“Would anyone like this ukulele?” asked Kimi suddenly, the high pitch of her inebriated voice bringing an end to Kōji’s reverie. From around the table, the young men raised their big, rough hands. Kōji, too, extended his arm meekly. The ukulele, now held aloft in Kimi’s grasp, shone in the red light, and looked like the rigid corpse of a waterbird being hoisted aloft by its neck. She toyed with the instrument’s strings with her thumb, and those nearest the pegs gave out a solemn, dry noise.
“No, you don’t! I won’t give it away so easily, you know. This ukulele is my flesh and blood. When I give it to someone, I’m giving myself to them.”
“So whoever gets your ukulele gets to be with you?” asked one of the young men, in an obtuse manner.
“Well, there’s no guarantee of that.”
“Still, I guess if we see a man walking around the village with your ukulele, that means he’s the guy you’re in love with, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Kimi brushed up a stray hair and answered decisively.
“Do you mean it? Will you swear on it?” said Matsukichi, speaking for the first time.
Kiyoshi gnawed at his nails in silence, his eyes glittering.
They were all drunk. They pressed Kimi to make a vow, and the proprietor was brought in to be a witness.
One of the young men scooped up the cat and placed it on the beer-stained table. The cat, with its sparse summer coat, squatted, pinioned by a hand on its back. Its bent body looked like it contained a strong but flexible spring, as if it were waiting for an opportunity to make a swift escape.
“Put your hand on the cat’s back and swear. If you lie, then you’ll turn into a cat, too.”
“That’s crazy!” exclaimed Kimi contemptuously, placing her hand on the back of the squirming animal and swearing an oath at the top of her voice. “There, I’ve done it. Now, let’s go for a swim, shall we?”
“Is that a good idea after we’ve had so much to drink?”
“Call yourself a man? You coward. Come on—let’s take a dip at Urayasu.”
Kimi started to leave first and, carrying her ukulele, turned to face the others from the entrance to the bar and shouted, in a deliberately affected accent, “Come on. Let’s go! Let’s go!”
In the end, only Kiyoshi, Matsukichi, and Kōji decided to go with Kimi. The four of them sang raucously as they headed for the harbor. At the wharf, only the area in front of the refrigerated ice store was glaringly bright. The electric motor for the freezer in the ice plant hummed on late into the night. There were a few shadowy figures squatting along the seawall close by, fishing for horse mackerel.
They hadn’t been down there for a while, and the number of ships alongside the wharf had increased considerably. The white underside of one ship appeared alternately bright and then dark again as the beam from the lighthouse near the bay entrance reached it. Similarly, the silver oil tanks standing on the opposite shore intermittently appeared small and white, and then disappeared from view again. Above this vantage point, countless stars filled the night sky.
Kōji thought again about Yūko. Even when he was apart from her for a moment, or perhaps because he was apart from her, his mind was continuously occupied by thoughts of her. A stern line groaned. One of the ships sulkily pulled on the rope, and then slowly pushed back and let it go slack again. He could only lament his bad fortune at running into this indescribably cold and evasive woman just as he was at last of the age to make a go of life. It was his fate. The world was full of young men who accepted their destinies lightly the way one wears a wristwatch, without much conscious thought. But his destiny was like a plaster cast.
He was so in love with her, and yet he suffered from the vague anguish of the moral impossibility of the situation and the fact that he was unable to capture her heart. Why now had Yūko summoned him to these parts?
If it was out of a sense of regret and atonement, then what did that kiss and the terrible things she said at the waterfall mean? In the end, thinking like this, his fondness for her only succeeded in raising doubts about what sort of person Yūko really was.
Kōji became alert as an unaccountable agitation began to constrict his body once again. Having his heart won over by something so uncertain was a bad omen. He told himself that he ought to have clearly seen the physical clarity of his punishment while in prison.
I am a changed person, I have repented, I have… His repentance was recognition of that clarity. Kōji’s life had changed dramatically since the picnic at the waterfall. Lately, from the moment he got up in the morning, throughout the day, he waited for Yūko to bestow her smile on him. Moreover, when she did, he could only bring himself to think of this as evidence that she didn’t love him after all.
Matsukichi jumped down into the sculling boat, hauled on the stern rope, and brought the craft in toward the stone steps of the harbor wall. Kiyoshi helped Kimi—who was carrying the ukulele—down into the boat. Kōji suddenly looked back in the direction of the ice plant. He watched as rays of golden light cascaded from the entrance—the door having been left open—spilling onto the dark concrete floor. It was a great outflow of silent, futile light—almost mystical in its appearance. He wondered why such a great amount of light jostled for space in that one place at night.
Taking up the oars, Matsukichi rowed the boat directly across the bay. Even out on the water, there was no wind.
Kiyoshi, who was a member of the Air Self-Defense Force ground crew, began to talk, enthusiastically, about dealing with the aftermath of a recent jet plane crash.
“There was an announcement on the speakers, giving the plane’s current situation. It said, ‘Emergency reported from: Flight Number T33A A/C number 390. The trouble is an engine stop. Present location above the Atsumi Peninsula.’ That was all. Then we lost radio contact. An F-86F fighter headed out right away to guide the plane down, but it radioed back that there was no sign of Flight 390. We were really shocked. Of course, two search-and-rescue helicopters had been scrambled as well. They carried out a fair number of low-level reconnaissance flights, and then, at last, we heard the sad news that they had found the crash site. We went separately by truck, and relying on guidance from the helicopters and using our own maps, we finally arrived at the scene about two and a half hours later. The body of the plane had plunged vertically into the ground. The tail, which we could just see sticking out of the earth, was smoldering and sputtering, and there was an indescribably unpleasant smell coming from the wreckage. I’ll never forget seeing two helmets lying in a field, casting long shadows as they caught the westerly sun.
“It had already started to get dark, so the excavation and recovery of the bodies had to wait until the next morning. Besides, we hadn’t even prepared any lighting equipment. We gathered together the fragments of wing that had scattered around the area, and then all we could do was pick some wildflowers and spend the night offering them up with incense sticks in prayer. It was such a sad night. No one said very much. We threw up a rope barrier all around, thirty yards from the wreckage, and took turns to keep watch to make sure any onlookers couldn’t get in. It was the saddest night I’ve ever spent, I can tell you. You have to appreciate, we’re ground crew—used to carrying wrenches and screwdrivers, not guns. We weren’t accustomed to standing guard like that. But, anyway, the long night passed without incident, and although the horrible stench from the burnt-out plane gradually faded, it clung to our noses all night long.
“Then morning came. The eastern skies brightened faintly. I remember thinking it would be an unearthly morning. I knew a gigantic round sun would climb into the sky. I wouldn’t be able to bear to look at such a sun. Such an unbridled, dazzling sun. But before it came fully up, the unburnt tail section of the plane began to reflect the radiant first light of morning. It was so awfully beautiful. Then, for the first time, we saw clearly the horror of the accident.”