I took the mirror Chiyoko handed me — I was the last to use it — and looked through it into the sea only to find a most ordinary scene little different from what I had imagined. There among a range of small, jagged rocks sprawled endless masses of dark green seaweed. Their slender stalks wavered back and forth quietly and endlessly to the rhythm of the undulating waves as though they were being played with by a warm wind.
"Any octopuses down there, Ichi-san?"
"Not a one."
I raised my head. Chiyoko poked her face back into the bucket. The fluttering brim of the straw hat she was wearing dipped into the water and raised tiny ripples whenever it went against the advance of the boat propelled by the fisherman. I looked at her dark hair and the white nape beneath it. I thought that her neck was even lovelier than her face.
"Are you finding any, Chiyo-chan?" I asked.
"No such luck. Not an octopus swimming anywhere."
"I've heard they're very difficult to see unless you're used to looking for them," Takagi explained.
With both her hands on the bucket against the water, Chiyoko twisted her body toward him even while she was hanging out the side of the boat. "Well, I guess that's why I can't see any." As she bent forward, she jerked the bucket, plunging it in as though playing with the water. "Chiyoko!" Momoyoko called out in warning from the opposite end of the boat.
Goichi was eagerly trying to thrust around for octopuses without knowing where any were. An odd tool is used for stabbing an octopus, a long and lean bamboo rod about a dozen feet in length with a kind of spearhead attached to one end. Our fisherman held the bucket in his mouth with his teeth, managing the rod with one hand even as the boat kept moving. As soon as he located one of the limp monsters, he deftly pierced it with the long bamboo harpoon.
A great many octopuses were thrown aboard single-handedly by the boatman, but all were nearly the same size, none of any surprising bulk. At first all of us were shouting at the novelty of each catch, but afterward, even my uncle, man of vigor that he is, seemed to tire of the sport and called out, "It's no fun just to keep catching octopuses this way!"
Takagi, smoking now, began gazing at the mass at the bottom of the boat. "Chiyo-chan, have you ever seen octopuses swimming? Come over and have a look. It's quite strange." Glancing at me he said, "And how about you, Sunaga-san? The octopuses are having a swim."
"Are they?" I replied. "That's nice." But I did not immediately rise from my seat.
"Well, let's see," said Chiyoko, moving toward Takagi and taking a seat beside him.
I asked her from my seat whether they were still swimming.
"Yes, it's quite interesting. Come and look."
Each octopus put its eight legs together and with its body elongated went straight ahead, pausing momentarily after each glide until it collided against a plank of the boat. Some of the octopuses ejected a black ink, just as squid do. I bent forward merely to glance at the sight and soon sat back down, but Chiyoko remained at Takagi's side.
"That's enough octopus," my uncle said to the boatman.
"Want to go back?" the man asked.
What looked like a few bamboo cages were floating in the distance, and my uncle, hoping to give some variety to the single kind of catch we had had so far on the trip, made the boatman row over to one of them. All of us stood up at once in the boat to look into the cage. There we found fish seven or eight inches long swimming in every direction within the narrow confines of their watery cage. Some of them had on their scales a blue sheen indistinguishable from the blue of the water, and these shone as though the tiny waves that the fish made as they rushed to and fro were sparkling transparently through their flesh.
"Try to scoop one up," Takagi said and had Chiyoko grab the handle of a large net. For the fun of it she took the net and tried moving it in the water, but didn't get anywhere. Takagi offered her his hand, and together they rummaged around with great difficulty inside the cage. But the effort fell far short of scooping up a fish, and soon Chiyoko returned the net to the boatman. With the same net he picked out as many fish as my uncle ordered him to.
Again we were on the beach, glad to have relieved the monotony of the catch of eerie-looking octopuses by having a variety of fish — grunts, sea bass, and black bream.
That night I returned to Tokyo alone. My mother was detained by everyone and consented to stay another few days at Kamakura on condition that Goichi or someone else see her home. I wondered how she could settle down so good-naturedly just by their persuading her, and my nerves, which were already on edge, were further irritated by her being so at home.
I have not seen Takagi at all since then. The triangular relationship involving Chiyoko and Takagi and me developed no further after that. As the weakest of the three, I escaped from the whirlpool halfway, as though I knew beforehand the ultimate workings of fate, and so my story must be quite disappointing to a listener. I feel somewhat like a fire fighter who's put down his standard too hastily, before the fire's been extinguished. My words may suggest I took the trouble of going to Kamakura with some object in mind from the very start, but even I, jealous in spite of my deficiency in competing, had an adequate portion of conceit flickering somewhere in my gloomy mind. I've made quite a study of this contradiction. Because I did not dare to make thorough use of my self-conceit on Chiyoko, however, I found different thoughts and feelings muddling in one after another to occupy my mind, so that I was pestered by their intrusion.
Sometimes it seemed to me that Chiyoko loved me as though I were the only person in the world. And even then I couldn't make a move. Yet whenever it occurred to me to close my eyes to the future and take a desperate step, she almost always escaped from my reach and assumed a look no different from a stranger's. During the two days I stayed at Kamakura, this ebb and flow of the tide occurred a few times. And occasionally I even had the dim suspicion smoldering in me that she had voluntary control over these changes in herself, intentionally coming toward me at one time and removing herself at another. And not only that. There were a number of instances when after immediately interpreting her words and conduct in one way, I could interpret them in a totally different way, so that I really did not know which interpretation was correct. I felt vexed by my vain endeavor to reach a definite conclusion.
During those two days I seem to have been enticed by a woman I had no intention of marrying. And as long as that Takagi kept hanging around the least bit in my sight, I was in real fear of being enticed to the very end against my will. I've already said I wasn't competing with him, but to prevent any misunderstanding, I'm repeating it again. I must assert that if the three of us in our triangular struggle went wild in a whirlpool of desire or love or tenderness, the force that would move me to act would certainly not be the spirit of competition trying to triumph over Takagi. I affirm that this is the same nervous reaction which makes one who looks down from a high tower feel, along with the sensation of awe, that he can't help but jump. From the outward result — a triumph over Takagi or a defeat by him — it might look as if we had competed, but the power moving me is one quite different from the competitive spirit. Moreover, it never came over me if Takagi was not in sight. During those days I felt the terrible flashes of that weird power. So I definitely resolved to leave Kamakura at once.
I'm such a weakling I'm unable to bear a novel that fully incites its readers. And still less am I able to put into practice the actions in that novel. The moment I discovered my sentiments were turning into a kind of novel, I became astonished and returned to Tokyo. While I was on the train, I felt half of me was superior, the other half inferior. In that fairly empty second-class coach, I imagined various sequences to the novel I had started writing and had torn to shreds. The sea, the moon, and the beach were there. And the shadow of a young man and that of a young woman. At first the man raged and the woman wept. And then the woman raged and the man pacified her. At last the two held hands and walked along the silent sands. Or there was a framed picture and straw mats and a cool breeze. There two young men engaged in a meaningless dispute. The words brought blood to their cheeks, and in the end both were driven to using language affecting their integrity. And finally they stood and fought with their fists. Or. . As in a play, scene after scene was depicted before my eyes. I was all the more happy for having lost the opportunity of trying to experience any one of these scenes. Others may ridicule me for acting like an old man. If they call someone who appeals only to poetry without carrying through any action in the world "an old man," I am content to be ridiculed as such. But if it is an old man whose poetry has dried up and withered, that comment I refuse to accept. I'm always struggling for poetry.