by Taeko Kono
Fumiko looked over her shoulder. “We’ve brought lunch for you, too, Yuko, if you’d like.”
Yuko proposed that they all have lunch down on the beach. On their way out, she bought sazae from the shop, and got her landlady to fill an empty bottle with soy sauce. Once they were down on the beach, she started to make a fire in the shelter of an overhanging rock, sending Takeshi, beside himself with excitement, to collect dry sticks and driftwood.
“What a great idea, Yuko!” Koji said. He brought out a small bottle of whiskey.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for so long,” Yuko said, wisps of smoke blowing past her eyes. “I couldn’t do it all alone.”
“Really? I would have, every day.”
At last she got a good blaze going, and they placed the sazae around the edge of the fire.
“Auntie, do you need any more?” Takeshi asked, bringing up another four or five pieces of driftwood and setting them down.
“No, that’s all right,” Yuko said. “Thank you. Here, come sit by me.” She spread a sheet of newspaper next to her, keeping it from blowing away until Takeshi settled his little bottom on it.
“This one’s huge!” he exclaimed and pointed at a sazae in the basket: protuding out of its shell was a particularly thick, slightly spiralled twist of flesh. Takeshi fearlessly stuck out his finger and moved closer to the fierce-looking thing. Suddenly it shrank back inside and Takeshi, snatching his hand away, jumped back. They all burst out laughing.
For the first time since she arrived, Yuko went without her afternoon nap. Once the picnic was over, she continued to keep her guests entertained. She wasn’t conscious of having to make an effort. She was exhilarated; and yet she felt no onset of a fever. Just offshore was a little island that she hadn’t set foot on yet. They were rowed across, and wandered about from rock to rock, and then the boat was rowed back, and they walked along the beach away from the village, gathering shells and taking photographs of one another. Still Yuko was quite content, not in the least bit tired.
Koji and Fumiko had no way of knowing about her afternoon nap regimen, but they did voice some concern. “Are you sure it’s all right for you to be so energetic?
“Let’s go back to the house. You mustn’t overdo it.”
Yuko took no notice. If anything, she felt irritated by their words.
“Don’t you think it’s a nice spot?” she exclaimed, learning it was their first visit to the area. “Aren’t you glad you came?”
The sun was beginning its descent. They had been sitting on a ramshackle boat for a few minutes, Koji having insisted that the adults, at least, take things more easily. Yuko looked toward the sea, glowing now with the first rays of sunset.
“Look how blue the sea gets,” she said. “Always around this time, it turns a beautiful deep blue.”
The three of them sat there for a while longer. Finally, Koji, who had his arms wrapped around his knees, turned his wrist and looked at his watch. Fumiko glanced at it too, and nodded meaningfully.
“We should be going,” she said.
“We’ll be right on time for the train if we pack up now.”
“Are you taking the semi-express?” Yuko asked, staring at Takeshi, playing a little distance away.
“That’s what we’d planned.”
“What if you stayed the night?” Yuko proposed.
“That’s out of the question,” replied Koji. “We just came to see how you’re doing. My brother would never forgive me if we stayed.”
“Oh, he won’t mind,” Yuko said. “Please stay. You’re on vacation, aren’t you?”
“We’ll be coming again,” Fumiko said flatly. “Do you want me to go and get him?” she asked her husband.
“Takeshi!” Koji shouted. “Come along!”
Takeshi stood up, clutching the handkerchief with all of his spoils that he had set down beside him on the sand. Instead of turning around, however, he stuck up a chubby forearm and waved his hand a few times, as if to say: “I’m not coming!” Child though he was, he knew perfectly well he was not being called back to be shown something new and exciting this time.
“Poor boy!” Yuko said, “Just when he seems to like it so much.” His little gesture, which seemed to her to speak volumes, made her remember all the other things he had said and done during the course of the day. She could see his pure white undershirt peeping out of his brick-red wool shirt. Not for one instant had his small body stood still. How he had hopped and skipped about when he discovered a pile of sea shells, busily picking them up! When she had found a dried up “box fish” lying in the sand, a rare variety of blowfish (she’d been learning about such things since her arrival), he had come running up to look. After staring at the weird object for a while, he had put both hands behind him, and said, “No thanks.” And when the boatman who took them to the island had huffed and puffed, pulling on the oars, Takeshi had asked him, “Are we that heavy, Sir?”
Now he was scampering even further away and stopping to examine something else.
“It’s no good. Go and get him,” Koji said to Fumiko.
“Oh, why not leave him?” Yuko said, just as Fumiko got up.
“But we’ll miss our train.”
“No, leave him with me,” Yuko said. “Just for a couple of days. It’ll do him good. Besides, the day after tomorrow is Saturday, when his uncle’s coming. He can take him back.”
“But he’s still so little,” Koji said.
“And he’ll be too much for you, Yuko,” Fumiko chimed in.
Yuko took no notice. “Takeshi!” she called. “Are you coming?” Seeing he was about to dash away again, she added: “I’ve something nice to tell you!” At this, Takeshi stopped, turned round, and started heading toward her.
How could she persuade him? Yuko wondered, keeping her eyes on him. Kajii was going to visit her the day after tomorrow. She felt no joy at the prospect, despite being able to show him how much her health had improved. They had been apart for two weeks now. The prospect of having to deal with him weighed on her mind. But Kajii was very fond of Takeshi. If only the boy were present when they met again, perhaps they’d be able to spend a day like today, in innocent enjoyment. This idea made her all the more unwilling to let him go.
Takeshi was now by her side.
“What is it?” he asked, and immediately poured the treasures from his handkerchief out onto the sand.
“What are you doing that for!” Fumiko scolded. “You’ll only have to pick them all up again!”
Takeshi crouched over his pile of shells, and started scouring through them. “Where’s it gone?” he cried. “My crab’s disappeared!”
“What crab?” Yuko asked, poking at the shells with her finger. “It must have run away.”
“No, it was a crab’s shell,” Takeshi said, combing through his collection again. He brought out two or three thin crab legs, in pieces and bleached white by the sun.
“This must be what you’re looking for,” Yuko said, picking one up. “It must have broken apart.”
“Oh no!”
“That’s too bad,” Fumiko said. Koji chuckled. “You shouldn’t have crammed them in all together.”
“Takeshi, do you want to stay the night here?” Yuko asked. “You’re a grown-up boy now, so you won’t be afraid without Mommy and Daddy, will you? I’ll find you some crabs: live ones, with bright red pincers. You can bring them back with you to Tokyo. Uncle Kajii will take you home. He’s coming the day after tomorrow.”
Takeshi tore his eyes away from the pile of broken shells.
“Where will we find them?” he asked.
“Well — lots of places.”
“But why didn’t you take me there today?”
“Because I forgot. Let’s go and look tomorrow.”
“What about Mommy and Daddy?” Takeshi asked, looking at t
hem.
“Us? We’re going home,” Koji said.
“Can we come again to hunt for crabs?”
“But there might not be any around then,” Yuko said quickly.
“I don’t know what to do!” Takeshi wailed.
“Well,” Koji said, “It’s up to you to decide.”
“All right,” Takeshi declared, suddenly. “I’ve decided. You go on home.” He waved his hand at his parents.
Till the very last moment Yuko was on tenterhooks about whether Takeshi would have the courage to stick to his decision. She was still prepared for him to back down when they reached the front of the shop and it was time to part. Her hand on his shoulder, she almost winked at them, as if it were all a joke.
“Well, this is goodbye, then.”
“Thank you,” they murmured, bending over briefly for a look at their son’s face. “Do look after him.” They walked away a little, looking back again. Whether he had forgotten them or he was trying to look as if he didn’t care, he avoided their gaze and concentrated on pulling the rubber bands around the rows of wakame packets on display, making them go snap. Yuko lost no time in turning him around and steering him inside the shop, where she could finally relax.
She did not feel tired, but because she had walked around more than usual, she refrained from taking a bath, though it would have been more than welcome. Asking the landlady to prepare a bath for Takeshi, she watched over his ablutions from the side of the tub. By the time he was washed and clean, and she brought him upstairs, it was dark outside. She slipped him into the fresh underwear his mother had brought in case he got wet wading, and then hastily closed the rain shutters, not wanting the sea under the dark night sky to scare him.
“Could you bring in an extra bed?” she asked, when the daughter came in with their evening meal tray. It was some time since her tuberculosis had been contagious, but she felt hesitant about letting the boy sleep with her. His parents were bound to make inquiries later.
She tucked Takeshi into bed dressed in his shirt, and began preparing to lie down herself.
“Where are my shells, Auntie?” he asked, turning his head on the pillow.
“Don’t worry,” she said, over her shoulder. “They’re safe. They’re all on the veranda railing.”
She slipped into bed with the light still on, and stole a look at the boy lying by her side. He was gazing up at the ceiling. His child’s head seemed very small, sticking out from the adult-size bedcovers. What was he thinking about? Was he thinking about home?
“When are we going crab-hunting?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“I know, but can we go after breakfast?”
“If you want to.”
Now that was decided, he twisted over onto his side and wiggled toward her to the edge of the bed.
“Tell me a story.”
“You’ve forgotten your pillow.”
He pulled over the cushion she had wrapped in a towel, and laid his head on it. “Come on,” he said. “Tell me a story.”
“A story. . . . A story,” Yuko said, hesitating. “Let me try and think of one.” She had no experience telling children stories. She could recollect two or three tales, but there was a special way to begin, wasn’t there, and she didn’t remember that.
“Don’t you have one you could tell me?” she said, feeling too uneasy. “What about a story you’ve seen on television? What’s your favorite? ‘General Pon-pon’?”
“No.”
“Well, which one?”
“I don’t like television,” he answered. He flipped his body over one more time so that he was now on his stomach, face down, and put one arm under his pillow.
“Scratch my back,” he said.
Yuko sat up in bed, and put a hand down the collar of the boy’s shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin inside. “Where does it itch?” she asked. “Here?” Her curled fingers moved around.
Takeshi buried his face in the pillow. He nodded slightly.
“How long has it been itching? Were you bitten by a bug?”
“I always have my back scratched when I go to sleep,” he said. “Go a bit higher.”
Yuko complied. Takeshi closed his eyes, clearly enjoying the sensation. “Don’t always scratch the same place,” he said, after a while.
First one spot, and then another came up for request. For all its smallness, his little back never seemed to run out of scratchable places. Holding back the covers with her arm, Yuko scratched his firm flesh in small circles with her fingertips — to the right, to the left, down the middle, and then back up again. Her hand started to get a little tired.
“One more time, where you were scratching before.”
Yuko moved her hand as she had been told.
“A bit further down. No, further.”
“Here?”
“No,” he replied, eyes closed, his little eyebrows frowning in irritation. “Not there. I mean nearer to the floor.”
Smiling wryly, Yuko hastened to follow his command.
It wasn’t long, however, before Takeshi’s requests became softer and fewer. Finally, they lapsed into silence. His breathing showed he was fast asleep. He was still only a baby really. After gazing for a while at his innocent sleeping face, with its lips pouting peacefully, she moved him back to the center of his bed.
Yuko slipped back into her own bed, and laid her head on the pillow, only to realize that the ceiling light was still on. She threw off her covers. Then her eyes fell on Takeshi’s school uniform hanging on a coat hanger against the wall. Its front unbuttoned, its stubby little sleeves thrusting sideways, its gold buttons twinkling in the yellow light, the little uniform was looking down on her, imperiously, from on high. Lying back on her pillow, she let her eyes linger over the uniform for a while.
Some live lobsters were being kept in a shallow wooden tank. Most of the time they stayed stretched flat out on the bottom, as if stuck there; but every now and then, with a violent twitch, one would start to thrash around in the water. Yuko crouched over the tank with Takeshi by her side. Rather than the lobsters, she wanted him to look at the baby turtle in there with them.
They had been walking past the shop, when they’d seen three men peering into the tank, remarking, “You don’t often see those!” and “What a rare catch!” Her curiosity piqued, Yuko had taken Takeshi over to see. “It’s a sea turtle,” one of the men explained. “Hatched yesterday evening.”
The baby turtle was just like an adult in shape and coloring, but its shell was only about an inch wide. It was swimming near the surface, going first to the left, then to the right. Covered with webs of skin, its feet were without toes.
“Is this the type that grows really big? Big enough for people to ride?” asked Yuko.
“Yes.”
“Remember the fairy tale about Urashima Taro?” Yuko asked Takeshi, who stood gripping the edge of the tank, staring into it. “This is the kind of turtle that took him to the Dragon Palace at the bottom of the sea. People will be able to ride on its back when it gets big. Look. Its legs are just like paddles, aren’t they?”
Takeshi nodded, without saying a word. The turtle paddled through the water, moving its legs one by one, its shell veering this way and that, as if still unsure of itself.
Yuko hesitated. “Do you think you could let me have this?” she asked the men.
“It would only die. You have to live here to know how to take care of these things.”
“But we only want it for a while, to play with.”
“Sorry. We don’t own it.”
Yuko had had no idea that the turtle, rare though it was, would be treated as such a prized object by the locals. “All right,” she said, and apologized for having asked. She was also sorry for having raised Takeshi’s hopes. “Well, thank you,” she said to the men. “Come along, Tak
eshi.” She was worried that he wouldn’t be persuaded to leave, but he followed her quite meekly.
They hadn’t got very far before he asked: “Where are we going to look next?”
Yuko had spent the entire morning looking for a crab for Takeshi, but to no avail. The sight of the baby turtle trying to swim had perked her up. If she could get the men to give it to her, then even if she and Takeshi still had no luck, she would have made up the loss. Surely it was beginning to dawn on him that crabs were turning out to be more difficult to find than she’d thought; maybe he would forget the crabs if he had a turtle to play with. Judging from what he’d just said, however, even if she had managed to get possession of the turtle, he wouldn’t have given up the search for a crab. He was determined to go on till they found one, a live crab, one that scuttled from side to side waving a bright red pincer. And he seemed utterly confident of success.
“Takeshi, it’s nearly lunchtime,” she said. “Let’s go back and eat, and take a nap.”
“But I don’t want a nap.”
“But you must. You won’t grow up unless you take a nap. Even crabs take naps in the afternoon. There’s no point in looking for them now.”
Yuko was determined not to skip her nap today. When she had risen this morning, if anything she’d felt better for all yesterday’s walking. But she felt anxious about breaking her habit two days in a row. Takeshi was here, and Kajii was coming tomorrow. She couldn’t afford a relapse.
They had lunch, and then she finally managed to persuade Takeshi to settle down to nap.
“What time can I get up?” he asked, pulling the blanket over his head, and kicking it away.
“At three. I’ll tell you when it’s time, so be a good boy and go to sleep.”
Takeshi shut his eyes.
“Auntie,” he said, opening them again. “Do crabs sleep on their backs, like we do?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, neither do I. Now be quiet and go to sleep.” Yuko closed her eyes.
“Auntie. I think they do sleep on their backs.”
Yuko pretended that she was no longer awake. In the afternoons, Takeshi did not seem to require his back scratch. When all was quiet, she took a peep. He was sound asleep. Yuko closed her eyes again.