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.”
“Ha,” the builders said, “you are right,” and they went back to pounding the foundation posts.
Old Gentleman rolled his eyes a few times. “Don’t ask me to save you next time the big wave comes,” he told everybody.
“But you will save us,” Jiya said gently, “because you are so good.”
Old Gentleman shook his head at this and then smiled. “What a pity you would not be my son,” he said and then he went back to the castle and shut the gates.
As for Kino and Jiya, they returned to the farmhouse, but the whole family could see that Jiya was restless from that day on. They had supposed that he would be a farmer, for he had learned everything about the land, and Kino’s father trusted him with much. But Jiya fell into a mood of forgetfulness, and one day Kino’s father spoke to him when they were working in the fields.
“I know that you are too good a son to be forgetful on purpose,” he said. “Tell us what is on your mind.”
“I want a boat,” Jiya said. “I want to go back to fishing.”
Kino’s father was shaping a furrow. “Life is stronger than death,” he said quietly.
From that day on the family knew that someday Jiya would go back to the sea, and that he would build himself a house on the beach. One after another now seven houses had risen, the frail wooden houses of fisherfolk that the big wave could lift like toys and crush and throw away. But they sheltered families, men and women and children. And again they were built with no windows toward the sea. Each family had built on the bit of land that had belonged to it before the big wave came, and at the end was left a bare piece. It belonged to Jiya now, for it had belonged once to his father.
“When I have a boat, then I shall build my own house there,” Jiya said one night to the farm family.
“I shall pay you wages from this day,” Kino’s father said. “You have become a man.”
From that day Jiya saved his wages until he had enough to buy a boat. It was a fine boat, slender and strong, of seasoned wood, and the sails were new. The day he got it he and Kino sailed it far into the channel, and Jiya had not been so happy since before the big wave. Kino could not forget the deep still cold of the bottomless waters upon which they floated. But Jiya thought only of the joy of having a boat of his own, and Kino did not want to spoil his joy by any hint of fear.
“I knew all the time that I had to come back to the sea,” he told Kino.
Then to Kino’s surprise Jiya grew very red. “Do you think Setsu would be afraid to live on the beach?” he asked Kino.
Kino was surprised. “Why should Setsu live on the beach?” he asked.
Jiya grew redder still, but he held his head high. “Because that is where I shall build my home,” he said firmly. “And I want Setsu to be my wife.”
It was such astonishing news that Kino did not know what to say. Setsu was his little sister, and he could not believe that she was old enough to be anybody’s wife. Nor, to tell the truth, could he imagine anybody wanting her for his wife. She was careless and teasing and mischievous and she still delighted to hide his things so that he could not find them.
“You would be very foolish to marry Setsu,” he now told Jiya.
“I don’t agree with you,” Jiya said, smiling.
“But why do you want her?” Kino urged.
“Because she makes me laugh,” Jiya said. “It is she who made me forget the big wave. For me — she is life.”
“But she is not a good cook,” Kino said. “Think how she burns the rice because she runs outside to look at something!”
“I don’t mind burned rice,” Jiya said, “and I will run out with her to see what she sees.”
Kino said no more, but he kept looking at his friend. Jiya, wanting to build a house, to marry Setsu! He could not believe it.
When they got home he went to his father. “Do you know that Jiya wants to marry Setsu?” he asked.
His father was looking over his seeds, for it was springtime again. “I have seen some looks pass between them,” he said, smiling.
“But Jiya is too good for Setsu,” Kino said.
“Setsu is very pretty,” his father said.
Kino was surprised. “With that silly nose she has?”
“I believe that Jiya admires her nose,” his father said calmly.
“I don’t understand that,” Kino replied. “Besides, she will hide his things and tease him and make him miserable.”
“What makes you miserable will make him happy,” his father said.
“I don’t understand that, either,” Kino said soberly.
“Someday you will understand,” his father said, laughing. “Do you remember that I told you life is stronger than death? Jiya is ready to live.”
On the day in the early summer that Jiya and Setsu were married, Kino still did not understand, for up to the very last day Setsu was naughty and mischievous, and indeed on the day of her own wedding she hid his hairbrush under his bed. “You are too silly to be married,” he told her when he found it. “I feel sorry for Jiya.”
Her big brown eyes laughed at him and she stuck out her small red tongue at him. “I will always be nice to Jiya,” she said.
But when the wedding was over and the family took the newly married pair down the hill to the new house on the beach, Kino began to feel sad. The farmhouse would be very quiet without Setsu and he would miss her. Every day he would come to see Jiya and many times he would go fishing with him. But Setsu would not be in the farmhouse kitchen, in the rooms, or in the garden. He would miss even her teasing. He grew very grave indeed. What if the big wave came again?
There in the pretty little new house he turned to Jiya. “Jiya, what if the big wave comes again?” he asked.
“I have prepared for that,” Jiya said. He led them through the little house to the room that faced the sea, the one big room in the house, where at night they would rest and where in the day they would eat and work.
All the family stood there, and as they watched, Jiya pushed back a panel in the wall. Before their eyes was the ocean, swelling and stirring under the evening wind. The sun was sinking into the water, in clouds of red and gold. They gazed out across the deep waters in silence.
“I have opened my house to the ocean,” Jiya said. “If ever the big wave comes back, I shall be ready. I face it. I am not afraid.”
“You are strong and brave,” Kino’s father said.
And they went back to the farm, and left Jiya and Setsu to make a new life in the new home on the old beach.