Well before sunrise, she wakes and scrubs the sinks and toilets, massages a few of the afternoon patients in the morning, clearing for herself an hour in the early afternoon, when the tide is out. As she makes her way to the western shore, she feels tight, like her chest and stomach and head are in a cramp. Nervous, not about getting caught, but whether or not the children will be playing today. I am like a child myself, she thinks, but shoves this thought aside, allowing the rare excitement to trundle through her again and again.
They are there and almost immediately they see her. Both of them go over to the large rocks where she had sat hours before. The boy and girl hold something in their hands, jumping and waving. She knows it is the soap figures and waves back; after a few minutes, she stops, letting them win the game. It doesn’t bother her today, for she knows that when they go back home, they will be taking something of her with them.
Over the next week, she works harder at night, another two soap figures, this time a crab and a star. While giving the patients massages, she has thought about which of the first soap figures the girl took—the fish or scallop shell? Which will she take this time? She hurries to finish them, knowing that in two weeks school will be out for the summer and other children will also be playing on the shore.
Around midnight on the first Wednesday in July, she is done. She can’t sleep and knows she probably won’t. She steps on the futons, careful not to tramp on someone, quietly leaves the room, slips on her sandals, and goes down to the dock. Placing the figures inside the plastic bag, she seals it tightly with some fishing line and slides into the water. She makes it on two breaths all the way across. Her goal by next summer is to do it on one breath; every day she practices holding her breath, trying to get her lungs back to where they were nine years ago.
The night has a nice breeze to it, and although the water is still cool, it is nearly the perfect temperature. She unwraps the figures. This time, she has used a piece of shaved charcoal to draw eyes and a smile on both the crab and the star. She leaves them on the same rock as the week before, then gives herself a few minutes to take in the air, the night on Honshu. She doesn’t stay long, then goes into the water, takes her time heading back, hauling with her, as always, a dense loneliness. When she feels the rough shell-covered cement, she pops out of the water, placing her hands on the top of the dock, lifts herself up, and reaches out for her sandals, but they are not sitting there. They are in the hands of the assistant director, Mr. Itoh.
ARTIFACT Number 0488
A Japanese Communist party badge
None of this she knows, will only learn of it later.
There is a nervous excitement inside the building; the July 1957 heat is pulverizing them. Although there is no known rule prohibiting meetings, they leave the windows closed. The night before, Mr. Shirayama had spoken with a few of his friends, asking them to pass word to as many of the patients as they trust that he wants to have a meeting. Over two hundred patients are inside, those who need to be are carried, their wheelchairs left out back of the building, along with Mr. Shirayama’s wheelbarrow.
The meeting begins at 6:30, giving them a little more than an hour of the dusk light to work with. Mr. Shirayama stands before everyone, nervous beyond belief, never having been much of a speaker, although he talks to his crops, and occasionally to the tools in his shed, although he never does that when anyone is around.
His voice gives away his uneasiness and he blurts out what he wants to say.
“First, Mr. Yamai was taken away from here and he died and now Miss Fuji has been locked in isolation.”
There is no hint of surprise, which doesn’t shock him, for word travels fast around here. Within less than an hour, news can be communicated to all seventeen hundred patients. But the couple hundred in this room don’t make a sound, leaving Mr. Shirayama to forge on.
“What are we going to do about this?”
Amid the second round of quiet, he isn’t sure what to say, how to continue on. That is when he is saved by Mr. Nogami, a patient who arrived here a few months before Mr. Shirayama in 1939. They have hardly ever spoken to each other in all their eighteen years on this island. Mr. Shirayama has found him to be a deeply bitter man, never able to shake off his bitterness of being here, the burden he has been given in his life. Not that they all don’t have their bad days, but Mr. Nogami seems to have a lifetime of them. He tries as much as possible to avoid people like Mr. Nogami because he doesn’t believe that he could survive this place were he to allow bitterness to seek shelter within him. He doesn’t try to deal with his bitterness; rather, he has forgotten it. It is easier for him to erase those first fifteen years of his life, before this disease, than try to deal with them and the acidic taste that they leave behind. Mr. Shirayama can bear looking at his history through the histories of others; at least it doesn’t suffocate him.
As for Mr. Nogami, he believes that he has every right, many justifiable reasons to be angry. It was his mother who came to visit him late in his first year here, and the final thing she said to him was for him never to come home, not even when he dies.
It was he who had enraged so many of the patients on the day of their country’s surrender, when they listened to the Emperor’s speech. He had stood up and shouted, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!” His cheers shocked everyone nearly as much as hearing the voice of the Emperor himself. Still, twelve years later, many have not forgotten or forgiven what he had done. When he stands up and speaks today, Mr. Shirayama is relieved that someone is helping move the meeting along, although he feels some apprehension when he sees who it is.
“We should fight!” Mr. Nogami hollers.
When Mr. Shirayama heard that Miss Fuji had been put into the isolation building, his initial thought was to start up a petition and present it to the administrators. He had thought the idea of a petition was quite radical and was surprised that he had thought of it at all. But then Mr. Nogami said what he did.
“We were brought to this damn place because we are sick, but here we are not being helped, just working day in and day out to keep this place alive while we die.” The right side of Mr. Nogami’s mouth is always open; spit flies everywhere. His Japanese Communist badge bobbles on his shirt.
“How much is enough? We don’t even have the right to vote. How far will we let this go and keep on bowing to these people like they are doing us a favor? We are doing them a favor! Where would all these people be without us? Nowhere. It is we who make their work possible. They exist because we are here! And it is time that we take back some of the power we give them, not let them feed off us. Mr. Yamai isn’t the first to die because of them. Miss Fuji isn’t the first, and she will not be the last, to be locked away in isolation.”
There are a few rumbles in the crowd, and Mr. Shirayama can’t make out whether they approve of what Mr. Nogami is saying or not.
“Thank you, Mr. Nogami,” he says meekly.
Mr. Nogami doesn’t sit back down.
“We certainly have the numbers. What is it now, forty or fifty patients to one staff member? Probably more. What can they do, lock us all up with Miss Fuji? Isolate us when we are already isolated?”
From the middle of the crowd, Miss Min stands and speaks up.
“I agree with Mr. Nogami. They can’t make anything worse for us here.”
Then a strange and surprising thing happens as Mr. Shirayama is about to try to temper Mr. Nogami’s and Miss Min’s remarks with his petition proposal. A couple of claps come from the crowd and then a few more, until what must be half of the patients in the room are doing so. Mr. Shirayama tries hushing them, warning that they could be heard, reminding them of the gravity of what they are doing. They only grow louder, and in time, Mr. Shirayama is also caught up in it, and he claps louder than he ever can remember doing, and he hopes that Miss Fuji, in the cement isolation room, half-buried under a sand dune on the eastern end of the island, can hear them and know that it is not only for her that they are doing this but also for th
emselves.
The second morning after their meeting, hundreds of them meet outside the building they have named the Lighthouse. They gather at the top of the suicide cliff, light some incense sticks, spend a moment thinking of all the lives that this place has pushed over the edge. Some of the patients don’t join in, believing that those who took their own lives were weak. Mr. Shirayama has never agreed with that, he has even thought them to be the brave ones, and there have been times, during those darkest of days, when he has en-vied their courage.
They make their way down to the administrative building, down near where they all spent their first days at Nagashima.
The sun is barely up. They have gathered as many of the patients who have wheelchairs as they could, and they have brought the empty wheelchairs of those who didn’t want to come. There are a few dozen wheelbarrows, and eight of the strongest patients spent most of the night carrying the half dozen small fishing boats up from the shore. Everything is placed in front of the administrative building, a thirty-yard maze of patients sitting in wheelchairs, crowded into the boats, sitting in and standing by the wheelbarrows.
The first of the administrators arrive around 7:30. Five men in suits, not yet changed into their white jackets and hats, standing with their white masks on, their eyes conveying their confusion. Standing there. Finally, Mr. Itoh, the assistant director, speaks.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The night before, the patients had agreed not to say a word. Stay there silent, silent as the administrators have been for the past two and a half decades, silent as the government, their families. Mr. Itoh must think that the words alone would get them jumping, scatter them like water bugs, like they have done so often in the past, for he stands there and waits.
“What do you think you’re doing?” His voice rises each time and each time it becomes less of a question and more of an order, a command. “What do you think you’re doing!”
At first, not speaking is terribly difficult for many of the patients, but as time passes, it becomes their strength, the hundreds of them linked by it, how they bury the screams of Mr. Itoh and his men with it.
One last time, he shouts, then walks away; his men follow.
Mr. Nogami is the first to speak once they have gone.
“The rest of you stay here, stay where you are.”
He points to Mr. Shirayama and the other seven patients who had helped carry the boats, again repeats for the others to remain behind. They cross the hill, past the building where they held the meetings, down past the empty gardens, the shore without the fishing boats, their nets lying unattended. They arrive at the cement-block shack, about the size of fifteen futons, and they break the lock on the door, lead Miss Fuji and the other two patients out from there. They are filthy and stink, shield their eyes from the sun.
“What’s happening?” Miss Fuji asks.
“We’ve had enough,” answers Mr. Nogami.
They start to carry the three of them back, but Mr. Nogami stays down there. He has a small sledgehammer and he begins slamming it against the building. His thick glasses have fallen off, and he is blindly hitting and hitting the building. For a while, nothing happens, but then he finally breaks through a part of the wall. He keeps hitting it until several of the patients go over and try to get him to stop, tell him that he is going to hurt himself. When they finally get him under control, they sit him on the ground, take the sledgehammer from him.
It is awhile before they manage to get Mr. Nogami back over to the administration building. The patients haven’t moved, still sitting in the boats, wheelchairs, wheelbarrows. Some of them have gone and brought food and water. The better part of the day is spent there, and still the administrators haven’t come back. Some of the weaker patients are moved under the shade of the roof, others inside the building; dinner is brought down to all of them.
“We remain until we get some changes here,” said Mr. Nogami, who, although weak from all his exertion, still has his determination left.
The sun sets and they stay. Some of the patients sleep on the cement; others huddle in the boats, some remain awake, talking and thinking about what is going to happen. It is well into the night when they hear the sound of a group of people heading their way. Then the flashlights can be seen. They grow closer. Larger. Brighter. The patients say nothing. All those with the flashlights and nightsticks don’t say much, either, their white masks standing out in the darkness. They start swinging wildly, hitting bodies, other times a tree, bodies, the boats, bodies, bodies. Wheelbarrows are flipped, bodies flailing to the cement, and beams of the flashlights burst out every which way, all of it going on and on and on. Mr. Shirayama and Miss Fuji have been shoved and beaten back into the hallway of the administrative building. Many of the patients are in there. Some lay injured on the floor; others try fighting their way back out into the night. The injured are tended to; shreds of clothes are used as bandages, as sponges to sop up the blood.
Not until dawn does the damage become apparent. Glass, bodies, splinters of wood, sandals without feet in them, wheelbarrows, a set of broken false teeth, busted boats, crippled wheelchairs, branches of trees. Outside the building, encasing them, police, a large number of them. The administrators, and others nobody recognizes, are talking, pointing at the patients. Every once in a while, one of the patients is taken away, down over the hill to the western shore of Nagashima, down near the receiving dock.
The Promin injections are given as usual by some of the patients. Miss Fuji is down at the other end of the hall, holding the bandaged head of Miss Min.
ARTIFACT Number 0453
A blank white urn
If there is only one in a day, she can get through it. Tells herself, When this is finished, then you are done; it is all over for another day. And maybe the next day there will be none. And maybe the day after that, as well. That has happened before—two, three days, a week even, without having to do one.
In her white jacket, like the doctor and nurses, a white mask like them, the puffy hat that resembles a shower cap, the trash bag—she’s the only one with a trash bag—she is made to witness and, at times, even to help with the procedure.
It is on these days when there is more than one abortion that she sees no end, that all that has occurred must be repeated again. The woman on her back, feet in stirrups, the injection of anesthetic passed by the nurse to the doctor, the cone-shaped tools used to stretch the cervical muscle, the suction machine brought over, turned on, all followed by that horrible sound. This is the time when she calls to mind a song, trying to get rid of that sucking noise, the sloshing sound like those men and women who catch loaches in the mud after the tide has gone out, that sound of feet or boots stuck in the mud.
She never meets the eyes of the women while they are on the table. They probably don’t even know that she is not a nurse, but a patient, like them. A patient who has been put here in Clinic B because the isolation room has been destroyed and this is her punishment for what they believe was an attempt at escape the year before. They didn’t know, still don’t know, that she would only swim over there, take a walk, and return. Doesn’t matter. She is now the bearer of the message to all: Don’t try it.
All she can do is watch the feet of the patient. The feet and all their tension, toes cradled together toward the aches, strangling in the stirrups. But even then, she has to turn away. Sometimes she doesn’t even know who is on the table. Tries her best not to know. Wrestling with the trash bag in her hands, she scurries to find a song, any song, pasting her eyes on the floor or wall.
Then she is given the remains and drops them in the bag. The doctor doesn’t even look at her. For this, she is grateful. The weight of the remains. She is never sure where or how to hold the bag. If she puts both hands on top, she can feel the weight sway and jiggle in there. If she holds the bag with one hand by the top and one on the bottom to keep it from moving, then she touches it, the mole-size head, the miniature feet and hands. And there
are times when it isn’t her imagination at work—with those late-term abortions, five, six, even seven months into it, everything is there, legs and arms, but the skull collapsed by the doctor so it can be pulled out of the womb. She waits with the trash bag open until the doctor throws in the placenta; then she closes it and leaves the room. And it is perfectly clear—and, she is certain, takes no imagination whatsoever—that she is a party to the killing.
She wants to run to the garbage bin, out in back of Clinic B, but she knows that she mustn’t let them know of the terror that grips her. She walks, lifts the lid of the garbage bin, sets the bag in there. There have been times that the weight has shifted, horrifying her, leading her to believe that the fetus was moving, struggling to get out. Now, no matter how quickly she wants to get rid of it, she sets it in there gently, then slams the lid shut.
On those days, while in the room during the second abortion, she tries imagining that this is a day when there is only one to perform, and that this is that one, but the exhaustion, the crazed exhaustion, tells her this isn’t true. Somehow, she makes it back to her room. One of her roommates goes and tells the patients whom she is to massage that she can’t. She drops onto the futon, which someone has prepared for her, and she will lie there, hide under the blanket whether it is the dead of summer or winter. It is on nights such as this that she wishes the disease would ravage her, incapacitate her; then at least someone could take care of her, feed her, bathe her, massage her, until it is time to cremate her.
ARTIFACT Number 0357
A wedding band made of seashell
Again, tonight, for the fifth time this week, he sneaks into the room and joins his wife on the futon. They are only three futons away from her, and she pretends to be asleep. She listens to the rustling of the sheets, aware of them trying to keep quiet, when that is the most difficult thing for them to do. She imagines it is like resurfacing from a dive and trying to control her breathing.
The Pearl Diver Page 9