The Frolic of the Beasts

Chapter 4

One particular evening after the end of the rainy season, Kōji found himself drinking alone in the only bar in the village. Lately, he had been coming here often on his own. The worse his estrangement from the villagers became, the more he came deliberately into the middle of the village to drink. And when the young villagers, who had returned in dribs and drabs at the end of the fishing season, heard the rumors about Kōji’s prison record, this only served to heighten their curiosity and their desire to become his drinking companions. Kōji’s crime became the relish for their beer—like a meritorious deed carried out on the field of battle in days gone by.

Even now, when he came down to the village from the Kusakado greenhouse, the sight of the star-filled midsummer night sky never ceased to amaze him. It was altogether different from the sky one saw in the city. Those innumerable stars were like a huge blanket of shiny mildew growing across the heavens.

It was a dark night in the village, with the brightest lights belonging to the last bus stopping at Toi at 8:45 p.m. and the occasional passing truck, their headlights shining mercilessly as they played on the rows of old houses standing alongside the prefectural highway.

The bus was supposed to run once an hour, but sometimes two or three came one after another in succession, or else nothing came along at all for two hours or more. Each time these large vehicles passed by, the rows of houses would vibrate like old chests of drawers, and then, when the bus stopped at the central crossroads and discharged its load of passengers, the local youths—who had been enjoying the cool of the evening on the roadside—teasingly greeted the familiar faces they recognized.

Even at night, there were a couple of fairly well-lit ice shops, with general menus displaying items like watermelons, lemonade, and Chinese noodles. They even had televisions, and the young villagers would congregate there to watch a baseball game or boxing match.

The bar, Storm Petrel, stood alone on the northern fringes of the run of stores, isolated from the others, and gave out all the more a dim light in the dark town. It was a crude hut with blue-painted panel walls; the sign, in English, should have displayed “Storm Petrel,” but the painter had mistaken the spelling and instead it read “Storm Pertel.”

But nobody criticized this oversight, and even the proprietor didn’t mind, so the black lettering, which was now covered in dust from the passing buses, had soon taken on an aged appearance.

Several dozen empty beer bottles were piled up to one side of the entrance. Despite the heat, the windows were closed in by crimson curtains.

Now and then, a popular song played in the background. The twenty-square-yard interior was bathed in a dim red light and looked a little shady. There was no barmaid, so the husband and wife proprietors had to take drinks orders themselves. There were just a few plain tables and chairs scattered about the room.

In one corner, a token stand-up bar had been installed, with an electric fan above it, and there was a tabby cat that, despite having its tail yanked constantly by the younger customers, only ever reacted by wearily changing its sleeping position.

It was early, and the regular customers hadn’t yet gathered. Kōji swapped gossip about Teijirō’s daughter, Kimi, with the owner. Kimi hadn’t stayed with her father at all during her ten-day vacation from the instrument factory in Hamamatsu. She had stayed the first night in a room of her own at the Kusakado greenhouse, and after that she lodged at the Seitōkan—an inn owned by her relatives. Teijirō himself had hardly spoken a word to his daughter, despite her long absence.

It seemed there were some ill feelings between them that nobody had previously been aware of. They had lived together, quite happily on the face of it, for some time after her mother had died.

Then one day Kimi suddenly left home and went to work as a factory girl in Hamamatsu; her father closed up the house and went to live at the Kusakado greenhouse, where a gardener was needed. Since his arrival in the village, Kōji hadn’t heard any stories about Teijirō’s daughter from Teijirō himself.

Not only was Kimi beautiful but she also knew it, and she let everyone else know it, too. The village girls and ordinary locals considered her presence a nuisance.

Before Kimi came home, several girls would come along with the local young men to drink at the Storm Petrel. But once she returned, she became the only female customer in the place.

Before long, this otherwise reputable drinking establishment—which had never before suffered any kind of moral censure—came to be seen as a place of ill repute.

This sudden decline in reputation in a matter of a few days was a remarkable change, and yet Kimi was not the sort of woman to behave flirtatiously.

Matsukichi, a fisherman, and Kiyoshi, a member of the Self-Defense Forces, both Kimi’s childhood friends, quarreled over her. But so far, there was no indication that she had given herself to either of them.

Kimi owned a ukulele. She carried this brand-new item—the manufacture of which she had been partly responsible for—wherever she went. Occasionally, while drinking, she would strum the instrument and sing. From deep within her bosom (which was the largest among all the girls in the village), from the bottom of the ashen gloom that drifted up from the flesh of her breasts, her voice rose up like a bucket in a well, brimming with abundant quantities of water, and those around soon forgot how poor her singing really was.

At around 9:00 p.m., Kimi, Matsukichi, and Kiyoshi came into the bar together with three other youngsters, and with their arrival, the peaceful evening in the Storm Petrel came to an end.

Kiyoshi called over to Kōji, who moved away from the bar and joined them at their table.

As usual, Kimi had her ukulele. The distant breeze from the electric fan blew her stray hairs about as she drank a highball and explained, in a businesslike manner, how the ukulele was manufactured.

First of all, the various parts are laid out in order: the mahogany sound board, the maple sides, and the neck. A groove is introduced into the sound board with a cutter and the circumference of the sound hole is then decorated with celluloid inlay. This was Kimi’s job.

The sides of the gourd-shaped body were formed by boiling the wooden boards and then bending them into shape using an electric press mold.

There were also more intricate stages of the manufacturing process, such as attaching the linings and plastic bindings, and sanding the edges of the ukulele’s body. But the task that demanded the highest degree of technical skill was attaching the neck to the body, and this was a job undertaken by fastidious craftsmen.

Once the rosewood fret board had been glued on, the instrument was polished with cloth before being sent to be lacquered. After the body assumes its perfectly polished finished form, four nylon strings are attached to complete the instrument—and the ukulele is ready to produce its first sound.

The sober luster of the dark mahogany instrument, which Kimi now held in her hands, appeared like restless agate or a drink-reddened chest in the red lighting. There was a sense of the carefree, like the firm flesh of a precocious girl, in the small gourd-shaped object. Its whole being seemed to have been designed in order to tease and cajole with its easy sound. Further still, stealing a look as far as one could inside the body of the instrument from the sound hole revealed a boundless, sweeping landscape of agitated shadows and shapes and dust-choked nooks and crannies—like the backstage scene in some grand theater. Kōji thought it amusing that Kimi had discovered an instrument so like herself in character.

Such a detailed explanation of the manufacturing process suggested a strange detachment between Kimi and this instrument. While right now the instrument certainly belonged to her, there would forever exist a tantalizing distance between the hands that once helped create it in the wood shaving–filled factory and the instrument itself.

Kōji found it easy to imagine the factory where Kimi worked. The high steel ceilings, the roar of the various machines, scattered deposits of sawdust, the strong, invigorating smell of lacquer…

At any rate, it would not be too dissimilar to the prison paper factory where he had worked for fifty yen a month making a variety of multicolored supplements for sundry children’s magazines.

It was tough when the New Year’s editions were due out. There was the first supplement, and then the second, and by the end of the season there would have been as many as five printings.

How he had adored the colors—like the gaudy plumage of a cockatoo! The supplements were full of paper handbags, paper brooches, floral design paper clocks, self-assembly paper furniture, paper pianos, paper flower baskets, and paper beauty salons—all done out in festival colors and printed on glossy paper.

If the print had shifted a little out of line, the effect produced an even more dazzling blaze of color.

One of the inmates who had children of his own had wept as he made the paper products. But Kōji didn’t have that problem. Yet when he imagined children receiving these toys and the warmth and comfort of their homes, he felt more anguish than when he recalled neon-lit streets of bars.

One time, when he was walking around Numazu following his release from prison, he noticed a pile of beautiful children’s magazines, stuffed full of supplements, heaped up under the protruding summer awning at the entrance to a bookstore. Maybe I made one of those supplements, he reflected as he glanced furtively at them.

He resolved never to have children. He wouldn’t be able to bear watching his child delightedly fingering the paper toys. He felt sure he would be a hard-to-please, disagreeable father. Kōji wanted to distance himself forever from those supplements. To him they used to symbolize those who had colorful, festive lives and who enjoyed the pleasures of a happy home. But then the hands that had made these supplements were the same roughly cracked hands that had committed that crime…

All the while he was listening to Kimi’s explanation, he kept thinking about the secret process for the production of the beautiful “special” children’s supplements. Although Kimi’s hands were not those of a criminal, the dismal nature of working in an instrument factory was not so far removed from his own experience.

And so he felt that, though she may not have been doing so deliberately, she was bragging about it shamelessly. At least that’s how it seemed to him. Working amid the dust, the wood shavings, and the smell of lacquer, Kimi brought one of those beautiful completed products home as a keepsake. Still, Kōji found it hard to believe the way she finally was able to possess every single aspect of the finished ukulele—its perfect smoothness, carefree tunes, the lyricism of “South Island,” and its leisurely melancholy… It was clearly “Kimi’s ukulele,” and it would remain distinct from the other thousands of ukuleles. By rights she herself ought never to have been able to acquire a real ukulele, the perfect instrument, and so it had become her icon.

The cat played around Kōji’s feet. From time to time, it extended the claws of its forepaws slightly and raked playfully at his insteps where they were exposed between the thongs of his geta. Since it was summer, it didn’t come onto the customers’ knees, preferring instead to lie with its stomach on the cool concrete floor. The cat liked Kōji, but Kōji disliked this strange, unaccountable fondness. With the tip of his toe he lightly kicked the cat away. But it soon came back again. At the Kusakado greenhouse, they would sometimes use bonito stock as well as chemical fertilizer. But it didn’t make Kōji reek of fish any more than the fishermen.

Kimi strummed her ukulele and sang a Hawaiian song she had picked up in the women’s dormitory at the Hamamatsu factory.

She was wearing a black, sleeveless beach dress with a sunflower pattern. A shadow was cast vertically into the cleavage of her voluptuous breasts, incongruous against her small stature. On a mere whim, she had clean-shaven one of her armpits, but left some stubble on the other. Her slightly stern face wore a frown, her mouth was like a beautiful half-open sea cucumber, and her dark skin was deeply reddened—maybe from the drink or perhaps from the lighting in the bar.

Kiyoshi was listening intensely to her, his bright, round face nestled in the turned-up collar of his white aloha shirt. Matsukichi, who was wearing a cotton waistband rolled up above his chest, rested his elbow on the tabletop, his chin on his hand.

Kōji sat across the table gazing intently at this stiflingly hot, still scene, as if looking through a picture frame.

He thought about Yūko and suddenly felt choked with emotion. I have repented, I have… He hadn’t realized before now just how much he was in love with her. If he were honest about it, he had to admit that he hadn’t wielded that wrench for her. However, he was sure he was in love now.

The bitter taste of contrition heightened the sweetness of his desire, and his longing for Yūko made its presence known here and there on the most unexpected and delicate of occasions. Kōji now felt constantly afraid of being ambushed by such desires. Yūko’s trifling gestures—the way she would raise her upper arm when she put a hand to her hair; the line of her skirt as she descended, in a stooped manner, the greenhouse steps; the fragrance of her face powder as it began to yield a little to the perspiration beneath… When these gestures suddenly shook him to his very foundations, he felt as though he had been waylaid by his own desires—stabbing him sharply in the back.

But the impossibility of the situation was even more apparent than before. Like living in a house built above a river with the constant clamor of water below, every inch of Kōji’s desire was directly linked to the noise of a culvert flowing through the memory of that dark jail. I have repented, I have… Whenever his desire for something arose, it inevitably revived his crime. Whether or not she was aware of Kōji’s feelings, Yūko had not allowed him to kiss her since the incident during the picnic.

Kōji scratched the bridge of his nose. It itched, unhappily, as if a fly were trying to scurry up his face.

It was clear from Yūko’s expression that some kind of change had occurred inside her since the picnic. During the hot evenings, there were times when she would pant faintly through open lips. She would gaze, absentmindedly, at a fixed point, and sometimes she would address Kōji in an unfriendly manner and make stinging remarks. And what was more, she seemed scarcely aware of the changes that had occurred within herself.

“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.”

“So, then what did you do?” asked Kimi.

“We started digging as quickly as we could. That was all,” answered Kiyoshi, falling silent. Then he abruptly changed the topic of conversation and said, “We keep a small flower garden. When I say ‘we,’ it was actually the guys from the repair platoon who made it, although I help tend it now and again. We call it the ‘Garden for the Attainment of Perfection.’ It comes from the proverb ‘Adversity is the best school.’ It has a small rose-trellised entrance and a summer house we made from targets for shooting practice. There’s even a red torii shrine gate on top of a miniature artificial hill, and goldfish swimming in a small pond, too. And scattered about in between are lots of flowers. There are carnations, and a cactus we planted recently was donated by the candy store at the PX. We also have some nasturtiums.”

“Are the flowers dedicated to those who died?” asked Kimi.

“Don’t be daft. Those flowers are there for the people who are still alive. But, tell me, if you’re from Hamamatsu, too, how is it we haven’t managed to bump into each other before now?”

“Because you haven’t been at the base in north Hamamatsu for very long, have you? Besides which, there’s no way you could find me in such a big town. Especially as I’m so good at hiding.”

“See? That’s how she is!” said Matsukichi, poking fun at Kimi as he slowly rowed the boat.

Kōji envied Kiyoshi his simple lyrical spirit. It was a warm, plump spirit, that was plain for all to see—just like a sweet bun in a shop’s glass display case. There had been a flower garden like the one Kiyoshi spoke of at the prison, too. While Kōji hadn’t helped with the garden that the other inmates tended with such care, he had loved it timidly, superstitiously, and keenly, and with a slight sense of loathing.

He, too, had heart-wrung memories of the vulgar saffron-colored nasturtiums. But unlike Kiyoshi, he would never relate such recollections to others.

And as for Matsukichi? He was like a dull-witted young animal.

Kōji suddenly blurted, “Kimi, before, you made a promise, right? That you’d have to leave some proof of your feelings on the ukulele.”

“When you say proof?”

Kōji explained that she ought to carve With Love, Kimi on the body of the ukulele. Kimi hesitated a little but in the end agreed. Kōji borrowed Kiyoshi’s knife and inscribed the ukulele in small English lettering. White granules scattered as the lettering was scored into the glossy, dark brown surface of the sound board. Kimi said she felt as though a tattoo were being etched onto her own arm. Then she reached out and softly touched Kōji’s arm—tensed as it supported the ukulele firmly against the slight pitching of the boat, so as to avoid spoiling the lettering he was engraving.

The forest of Urayasu was located on the tip of the promontory, in an area within the breakwater on the end of which stood a lighthouse. The eastern fringe of the forest gave out onto a quiet inlet of the bay, while the western part of the forest spread immediately beyond the breakwater and connected with the rocky coast of the open sea. In the midst of the dense forest was a Shinto shrine, dedicated to the worship of an early Kamakura-period sacred mirror known as the Shōchiku Hijaku Kyō.

It was known among the many small inlets in the bay particularly for its tranquility and white, sandy beaches—and they went intent on enjoying an evening dip in the sea.

The water close to the shore was extremely shallow and the bottom of the boat dragged on the sand. Stretching the mooring rope as far as possible, they finally managed to tie it to a rotten tree on the bank.

The three men were amazed at how well prepared Kimi was. When without hesitation she stripped off her beachwear, she already had on a white swimsuit. With no other option, the men swam in their underpants.

A new moon appeared in the sky above the village. Kōji could see the dull lights of the Kusakado house in the hills to the north of the village. With an invigorating shudder, he felt the uneasy, quickening pace of his heartbeat as his inebriated body was suddenly immersed in the water, and he swam about in the middle of the narrow inlet.

“Hey, a shadow! Look at the shadow!” shouted Kimi, lifting her head from the surface of the water.

Her gleeful cry slapped the water’s surface and rebounded, drowning out the distant echo of breaking waves as they pounded the rocky shore. Looking down, they saw their own strangely distorted shadows on the white, cone-shaped seabed, lit up by the lighthouse twelve nautical miles away as it cast its beam across the darkness every two seconds.

Having enjoyed their swim sufficiently, they climbed onto the shore and entered the Urayasu forest. Even in the depths of the forest, the light from the lighthouse shone like a flash of lightning and transformed the unsettling darkness.

Although it was summer, the forest paths, ankle-deep in moist leaves, were barely evident. The striped mosquitoes were a real nuisance. The deeper they went into the forest, the more the boom of the offshore waves echoed terrifically around the tree trunks.

Naked, they walked in silence, swatting at the mosquitoes that swarmed all around them.

“Let’s light a fire here. It’ll keep the mosquitoes away, and we can dry ourselves off,” suggested Matsukichi. Kimi had only brought her ukulele, and so Kiyoshi went back to the boat to fetch matches. They made a small bonfire out of dead branches, and sitting around it, they all felt peaceful.

Kimi played her ukulele and sang softly, the fire reflected on the body of the instrument. Still wet, her bare shoulders took on a pale hue in the light of the lighthouse as it penetrated the lower branches of the trees. They neither laughed nor joked; instead, they were content in the feeling of superiority that came from indulging themselves in a special kind of pleasure, the likes of which they knew was alien to city dwellers.

They gazed in silence at the flickering flames of the small bonfire—the bottoms of their eyes stinging a little as the salt water dried.

“Give me the ukulele,” said Matsukichi suddenly, his voice deep and serious. Resolution, following lengthy indecision, was clearly evident in his tone.

Kimi held the ukulele in her arms and refused.

“I won’t.”

They fell silent again. But this time the silence no longer carried with it that sense of calm.

Before long, Matsukichi pressed the matter again, more persistently and maladroitly than before.

“Now look. As I see it, there’s three of us men here, okay? You have to give the ukulele to one of us, right? So I think you should give it to me.”

Matsukichi’s naked body was by far the most powerfully built of the three. He was broad-shouldered, and his chest muscles bulged like a bank of summer clouds. His voice, too, like his body, was imposing, though it carried with it a heavy, melancholy quality.

It seemed that Kimi sensed her answer at this moment would result in a definite consequence. Lifting her keen eyes, she stared at Matsukichi fixedly, and then, after they had glared at each other for a while, finally she said, “I won’t.”

It was obvious, even in the dark, that Matsukichi’s face had begun to flush with embarrassment. All of a sudden he reached out a sturdy arm. Thinking only that this powerful lunge was directed toward Kimi, Kōji involuntarily moved his body diagonally in order to shield her.

Kōji had no idea how Matsukichi judged situations or how he made his decisions. Be that as it may, it was certain that his thoughts were seeking to escape from a kind of bewilderment in deciding to act the way he did. Ordinarily, he probably wouldn’t have hesitated in fighting the other two men and choosing to take Kimi forcibly. And yet, in the moment, rather than trusting in his carnal desires (and, after this experience, he would be unlikely to doubt those desires again), he had put his faith in a single concept, that is to say, the ukulele. He snatched the instrument roughly from Kimi’s grasp, and since Kōji had in fact been protecting Kimi’s person, the ukulele was, if anything, easily taken. For some reason, in that instant, Kōji stole a glance at Kiyoshi. This serious young man’s face was faintly immersed in a lyrical veil of unease, and with his mouth slightly agape, he looked as though he was bound to the depths of a world he found difficult to shut out—a world of flowers and aircraft tails glinting in the morning sun, a world filled with tragically heroic death. And yet, the lively scene that was in full play before him didn’t call for honor on his part at all.

Kimi stood up and seized violent hold of Matsukichi’s arms. The ukulele pitched and sailed dangerously into the air above their heads. In the end, Matsukichi couldn’t resist Kimi’s efforts, and instead he had tossed the ukulele to Kiyoshi. As if waking from a dream, Kiyoshi’s naked body moved nimbly. He took the ukulele in one hand and began to run. Kiyoshi’s actions were completely natural; he found himself in a situation where his role had suddenly become necessary.

Letting out an unhappy shriek, this time Kimi gave chase after Kiyoshi. But Kiyoshi threw the ukulele back to Matsukichi, who was now free of her. Laughing so loudly that his voice echoed through the forest, Matsukichi tore away in the direction of the beach by the inlet, throwing the ukulele once again to Kiyoshi’s waiting hands. Then, while Kiyoshi and Kimi fought for possession of the instrument, he swiftly untied the mooring rope, splashed across the water, kicking up spray as he went, and leapt into the boat. As Kiyoshi plunged into the shallows, holding the ukulele above the water, Matsukichi tossed Kimi and Kōji’s clothes onto the beach; then he reached out and pulled Kiyoshi into the boat.

Kimi cursed loudly from the shore. But she appeared to have abandoned any thoughts of swimming after them. The sculling boat, carrying Kiyoshi, Matsukichi, and the ukulele, receded in a moment across the bay, leaving Matsukichi’s laughter trailing behind across the water. Before long, as the boat reached the middle of the bay—Matsukichi having handed the oars to Kiyoshi—the discordant sound of Matsukichi’s strumming reached the ears of Kōji and Kimi, left behind on the shore at Urayasu.

There followed a predictable sequence of events. Kimi returned to the vicinity of the bonfire in the forest and told Kōji that the reason she hadn’t swum after the boat earlier was because she wanted to be alone with him. She said she knew full well that Kōji was in love with Yūko, but that just for this one night she was prepared to make a sacrifice and act as a stand-in.

Kōji hardly talked about how he felt. Kimi’s doleful words appeared absurd to him—like a set firework that hadn’t gone off properly. At length, he said he would prefer it if she didn’t talk anymore.

The roar of the ocean waves; the dying flames of the bonfire; the beam of light from the lighthouse lancing like lightning through the gaps in the trees; a new moon climbing into the sky; countless stars… Surrounded by all of this, Kōji was able to put Yūko from his mind and enjoy not having to think of her at all.

He fancied he hadn’t experienced the various contrivances of nature befriending him like this since his youth, but appreciating it now, it was like some elaborate chicanery: the artifice of a new moon, the pounding waves, and the low, melancholy buzz of mosquitoes around Kimi’s hair.

When he buried his face in her magnificent bosom, and felt her flesh—like taut sheepskin—on the tip of his tongue, he unwittingly compared his rapture with that gem of perfect flesh that had been honed by the young inmates day in, day out, in the prison. In contrast to that, this was nothing but a poor imitation. And people call this very thing nature.

Kimi’s body was briny like a salted fish.

After they finished, she gazed deeply into Kōji’s eyes as if trying to figure out how much he had enjoyed it; this was one of the things he wanted to tell her to stop doing.

Even so, Kōji’s needs were sated. It had been a long time since he had experienced his sexual desires receding and leaving behind the flesh, as the waves turn and recede, leaving behind a wet beach.

Trying hard not to let his eyes reveal his gratitude, he held Kimi fixedly in his gaze, before planting a light kiss the way a man does after sleeping with his lover. For the first time, he thought, I’m all body; just a physical presence—like a dog. He felt as though, for a short while at least, he had escaped from his preordained destiny.

With their clothes tied up above their heads, Kōji and Kimi jumped into the sea below the lighthouse, and swam across the bay at its narrowest point. The tide was coming in and so there was no danger of being swept out to sea.

They reached the other side swimming between the oil-smelling boats, dressed quickly, and, barefooted, went their separate ways home.

Several days later, when he came down into the village, Kōji soon heard rumors about the young men. Apparently Kiyoshi was inseparable from Kimi’s ukulele, carrying it around wherever he went. Kiyoshi’s good fortune had become the object of envy of the young men in the village. And yet, no matter how much he was pressed, Kiyoshi just smiled, without revealing anything at all.

That night, Matsukichi asked Kōji to step outside the bar at the Storm Petrel as he had a confidential matter to discuss. He claimed that the night after they had been to Urayasu, he and Kimi met secretly and, finally, she gave herself to him. There had been a secret pact between Kiyoshi and Matsukichi. Kiyoshi cared only about his reputation. Matsukichi, on the other hand, was more realistic.

In exchange for keeping the ukulele, Kiyoshi had promised Matsukichi that he wouldn’t lay a hand on Kimi. When Matsukichi confided this secret pact to Kimi, she suddenly began to laugh and then surprisingly easily, not to say cheerfully, agreed to his proposal. Matsukichi thought this proof enough that Kimi had been in love with him right from the start. He repeatedly impressed upon Kōji the need to keep this grave secret. If anything, Kōji was surprised that Matsukichi hadn’t the slightest inkling of his own relationship with Kimi.

Kōji remembered his geta and Kimi’s sandals that they had left in the forest in Urayasu that night. They had been kicked off carelessly—surely no one would mistake them for footwear discarded at the scene of a suicide. He hoped they would be taken by the incoming tide and carried out to sea as the tide ebbed, and how, if they weren’t, then they would probably rot, half-immersed in water like a scrapped vessel. In the course of time, they would be eaten into completely and transformed into a dwelling place for an infestation of sea lice. They would cease to be geta and sandals. Having once belonged to man, they would instead melt into the great multitude of unearthly, formless material phenomena that exist on earth.