Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall. There were tigers in one section, but no tigers in another. Maybe it was as simple as that. And there was no logical continuity from one section to another. And it was precisely because of this lack of logical continuity that choices really didn't mean very much. Wasn't that why he couldn't feel the gap between one world and another? But that was as far as his thoughts would go. He wasn't able to think more deeply than that. The fatigue in his body was as heavy and suffocating as a sodden blanket. No more thoughts came to him, and he just lay there, inhaling the aroma of the grass, listening to the grasshoppers wings, and feeling through his skin the dense membrane of shadow that covered him.
And in the end his mind was sucked into the deep sleep of afternoon.
The transport ship cut its engines as ordered, and soon it had come to a standstill on the surface of the ocean. There was less than one chance in ten thousand that it could have outrun such a swift, modern submarine. The submarines deck gun and machine gun were still trained on the transport ship, its crew in a state of readiness to attack. Yet a strange sense of tranquillity hovered between the two ships. The submarines crew stood in full view on deck, lined up and watching the transport ship with an air of having time to kill. Many of them had not even bothered to strap on battle helmets. There was hardly any wind that summer after- noon, and now, with both engines cut, the only sound was the languid slap of waves against the two ships hulls. The transport ship signaled to the submarine: We are a transport ship carrying unarmed civilians. We have neither munitions nor military personnel on board. We have few lifeboats. To this the submarine responded brusquely: That is not our problem. Evacuation or no, we commence firing in precisely ten minutes. This ended the exchange of signal messages between the two ships. The captain of the transport ship decided not to convey the communication to his passengers. What good would it do? A few of them might be lucky enough to survive, but most would be dragged to the bottom of the sea with this miserable old washtub. The captain longed for one last drink, but the whiskey bottle- some fine old scotch he had been saving-was in a desk drawer in his cabin, and there was no time to get it now. He took off his hat and looked up at the sky, hoping that, through some miracle, a squadron of Japanese fighter planes might suddenly appear there. But this was not to be a day for miracles. The captain had done all he could. He thought about his whiskey again.
As the ten-minute grace period was running out, strange movement began on the deck of the submarine. There were hurried exchanges among the officers lined up on the conning- tower deck, and one of the officers scrambled down to the main deck and ran among the crew, shouting some kind of order. Wherever he went, ripples of movement spread among the men at their battle stations. One sailor shook his head from side to side and punched the barrel of the deck gun with a clenched fist. Another took his helmet off and stared up at the sky. The mens actions might have been expressing anger or joy or disappointment or excitement. The passengers on the transport ship found it impossible to tell what was happening or what this was leading up to. Like an audience watching a pantomime for which there was no program (but which contained a very important message), they held their breaths and kept their eyes locked on the sailors every movement, hoping to find some small hint of meaning. Eventually, the waves of confusion that had spread among the sailors began to subside, and in response to an order from the bridge, the shells were removed from the deck gun with great dispatch. The men turned cranks and swung the barrel away from the transport ship until the gun was pointing straight ahead again, then they plugged the horrid black hole of the muzzle. The gun shells were returned below decks, and the crew ran for the hatches. In contrast to their earlier movements, they did everything now with speed and efficiency. There was no chatting or wasted motion.
The submarines engines started with a definite growl, and at almost the same moment the siren screeched to signal All hands belowdecks! The submarine began to move forward, and a moment later it was plunging downward, churning up a great white patch of foam, as if it had hardly been able to wait for the men to get below and fasten the hatches. A membrane of seawater swallowed the long, narrow deck from front to rear, the gun sank below the surface, the conning tower slipped downward, cutting through the dark-blue water, and finally the antenna and the periscope plunged out of sight, as if to rip the air clean of any evidence they had ever been there. Ripples disturbed the surface of the ocean for a short while, but soon they also subsided, leaving only the weirdly calm afternoon sea.
Even after the submarine had plunged beneath the surface, with the same amazing suddenness that had marked its appearance, the passengers stood frozen on the deck, staring at the watery expanse. Not a throat was cleared among them. The captain recovered his presence of mind and gave his order to the navigator, who passed it on to the engine room, and eventually, after a long fit of grinding, the antique engine started up like a sleeping dog kicked by its master.
The crew of the transport ship held their breaths, waiting for a torpedo attack. The Americans might have simply changed their plans, deciding that sinking the ship with a torpedo would be faster and easier than a time-consuming volley from the gun. The ship ran in short zigzags, the captain and navigator scanning the oceans surface with their binoculars, searching for the deadly white wake of a torpedo. But there was no torpedo. Twenty minutes after the submarine had disappeared beneath the waves, people at last began to break free of the death curse that had hung over them. They could only half believe it at first, but little by little they came to feel that it was true: they had come back alive from the verge of death. Not even the captain knew why the Americans had suddenly abandoned their attack. What could have changed their minds? (Only later did it become clear that instructions had arrived from headquarters just moments before the attack was to have begun, advising them to suspend all hostilities unless attacked by the enemy. The Japanese government had telegraphed the Allied powers that they were prepared to accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender unconditionally.) Released now from the unbearable tension, several passengers plopped down on the deck where they stood and began to wail, but most of them could neither cry nor laugh. For several hours-and, in the case of some, for several days-they remained in a state of total abstraction, the spike of a long and twisted nightmare thrust unmercifully into their lungs, their hearts, their spines, their brains, their wombs.