The Big Wave

Chapter One

KINO LIVED ON A farm. The farm lay on the side of a mountain in Japan. The fields were terraced by walls of stone, each one of them like a broad step up the mountain. Centuries ago Kino’s ancestors had built the stone walls that held up the fields.

Above all the fields stood the farmhouse that was Kino’s home. Sometimes he felt the climb was a hard one, especially when he had been working in the lowest field and he wanted his supper. But after he had eaten at night and in the morning, he was glad that he lived so high up because he could look down on the broad blue ocean at the foot of the mountain.

The mountain rose so steeply out of the ocean that there was only a strip of sandy shore at its foot. Upon this strip was the small fishing village where Kino’s father sold his vegetables and rice and bought his fish. From the window of his room Kino looked down upon the few thatched roofs of the village, running in two uneven lines on both sides of a cobbled street. These houses faced one another, and those that stood beside the sea did not have windows toward it. Since he enjoyed looking at the waves, Kino often wondered why the village people did not, but he never knew until he came to know Jiya, whose father was a fisherman.

Jiya lived in the last house in the row of houses toward the ocean, and his house did not have a window toward the sea either.

“Why not?” Kino asked him. “The sea is beautiful.”

“The sea is our enemy,” Jiya replied.

“How can you say that?” Kino asked. “Your father catches fish from the sea and sells them and that is how you live.”

Jiya only shook his head. “The sea is our enemy,” he repeated. “We all know it.”

It was very hard to believe this. On hot sunny days, when he had finished his work, Kino ran down the path that wound through the terraces and met Jiya on the beach. They threw off their clothes and jumped into the clear sea water and swam far out toward a small island which they considered their own. Actually it belonged to an old gentleman whom they had never seen, except at a distance. Sometimes in the evening he came through the castle gate and stood looking out to sea. Then they could see him, leaning on his staff, his white beard blowing in the wind. He lived inside his castle behind a high fence of woven bamboo, on a knoll outside the village. Neither Kino or Jiya had ever been inside the gate, but sometimes when it was left open they had peeped into the garden. It was beautiful beyond anything they could imagine. Instead of grass the ground was covered with deep green moss shaded by pine trees and bamboos, and every day gardeners swept the moss with bamboo brooms until it was like a velvet carpet. They saw Old Gentleman walking under distant trees in a silver-gray robe, his hands clasped behind his back, his white head bent. He had a kind, wrinkled face, but he never saw them.

“I wonder if it is right for us to use his island without asking?” Kino asked today when they reached its beach of smooth white sand.

“He never uses it himself,” Jiya replied. “Only the sacred deer live here.”

The island was full of sacred deer. They were not afraid, for no one hurt them. When they saw the two boys they came to them, nuzzling into their hands for food. Sometimes Kino tied a little tin can of cakes about his waist and brought them with him to feed the deer. But he seldom had a penny, and now he reached high and picked the tender shoots of the rushes for them. The deer liked these very much and they laid their soft heads against his arm in gratitude.

Kino longed to sleep on the island some night, but Jiya was never willing. Even when they spent only the afternoon there he looked often out over the sea.

“What are you looking for?” Kino asked.

“Only to see that the ocean is not angry,” Jiya replied.

Kino laughed. “Silly,” he said. “The ocean cannot be angry.”

“Yes, it can,” Jiya insisted. “Sometimes the old ocean god begins to roll in his ocean bed and to heave up his head and shoulders, and the waves run back and forth. Then he stands upright and roars and the earth shakes under the water. I don’t want to be on the island then.”

“But why should he be angry with us?” Kino asked. “We are only two boys, and we never do anything to him.”

“No one knows why the ocean grows angry,” Jiya said anxiously.

But certainly the ocean was not angry this day. The sun sparkled deep into the clear water, and the boys swam over the silvery surface of rippling waves. Beneath them the water was miles deep. Nobody knew how deep it was, for however long the ropes that fishermen let down, weighted with iron, no bottom was ever found. Deep the water was, and the land sloped swiftly down to that fathomless ocean bed. When Kino dived, he went down — down — down, until he struck icy still water. Today when he felt the cold grasp his body he understood why Jiya was afraid, and he darted upward to the waves and the sun.

On the beach he threw himself down and was happy again, and he and Jiya searched for pebbles, blue and emerald, red and gold. They had brought little baskets woven like bags, which they had tied with string around their waists, and these they filled with the pebbles. Jiya’s mother was making a pebble path in her rock garden, and nowhere were the pebbles so bright as on Deer Island.

When they were tired of the beach they went into the pine forest behind it and looked for caves. There was one cave that they always visited. They did not dare to go too deep into it, for it stretched downward and under the ocean. They knew this, and at the far end they could see the ocean filling it like a great pool and the tides rose and fell. The water was often phosphorescent and gleamed as though lamps were lighted deep beneath the surface. Once a bright fish lay dead on the rocky shore. In the dark cave it glittered in their hands, but when they ran with it into the sunshine, the colors were gone and it was gray. When they went back into the cave, it was bright again.

But however good a time they had on the island, Jiya looked often at the sun. Now he ran out on the beach and saw it sinking toward the west and he called to Kino.

“Come quickly — we must swim home.”

Into the ocean, ruddy with sunset, they plunged together. The water was warm and soft and held them up, and they swam side by side across the broad channel. On the shore Jiya’s father was waiting for them. They saw him standing, his hands shading his eyes against the bright sky, looking for them. When their two black heads bobbed out of the water he shouted to them and waded out to meet them. He gave a hand to each of them, pulling them out of the white surf.

“You have never been so late before, Jiya,” he said anxiously.

“We were in the cave, Father,” Jiya said.

But Jiya’s father held him by the shoulders. “Do not be so late,” he said, and Kino, wondering, looked at him and saw that even this strong fisherman was afraid of the anger of the sea.

He bade them good night and climbed the hill to his home and found his mother ready to set the supper on the table. The food smelled delicious — hot fragrant rice, chicken soup, brown fish.

No one was worried about Kino. His father was washing himself, pouring water over his face and head with a dipper, and his little sister, Setsu, was fetching the chopsticks.

In a few minutes they were all sitting on the clean mat around a low square table, and the parents were filling the children’s bowls. Nobody spoke, for it is not polite to speak until the food is served and everybody has had something to eat.

But when the supper was over and Kino’s father was drinking a little hot wine out of a very small cup, and his mother was gathering together the black lacquered wood rice bowls, Kino turned to his father.

“Father, why is Jiya afraid of the ocean?” he asked.

“The ocean is very big,” Kino’s father replied. “Nobody knows its beginning or its end.”

“Jiya’s father is afraid, too,” Kino said.

“We do not understand the ocean,” his father said.

“I am glad we live on the land,” Kino went on. “There is nothing to be afraid of on our farm.”

“But one can be afraid of the land, too,” his father replied. “Do you remember the great volcano we visited last autumn?”

Kino did remember. Each autumn, after the harvest was in, the family took a holiday. They always walked, even little Setsu. They carried packs of food and bedding on their backs and in their hands tall staffs to help them up the mountainsides, and then forgetting all their daily tasks they walked to some famous spot. At home a kind neighbor tended the chickens and looked after the place. Last autumn they had gone to visit a great volcano twenty miles away. Kino had never seen it before, but he had heard of it often, and sometimes on a clear day, far to the edge of the sky, if he climbed the hill behind the farm, he could see a gray, fanlike cloud. It was the smoke from the volcano, his father had told him. Sometimes the earth trembled even under the farm. That was the volcano, too.

Yes, he could remember the great yawning mouth of the volcano. He had looked down into it and he had not liked it. Great curls of yellow and black smoke were rolling about in it, and a white stream of melted rock was crawling slowly from one corner. He had wanted to go away, and even now at night sometimes when he was warm in his soft cotton quilt in his bed on the matting floor he was glad the volcano was so far away and that there were at least three mountains between.

Now he looked at his father across the low table. “Must we always be afraid of something?” he asked.

His father looked back at him. He was a strong wiry thin man and the muscles on his arms and legs were corded with hard work. His hands were rough but he kept them clean, and he always went barefoot except for straw sandals. When he came into the house, he took even these off. No one wore shoes in the house. That was how the floors kept so clean.

“We must learn to live with danger,” he now said to Kino.

“Do you mean the ocean and the volcano cannot hurt us if we are not afraid?” Kino asked.

“No,” his father replied. “I did not say that. Ocean is there and volcano is there. It is true that on any day ocean may rise into storm and volcano may burst into flame. We must accept this fact, but without fear. We must say, ‘Someday I shall die, and does it matter whether it is by ocean or volcano, or whether I grow old and weak?’ ˮ

“I don’t want to think about such things,” Kino said.

“It is right for you not to think about them,” his father said. “Then do not be afraid. When you are afraid, you are thinking about them all the time. Enjoy life and do not fear death — that is the way of a good Japanese.”

There was much in life to enjoy. Kino had a good time every day. In the winter he went to a school in the fishing village, and he and Jiya shared a seat. They studied reading and arithmetic and all the things that other children learn in school. But in the summer Kino had to work hard on the farm, for his father needed help. Even Setsu and the mother helped when the rice seedlings had to be planted in the flooded fields on the terraces, and they helped, too, when the grain was ripe and had to be cut into sheaves and threshed. On those days Kino could not run down the mountainside to find Jiya. When the day was over he was so tired he fell asleep over his supper.

But there were days when Jiya also was too busy to play. Word came in from the fishermen up the coast that a school of fish was passing through the channels and then every fishing boat made haste to sail out of the bays and inlets into the main currents of the sea. Early in the morning, sometimes so early that the light was still that of the setting moon, Jiya and his father sailed their boat out across the silvery sea, to let down their nets at dawn. If they were lucky the nets came up so heavy with fish that it took all their strength to haul them up, and soon the bottom of the boat was flashing and sparkling with the wriggling fish.

Sometimes, if it were not seedtime or harvest, Kino went with Jiya and his father. It was an exciting thing to get up in the night and dress himself in his warm padded jacket tied around his waist. Even in summer the wind was cool over the sea at dawn. However early he got up, his mother always got up, too, and gave him a bowl of hot rice soup and some bean curd and hot tea before he started. Then she packed his lunch in a clean little wooden box, cold rice and fish and a bit of radish pickle.

Down the stone steps of the mountain path Kino ran straight to the narrow dock where the fishing boats bobbed up and down on the tide. Jiya and his father were already there, and in a few minutes the boat was nosing its way between the rocks out to the open sea. Sails set and filling with the wind, they sped straight into the dawn-lit sky. Kino crouched down on the floor behind the bow and felt his heart rise with joy and excitement. The shore fell far behind them and the boat took on the deep swell of the ocean. Soon they came to a whole fleet of fishing boats, and then together they flew after the schools of fish. It was like being a bird in a flock, flying into the sky. How exciting it was, too, to pull up the fish! At such times Kino felt Jiya was more lucky than he. Fish harvest was much easier than rice harvest.

“I wish my father were a fisherman,” he would tell Jiya. “It is stupid to plow and plant and cut the sheaves, when I could just come out like this and reap fish from the sea.”

Jiya shook his head. “But when the storms come, you wish yourself back upon the earth,” he said. Then he laughed. “How would fish taste without rice? Think of eating only fish!”

“We need both farmers and fisherman,” Jiya’s father said.

On days when the sky was bright and the winds mild the ocean lay so calm and blue that it was hard to believe that it could be cruel and angry. Yet even Kino never quite forgot that under the warm blue surface the water was cold and green. When the sun shone the deep water was still. But when the deep water moved and heaved and stirred, ah, then Kino was glad that his father was a farmer and not a fisherman.

And yet, one day, it was the earth that brought the big wave. Deep under the deepest part of the ocean, miles under the still green waters, fires raged in the heart of the earth. The icy cold of the water could not chill those fires. Rocks were melted and boiled under the crust of the ocean’s bed, under the weight of the water, but they could not break through. At last the steam grew so strong that it forced its way through to the mouth of the volcano. That day, as he helped his father plant turnips, Kino saw the sky overcast halfway to the zenith.

“Look, Father!” he cried. “The volcano is burning again!”

His father stopped and gazed anxiously at the sky. “It looks very angry,” he said. “I shall not sleep tonight.”

All night while the others slept, Kino’s father kept watch. When it was dark, the sky was lit with red and the earth trembled under the farmhouses. Down at the fishing village lights in the little houses showed that other fathers watched, too. For generations fathers had watched earth and sea.

Morning came, a strange fiery dawn. The sky was red and gray, and even here upon the farms cinders and ash fell from the volcano. Kino had a strange feeling, when he stepped barefoot upon the earth, that it was hot under his feet. In the house the mother had taken down everything from the walls that could fall or be broken, and her few good dishes she had packed into straw in a basket and set outside.

“Shall we have an earthquake, Father?” Kino asked as they ate breakfast.

“I cannot tell, my son,” his father replied. “Earth and sea are struggling together against the fires inside the earth.”

No fishing boats set sail that hot summer morning. There was no wind. The sea lay dead and calm, as though oil had been poured upon the waters. It was a purple gray, suave and beautiful, but when Kino looked at it he felt afraid.

“Why is the sea such a color?” he asked.

“Sea mirrors sky,” his father replied. “Sea and earth and sky — if they work together against man, it will be dangerous indeed for us.”

“Where are the gods at such a time?” Kino asked. “Will they not be mindful of us?”

“There are times when the gods leave man to take care of himself,” his father replied. “They test us, to see how able we are to save ourselves.”

“And if we are not able?” Kino asked.

“We must be able,” his father replied. “Fear alone makes man weak. If you are afraid, your hands tremble, your feet falter, and your brain cannot tell hands and feet what to do.”

No one stirred from home that day. Kino’s father sat at the door, watching the sky and the oily sea, and Kino stayed near him. He did not know what Jiya was doing, but he imagined that Jiya, too, stayed by his father. So the hours passed until noon.

At noon his father pointed down the mountainside. “Look at Old Gentleman’s castle,” he said.

Halfway down the mountainside on the knoll where the castle stood, Kino now saw a red flag rise slowly to the top of a tall pole and hang limp against the gray sky.

“Old Gentleman is telling everyone to be ready,” Kino’s father went on. “Twice have I seen that flag go up, both times before you were born.”

“Be ready for what?” Kino asked in a frightened voice.

“For whatever happens,” Kino’s father replied.

At two o’clock the sky began to grow black. The air was as hot as though a forest fire were burning, but there was no sign of such a fire. The glow of the volcano glared over the mountaintop, blood-red against the black. A deep-toned bell tolled over the hills.

“What is that bell?” Kino asked his father. “I never heard it before.”

“It rang twice before you were born,” his father replied. “It is the bell in the temple inside the walls of Old Gentleman’s castle. He is calling the people to come up out of the village and shelter within his walls.”

“Will they come?” Kino asked.

“Not all of them,” his father replied. “Parents will try to make their children go, but the children will not want to leave their parents. Mothers will not want to leave fathers, and the fathers will stay by their boats. But some will want to be sure of life.”

The bell kept on ringing urgently, and soon out of the village a trickling stream of people, nearly all of them children, began to climb toward the knoll.

“I wish Jiya would come,” Kino said. “Do you think he will see me if I stand on the edge of the terrace and wave my white girdle cloth?”

“Try it,” his father said.

“Come with me,” Kino begged.

So Kino and his father stood on the edge of the terrace and waved. Kino took off the strip of white cloth from about his waist that he wore instead of a belt, and he waved it, holding it in both hands, high above his head.

Far down the hill Jiya saw the two figures and the waving strip of white against the dark sky. He was crying as he climbed, and trying not to cry. He had not wanted to leave his father, but because he was the youngest one, his older brother and his father and mother had all told him that he must go up the mountain. “We must divide ourselves,” Jiya’s father said. “If the ocean yields to the fires you must live after us.”

“I don’t want to live alone,” Jiya said.

“It is your duty to obey me, as a good Japanese son,” his father told him.

Jiya had run out of the house, crying. Now when he saw Kino, he decided that he would go there instead of to the castle, and he began to hurry up the hill to the farm. Next to his own family he loved Kino’s strong father and kind mother. He had no sister of his own and he thought Setsu was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

Kino’s father put out his hand to help Jiya up the stone wall and Kino was just about to shout out his welcome when suddenly a hurricane wind broke out of the ocean. Kino and Jiya clung together and wrapped their arms about the father’s waist.

“Look — look — what is that?” Kino screamed.

The purple rim of the ocean seemed to lift and rise against the clouds. A silver-green band of bright sky appeared like a low dawn above the sea.

“May the gods save us,” Kino heard his father mutter. The castle bell began to toll again, deep and pleading. Ah, but would the people hear it in the roaring wind? Their houses had no windows toward the sea. Did they know what was about to happen?

Under the deep waters of the ocean, miles down under the cold, the earth had yielded at last to the fire. It groaned and split open and the cold water fell into the middle of the boiling rocks. Steam burst out and lifted the ocean high into the sky in a big wave. It rushed toward the shore, green and solid, frothing into white at its edges. It rose, higher and higher, lifting up hands and claws.

“I must tell my father!” Jiya screamed.

But Kino’s father held him fast with both arms. “It is too late,” he said sternly.

And he would not let Jiya go.

In a few seconds, before their eyes the wave had grown and come nearer and nearer, higher and higher. The air was filled with its roar and shout. It rushed over the flat still waters of the ocean and before Jiya could scream again it reached the village and covered it fathoms deep in swirling wild water, green laced with fierce white foam. The wave ran up the mountainside, until the knoll where the castle stood was an island. All who were still climbing the path were swept away — black, tossing scraps in the wicked waters. The wave ran up the mountain until Kino and Jiya saw the wavelets curl at the terrace walls upon which they stood. Then with a great sucking sigh, the wave swept back again, ebbing into the ocean, dragging everything with it, trees and stones and houses. They stood, the man and the two boys, utterly silent, clinging together, facing the wave as it went away. It swept back over the village and returned slowly again to the ocean, subsiding, sinking into a great stillness.

Upon the beach where the village stood not a house remained, no wreckage of wood or fallen stone wall, no little street of shops, no docks, not a single boat. The beach was as clean of houses as if no human beings had ever lived there. All that had been was now no more.

Jiya gave a wild cry and Kino felt him slip to the ground. He was unconscious. What he had seen was too much for him. What he knew, he could not bear. His family and his home were gone.

Kino began to cry and Kino’s father did not stop him. He stooped and gathered Jiya into his arms and carried him into the house, and Kino’s mother ran out of the kitchen and put down a mattress and Kino’s father laid Jiya upon it.

“It is better that he is unconscious,” he said gently. “Let him remain so until his own will wakes him. I will sit by him.”

“I will rub his hands and feet,” Kino’s mother said sadly.

Kino could say nothing. He was still crying and his father let him cry for a while. Then he said to his wife:

“Heat a little rice soup for Kino and put some ginger in it. He feels cold.”

Now Kino did not know until his father spoke that he did feel cold. He was shivering and he could not stop crying. Setsu came in. She had not seen the big wave, for her mother had closed the windows and drawn the curtains against the sea. But now she saw Jiya lying white-pale and still.

“Is Jiya dead?” she asked.

“No, Jiya is living,” her father replied.

“Why doesn’t he open his eyes?” she asked again.

“Soon he will open his eyes,” the father replied.

“If Jiya is not dead, why does Kino cry?” Setsu asked.

“You are asking too many questions,” her father told her. “Go back to the kitchen and help your mother.”

So Setsu went back again, sucking her forefinger, and staring at Jiya and Kino as she went, and soon the mother came in with the hot rice soup and Kino drank it. He felt warm now and he could stop crying. But he was still frightened and sad.

“What will we say to Jiya when he wakes?” he asked his father.

“We will not talk,” his father replied. “We will give him warm food and let him rest. We will help him to feel he still has a home.”

“Here?” Kino asked.

“Yes,” his father replied. “I have always wanted another son, and Jiya will be that son. As soon as he knows that this is his home, then we must help him to understand what has happened.”