“I’m a second-class deckhand,” replied Tamekichi.
The chief mate thought for a moment. “All right, we’ll let you on.”
Tamekichi climbed the steep side of the ship like a monkey. Using the hatchway to the front of the galley, he ducked into the side bunker.
Seconds later, the detective was alongside the ship. He was shouting in Japanese. “He’s a murderer! Don’t you understand? These damn Westerners! What do they think they’re doing? He’s committed murder!” he shouted. But he arrived a minute too late. He was out of breath.
“Don’t you understand, you idiots. He’s a MURDERER! Hand him over! Bring him down here this instant!”
The sailors standing at the gunwale of the ship burst into laughter. They could not understand him, but they found his agitation hilarious.
“MURDer-er-der-er!” shouted one of them, mimicking the detective.
The rope ladder—the “jacob”—was hoisted up.
“All aboard!” shouted the chief helmsman from the bridge.
“All’s in,” came the reply from the boatswain.
The signal bell to the engine room was sounded. The “screw,” or propeller, of the ship began to rotate and churn the waters of the bay.
More bells sounded. “Scatter ’round!” The crew split up and moved in every direction, casting off “ropes” and pulling out “bitts.” The second mate was at the stern.
“All right. Here we go.”
The Victor Karenina, flying the flag of Norway, pulled from the quay as a winch cranked in the heavy chains of the anchor.
“Sah-yo-nah-ra!” one of the sailors shouted to the detective, who was left standing on the pier, furious because he was unable to reclaim his prisoner. Just then, a blast on the ship’s whistle rent the air. It drowned out the laughter of the sailors on the deck.
II
The chief mate drew up a dummy contract. When it was time for Tamekichi to sign it in front of the captain, he wrote “Shintarō Sakamoto.” He really did not know why he had signed Sakamoto’s name instead of his own.
“Sakamoto” was assigned to cleaning the officer’s saloon once a day and to carrying meals to the sailors and stokers working below deck. He also was to help tar the steel plates, mend the covers on the lifeboats, and use wire to lash down bundles stored on deck.
Kobe began to fade into the mist. By now it looked more like a mirage than a city. Tamekichi felt free at last. He quickly settled into a routine that was familiar to him. He could not have been happier fitting a wrench to bolts. Or being under the beautiful sun and hearing the sea whisper to him from the broadsides of the boat. Moreover, he was happy to have escaped the clutches of the Japanese police with all their ridiculous and unfounded accusations. But far, far more important was the joy that he experienced at finding himself in a place where he truly belonged.
Perhaps he was being irresponsible by not doing what was best for his own future—and clearing his name—but his long life as a vagabond had taught him to adopt a devil-may-care attitude toward himself.
The sailors called him “Saki,” and they found him to be a helpful mate.
In the afternoon, the sky began to look threatening. Tamekichi joined the sailors in making the rounds of the ship to secure the seven hatches to the storage area below by inserting wedges between the door and the door bar. Tamekichi was the only one who could drive in a wedge with a single blow. The sailors were impressed, and they asked where he had worked before. He was only too happy to answer their questions in crisp “cockney” English. And nobody asked why he sought refuge on the ship. For sailors, whose nationalities are very often unknown, the issue was immaterial. It was no problem at all. Only that once, when Tamekichi was called to the captain’s office to sign the contract, did he have to lie and explain that he “had run away from his uncle’s house for personal reasons.”
“Shin Saki, second-class mate on the Victor Karenina.” Tamekichi repeated his new name and rank to himself. He could not hide the grin that spread across his face from ear to ear.
It was arranged that the cook, the officers’ cabin boy, and Tamekichi would share a room facing the starboard passageway. Tamekichi was assigned to take meals to the lower-ranking sailors in the mess room at the stern of the ship before they came off duty. Because clearing the tables was the apprentice’s job, the only crew members that he had contact with were those with whom he worked on deck. In other words, he had not seen any of the engine-room workers. It was the custom among deckhands to look down on these men who, their bodies smeared with coal, ashes, and grease, writhed like insects “down below” in the hold of the ship. Ever since he started sailing as a lad, he, too, came to believe “the cockroaches” in the engine room belonged to a completely different class of sailor. They were never smartly dressed the way sailors ought to be. That was why he never gave them any special attention. But he did ask his roommate, the cabin boy, for details about the ship and its crew. There were seventeen deckhands and twenty-one engine-room workers. The ship was heading straight south to take on a load of guano at Thursday Island. It would sail around to Hawaii, then head to Grace Harbor on the west coast of North America to take on a supply of lumber; there, it would wait for the ice to thaw and then sail up the Yukon River to the Klondike. Kobe was the first stop in a long overseas voyage; after that, the ship’s destination would be decided by whoever chartered it next. The Victor Karenina was a tramp steamer. It was ready to go anywhere in the world—at the behest of even one telegram.
It was typical of men who worked on long-distance runs to be deeply moved each time their ship entered or left port. On the surface, they looked coarse and tough, but underneath they were sentimental. Strange as it may seem, Tamekichi felt nothing but relief and joy as the ship sailed away from land. As his sighs of relief grew stronger, his mind became increasingly vulnerable to the powers of autosuggestion—even if he himself did not understand what was happening.
It was not until he finally climbed into his boxlike berth, wrapped himself in a blanket, and closed his eyes, that Mori Tamekichi had his first moment in which to stop and shudder in horror at the crime he was suspected of committing. He reached for Sakamoto’s penknife in his pocket. It was cold to the touch, and it unnerved him. He felt utterly powerless. Before he knew it, he found he was the victim of a perverse state of mind in which he truly believed he had committed the crime of which he was accused. How many people in the world with “clean hands” have confessed in a moment of weakness to groundless charges that were no more than the figment of someone else’s imagination? He was sure there were many. And once they confessed, what was done was done. As a result, they were cast into oblivion—all in the name of the law! It was in fainthearted moments like the one that he experienced now that people allowed themselves to get carried away, and they were never heard from again.
In his case, he had neither the will nor the stubbornness to insist on his innocence—if, in fact, he really was innocent. He felt there was no evidence to prove his lack of guilt. Still, he was filled with happiness at being back at sea. He tried to fathom the facts behind the murder case, but the effort was all in vain. The more he thought about the facts, the murkier they became. Did he really kill Sakamoto?
In any event, what did it matter now? He was completely cut off from Japan. Sakamoto was dead. And Mori Tamekichi, who was wanted by the Japanese police as the murderer, also ceased to exist.
Tamekichi told himself he would lead a new life under the assumed name of Sakamoto Shintarō. “I won’t leave this ship for the time being. And then, as I switch from one ship to another, my nationality will become more and more ambiguous. No one will know what it is.”
As the youngest son, he had no family responsibilities, and as a single man who lived a “bohemian” life, he had no abiding attachments in Japan. And look at a map—Japan was just a string of islands scattered across the ocean. Running at a speed of eleven and a quarter knots, the ship would reach the open seas off the shoal
s of Tosa on Shikoku Island very soon. It already was dark, but he could see the foam of the waves break at eighteen degrees. They broke into a white spray that splashed against his porthole window. The low rotation noise of the engine was like a lullaby to his ears. Mori Tamekichi, aka Sakamoto Shintarō, snored gently as he drifted into a peaceful sleep.
He did not know how long he slept.
When he woke up, the waters were calm, and dawn was breaking. The ship was anchored in port. He looked out the porthole. They must have put into Karatsu or some other harbor to escape the typhoon. But wait, what were those towers in the morning mist? No, they weren’t waves—they were the smokestacks of the Kawasaki Shipyards in Kobe.
“We’re back in Kobe!?! We must have turned around on account of the storm!”
Experience told him, however, that a huge, six-thousand-ton ship like the Victor Karenina never returned to the port it departed from—even when there was a storm that made a barometer needle stand on end.
The chief mate and the boatswain entered the cabin.
“Saki, they say you are a murderer!” The boatswain barked.
“Keep your voice down,” said Tamekichi. As he reached for the knife in his pocket, he started to shake all over. Above all else he wanted to stay at sea. The desire was making a coward of him.
“Ha, ha, ha!” the chief mate laughed.
“We were told to return to Kobe in a wireless message received from our agent and the maritime police. They say you were being escorted to the police station when you jumped aboard our ship. Is that right? Ha, ha, ha!”
Tamekichi was at a loss to know what to think. Suddenly he saw the hangman’s noose sway before his eyes. Images of his injured finger and Sakamoto’s penknife whirled round and round him as he stood on the scaffold. At the same time, he saw a free life at sea opening its arms to embrace him.
“The maritime police launch just left the pier. The police officers will be here any minute.”
Tamekichi’s face turned white. Collapsing across the bed, he buried it in the covers.
The chief mate and the boatswain were discussing something in a low voice. They turned to him. The boatswain wanted to know what he planned to do.
“You wanna hide?” the chief mate asked him.
Tamekichi was wound as tight as a spring as he reached up and grabbed the chief mate’s shirt. He was so desperate that he could hardly talk.
“All right, then. We’ll hide you as best as we can. Somehow or other, I think it’s gonna be OK,” said the chief mate with a smile. Then he let out a roar. It was a big belly laugh.
“Shall we hand him over to one of the boys in the engine room to help him out?” asked the boatswain.
“That’s a good idea. Get ‘Boston.’”
The boatswain was out of the room in a flash. He shouted down the “cylinder” to the engine room.
“Boston? Where’s ‘Midnight Bos-to-on’?”
Pretty soon a black man, who was nearly seven feet tall, came lumbering into the room with an oily rag in his hand.
“Hide this fellow. Get him out of here.” The chief mate motioned with his chin.
Boston took a quick glance at Tamekichi. He started to lead him out of the room. Just then, the cabin boy rushed in.
“Chief mate, sir, the police are here.”
They were voices coming from the starboard deck, and they were speaking in Japanese. Tamekichi ducked under Boston’s arm and flew as fast as he could down the steel stairway to the engine room. Since there was trouble on board, nobody was in the engine room stoking the furnaces. Tamekichi tried to hide by climbing into the water filter, but he slipped on the greasy floor. Lying on his side, he tried to slide behind the Wier evaporator.
“That’s no good. They’ll find you right away!” cried the black man. “Get up on the donkey boiler and crawl down to the space by the watertight bulkhead. There’s no time to lose!”
Tamekichi climbed from the low tunnel to the top of the donkey boiler. It was covered in ashes that were an inch thick. Then, he climbed into a hole so small that he had to stick in one leg at a time. He squeezed into the space alongside the boiler, which was surrounded by water pipes. The sides of the unfired boiler were ice cold. He heard Boston shut the tunnel door and walk away. The air inside the boiler was so close it was as if it had solidified. He had to force his body into a very unnatural position, but as long as he continued to focus on the eerie but tranquil silence that emanated from below the ship’s water level, he found he could forget the pain. No, he refused to even think about it. How in hell had he managed to end up like this? He no longer knew. What’s more, he had ceased to ask the question.
Tap, tap, tap, scraaatch.
From out of nowhere, there came a sound. It was like someone scratching a piece of metal. It took him by surprise.
There it was again.
Tap, tap, tap, scraaatch.
The sound seemed to come from inside the boiler. Or was it from the ventilator in the furnace down below?
Tap, tap, tap, scraaatch, scratch.
All of a sudden, Tamekichi understood what he was hearing. It had to be the telegraphic code of the wireless, universal ABC code by which every nation communicated. All sailors knew it, and they often tapped out messages on a tabletop with their fingers. No question about it! The tapping was coming from inside the donkey boiler!
Suddenly, there was the sound of feet in the boiler room. He could hear the chief mate say, “See, nobody’s here. Aha, ha, ha!”
After several verbal exchanges between the police and the chief mate, everyone left. Tamekichi pressed his ear to a water pipe and tried to be as still as he could. He might as well have been dead he was so quiet.
Tap, tap, scraaatch. . . .
The message was louder than before. Without even having to think, he decoded it.
“S.O.S!”
Wasn’t that the signal used by all ships in distress?!
He was startled. He took the penknife out of his pocket and tapped on the pipe.
“W.H.A.T. I.S. T.H.E. M.A.T.T.E.R. . . . ?”
Tap, scraaatch, tap, tap, tap, scraaatch.
“S.H.A.N.G.H.A.I. . . .” came the reply.
Shanghai?
“W.H.A.T. I.S. T.H.A.T?” He tapped on the pipe again.
“H.A.V.E. B.E.E.N. S.H.A.N.G.H.I.E.D.”
Shanghaied?! To kidnap a man on the street by force. To cart him off to a ship. And once the ship left port, and there was no more contact with land, to make him work at hard labor. That was what was meant by the phrase “to shanghai.” It was a secret practice, but it was known to tramp steamers all over the world. As the kidnappers feared revelation of their crime, they never let shanghaied men back on land again. For the shanghaied, it meant a life in the hold of a ship. It meant a life forever without sunlight. It meant twenty-four hours a day of labor “down below.” It meant bad food and all manner of maltreatment. It was rare for anyone to survive more than six months. Only a very few did.
Tamekichi was almost crazy with fear as he slid along the walls of the boiler and reached the door where the noise came from. There was a handle on the outside. It made it easy to open the door.
The putrid smell of human excrement and piss and sweat assailed him. It was enough to make him sick. Deep within the darkness, Tamekichi heard a voice. It emanated from an old, frayed blanket. The blanket was covered in crumbs left from eating pieces of stale bread.
“Is that you, Tamé?”
“Keep your eyes covered! Don’t look at the light, whatever you do!” Tamekichi shouted at the figure.
More dead than alive, the man crawled into a place where Tamekichi could see him. He kept his eyes closed tightly, but Tamekichi knew who he was—it was Sakamoto Shintarō!—the man that he was supposed to have murdered.
“I can’t believe it. You’re alive?!”
“That’s right. I left the inn that night because my tooth was bleeding and my jaw hurt like hell. I was going to see if I could get tha
t quack doctor out of bed. That’s when they caught me. They shanghaied me. Hey, the ship has stopped. Where are we? Port Arthur? Vladivostok? Where are we?”
“Kobe.”
“Kobe? How can that be? I thought the engines were running for four or five days at least. . . .”
“This is what happened. . . .”
Tamekichi began to explain. “I escaped to the ship because the police said I killed you. See? Then they sent a radio message from land, telling the ship to return to port. That penknife of yours—you know, the one I borrowed to slice a pear—it’s caused me no end of trouble. On top of everything else, I cut my finger with it.”
Holding the knife in a backhand grip as he sat on the steel steps in front of the closed bunker, Tamekichi started to grin like a lunatic. He had heard the call of the sea all right. In fact, it was almost as if he had boarded the ship and set sail in order to save Sakamoto, who had managed to stay alive, if only just barely. He also was happy he could prove his innocence at last. But it also meant they had no choice but to disembark and deal with the authorities. Here he had finally gotten out to sea, but he would have to take this golden opportunity and throw it away. He would have to abandon what would never come his way again no matter how hard he searched for it. He hated Sakamoto. Why was he obliged to help the bastard, especially after all the trouble he caused him? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead, having been murdered by none other than himself ? Tamekichi’s mind kept turning the idea over and over. “That’s right. I killed him just like the detective said. How dare this pale shadow suddenly wander out of nowhere and ruin everything for me!” Tamekichi was furious.
“What if he were to go and die just like he was supposed to? Wouldn’t it be a whole lot better? I’d be able to sail away to all the distant lands that I long for.—Wait a second! It may not be too late. No, it’s not too late at all. There’s no problem. He’s as good as dead already. If not, he might as well be.—As a matter of fact, he is dead. According to the evidence, I’m the lowly bastard who murdered him.—And here we are, standing in front of the furnace of this freighter, in a place where the arm of the law can never reach.—That’s right, now is my perfect chance.—But what kind of chance is it?—Mori Tamekichi is supposed to be the author of his own life. It was precisely because of the ‘murder’ that I was able to get aboard this ship. That’s right. To go abroad. To go to foreign lands. And, yes, even to wield this cursed penknife!—Yes, everything has worked out like they told me it would.—Yes, it was the detective’s idea. He’s the one who suggested it all. Everything is going to be just like he said it would.”
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 82