the old one. There, they said, the water was deep and great fish came close to the shore in schools. They did not need to go far out to sea to seek the booty. The channels between the islands were rich.
Now Kino and Jiya had not often gone to the beach again, either. Once or twice they had walked along the place where the street had been, and Jiya had searched for some keepsake from his home that the sea might have washed back to the shore. But nothing was ever found. The surf was too violent above deep waters, and even bodies had not returned. So the two boys, now young men, did not visit the deserted beach very often. When they went to swim in the sea, they walked across the farm and over another fold of the hill.
But Kino saw that Jiya always looked out of the door every morning and he looked at the empty beach, searching with his eyes as though something might one day come back. One day he did see something. Kino was at the door putting on his shoes and he heard Jiya cry out in a loud voice, “Kino, come here!” Quickly Kino went and Jiya pointed down the hillside. “Look — is someone building a house on the beach?”
Kino looked and saw that indeed it was so. Two men were pounding posts into the sand, and a woman and a child stood near, watching. “Can it be that they will build again on the beach?” he exclaimed.
But they could not rest with watching. They ran down the hill to the beach and went to the two men. “Are you building a house?” Jiya cried.
The men paused and the elder one nodded. “Our father used to live here and we with him. During these years we have lived in the outhouses of the castle and we have fished from other shores. Now we are tired of having no homes of our own. Besides, this is still the best of all beaches for fishing.”
“But what if the big wave comes back?” Kino asked.
The men shrugged their shoulders. “There was a big wave in our great-grandfather’s time. All the houses were swept away, but our grandfather came back. In our father’s time the big wave came again, but now we come back.”
“What of your children?” Kino asked anxiously.
“The big wave may never come back,” the men said. And they began to pound the post into the sand again.
All this time Jiya had not said another word. He stood watching the work, his face musing and strange. The big wave and the sorrow it had brought had changed him forever. Never again would he laugh easily or talk carelessly. He had learned to live with his parents and his brother dead, as Kino’s father had said he would, and he did not weep. He thought of them every day and he did not feel they were far from him or he from them. Their faces, their voices, the way his father talked and looked, his mother’s smile, his brother’s laughter, all were with him still and would be forever. But since the big wave he had been no longer a child. In school he had earnestly learned all that he could, and now he worked hard on the farm. He valued deeply everything that was good. Since the big wave had been so cruel, he could not bear cruelty, and he grew into the kindest and most gentle man that Kino had ever seen. Jiya never spoke of his loneliness. He did not want anyone to be sad because of his sadness. When he laughed at some trick of Setsu’s, or when she teased him, his laughter was wonderful to hear because it was so whole and real.
Now as he stood watching the new house being made on the beach, he felt a strong delight. Could it be true that people would gather once more on this beach to make a village? Was it right that it be so?
At this moment there was a commotion on the hillside. They looked up and saw it was Old Gentleman, coming slowly down the rocky path. He was very old indeed now, and he walked with difficulty. Two menservants supported him.
The elder builder threw down his stone mallet. “Here comes our Old Gentleman,” he told the others. “He is very angry or he wouldn’t have left the castle.”
Anyone could see that Old Gentleman was angry. He grasped his long staff, and when he came near them he pulled his beard and moved his eyebrows. His body was as thin as a bamboo, and with the wind blowing his white hair and long white beard, he looked like an ancient god out of the temple.
“You foolish children!” he cried in his high old voice. “You have left the safety of my walls and come back to this dangerous shore to make your home, as your fathers did before you. The big wave will come back and sweep you into the ocean again!”
“It may not come, Ancient Sir,” the elder builder said mildly.
“It will come!” Old Gentleman insisted. “I have spent my whole life in trying to save foolish people from the big wave. But you will not be saved.”
Suddenly Jiya spoke. “This is our home. Dangerous as it is, threatened by the volcano and by the sea, it is here we were born.”
Old Gentleman looked at him. “Don’t I know you?” he asked.
“Sir, I was once in your castle,” Jiya replied.
Old Gentleman nodded. “Now I remember you. I wanted you for my son. Ah, you made a great mistake, young man! You could have lived in my castle safely forever and your children would have been safe there, too. The big wave never reaches me.”
Jiya shook his head. “Your castle is not safe either,” he told Old Gentleman. “If the earth shakes hard enough, your castle will crumble, too. There is no refuge for us who live on these islands. We are brave because we must be.”