The Pearl Diver

by Jeff Talarigo

  “Is anyone home?”

  Before she knows what she is doing, she is next to the man, standing between him and his friends.

  “Leave him alone,” she shouts.

  The man is startled, but he regains his composure, laughs at her.

  “What’s wrong with all of you?”

  The group of men grow quiet; a couple of them try to muffle drunken laughs. One of the men goes over to his friend.

  “Come on, let’s go.” He pulls him by the arm.

  “Come on.” He manages to get his friend to take a step, and the man’s feet follow one step at a time. The others follow them down the arcade street; soon they are all gone and it is only their fading laughter that she can hear. She walks the opposite way, hears a soft “Thank you” come from inside of the box house. She doesn’t answer, then turns left on a small side street and heads in the direction of the river, only two blocks away.

  The river is a calm one, one that you can’t see flowing until something floats by. She doesn’t have to wait long before a bottle comes into view and meanders past. She crosses the bridge and walks along the narrow sidewalk. Shortly, she arrives near the freeway underpass. Cars rumble above; trucks seem as if they are dropping on her.

  Here, there are more substantial houses, made of boxes, blue tarps, sheets of plywood, old rugs. A permanence to them. Outside, a woman is squatting, stirring a pot of something. They nod to each other. A small dog whimpers and roams as far as its chain permits. The houses, built close to one another, go on for about a hundred yards. She notices that many of them have small rugs or mats in front, a pair of shoes or slippers sitting atop them. She goes over the shoes, tries remembering what kind Yasu wears. They all look like his, yet none of them do. She isn’t sure what to do or in front of which house to place the bottle of cough medicine she has brought.

  A truck thunders overhead and she wonders how can they sleep with all the noise, the highway less than sixty feet above. She remembers those sleepless nights in her early months at Nagashima, and all the others that came, and she once wondered if she would ever sleep in her life again, but she did, and so, too, do they.

  In this narrow hotel room, she knows she will not spend another night here. This hotel room, she thinks, where one can pull the heavy dark curtains tight, deceive the day by turning it into night, but where night is always itself.

  This thought gets her off the bed and she throws open the curtains and the sunlight hurts her eyes. She takes a shower, dresses, packs her little suitcase, stands in line at the train station, and gets a ticket for where she is going, where she knows that her story must end.

  Even before she arrives here at Shima Peninsula, a place she has always wanted to go, the most famous place in the country for pearl divers, she knows what she is going to do and how she’s going to do it. There wasn’t much of a choice. The what she knew before even leaving the station; the how came later while she slept on the long train ride on her way here. When she awoke, she was happy, knew that it was right. There will be no more controlling her; this time she will have the final say.

  That she never gave any thought of returning to Shodo Island doesn’t surprise her; she long ago lost any sentiment to go back to her home island for a visit. Maybe thirty years ago, but not now. It is the diving that, after all this time, still has a place in her life, the one thing that has never abandoned her. And this is why she is standing at the front desk of the hotel, asking about boat rentals.

  “Yes, we have small pedal boats that you can rent for a thousand yen per hour.”

  “No, I don’t want a pedal boat. Do you have rowboats?”

  “Rowboats? Excuse me a minute, ma’am.” The young man goes over to the woman at the other end of the counter and they talk. He returns with the woman, who asks, “Are you sure you want a rowboat, ma’am?”

  “Yes, that’s what I asked for.”

  “Who is this for, ma’am?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “Well, rowboats are not something we usually get requests for. We have kayaks.”

  “Will one of these kayaks take me out there into the sea? Out where the divers dive?”

  “Sure. Have you ever been in a kayak?”

  “No, but I’m sure I can handle it.”

  “Kayaks are two thousand yen per hour. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, but for tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “What time do the divers go out?”

  “There are three shows each day—eleven, one-thirty, and four.”

  “Shows?”

  “Pearl diving, ma’am. We offer a ten percent discount on tickets if you’re staying at the hotel. Also, if you’re interested, there is a Pearl Diver Parade of Fire, where the divers swim out into the ocean with burning torches, and later the Pearl Diver Queen Contest.”

  She waits awhile before talking to the lady behind the counter.

  “I’ll just take the room for tonight. I’ll check on one of the boats later today.”

  The room is twice as large as the small place she had for the past couple of months. She opens the curtain of her seventh-floor window and sees the blue sea. The woman at the desk confused her with all the talk about shows and parades. She probably thought that she was a regular tourist coming to see one of the attractions.

  She takes the sidewalk down to the shore, hoping to get a glimpse of the divers. She doesn’t see any, and when she asks where they dive, she is told she can find them over by the small pavilion. She passes quite a few shops selling pearls; she thinks of the pearls she had found in her years of diving— nineteen of them, about halfway to a full necklace. She remembers the one diver, the lucky one, who spoke so loudly, and how she was always finding pearls. The shops have shell necklaces, photo postcards of sexy-looking divers in revealing suits. She imagines herself in one of those partially see-through suits and laughs. How ridiculous.

  When she arrives at the pavilion, there is a line of people, and she passes them. One woman tells her that tickets for the show can be bought over there by the restaurant. Again, this talk of a show. She buys a ticket, and when the gate is opened, she finds a seat in the pavilion, which is built out on the rocks and into the sea. She thinks of the vending machines that Yasu told her were atop Mount Fuji.

  The show begins with a young lady explaining the history of the divers on Shima Peninsula. The young women, who are posing as divers, go underwater. There is a loud applause as the divers rise to the top, each holding up a shell, giving a beautiful smile and wave. She wants to tell the people next to her that in four diving seasons, she found nineteen, that those sexy suits are not what the divers wore, and that she, so tired from the dive, couldn’t smile and wave. She excuses herself, leaves the pavilion, and finds a bench to sit on. The extreme weakness is upon her again, and while sitting, she looks around for a place to eat, but although she has hardly eaten anything in the past couple of days, she has no desire for food.

  Soon it will be over. Soon she can give herself back to the sea. Her place. One final dive. Last night on the train, she had a fleeting sense of giving up, quitting; the guilt slashed through her. But she knows that it is only a matter of time, months, maybe a year. She is not ready for another fight.

  She is too late for the Pearl Divers’ Parade of Fire, but in time to see the last of the Queen Contest. Onstage, there are eight young women all wearing the same thin white semitransparent suits, divers’ goggles resting atop their heads, and high heels. A man with a tuxedo and microphone walks up to each of them, asking the common questions.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “What is your blood type?”

  “AB.”

  He goes along the row of girls, asking the same kinds of questions. She laughs to herself, knowing that not a one of those beautiful, thin girls could last a single dive; they couldn’t make it fifteen feet under before fear would thrust them back to the surface. Their little bodies couldn’t stand fi
ve seconds of the cold. This isn’t who we are, who we were, she thinks.

  Late that night, as she sits in the outdoor stone hot spring, she can’t even enjoy this, her final night here, the idea of which, only twenty-four hours before, she was so at peace with. A peace now splintered by her confusion over the day’s events. She thinks how the final dive, which she had so much craved, has been crushed by the need to get away from this place.

  A couple of women enter the hot spring and sit across from her, talking. One of the women goes underwater for a second and resurfaces.

  “Look, a pearl!” She holds up the imaginary pearl in her hand. They both giggle.

  Miss Fuji is exhausted, but she manages to stand up to leave, and as she moves past them through the waist-high water, she turns and says, “That’s not how it was.”

  There is no dock where the taxi drops her off in Mushiage, only water. The wall where the dock was connected is nothing more than ragged chunks of cement. She stands and stares into the water, but it offers nothing to keep her interest. She picks up her suitcase and continues toward the fishing boats. A man stands on the prow of one, hosing down the outside of it.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Yes.” He turns around, still spraying the boat.

  “Where’s the ferry?”

  “The Nagashima ferry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you need the ferry when there’s the bridge?”

  She doesn’t know how to answer him, knows that he is pointing at it, but she keeps her eyes on the fishing boats.

  “You have family over there?”

  Again, she isn’t sure how to answer him. But he has already walked away.

  She leaves her suitcase on the dock, near the fishing boats, and walks into town. It has never been much of a town, just the simple main street, which has changed hardly at all. There is still the market area, with the same seafood smell as before, the place where there used to be a good noodle shop, now a parking lot, the bus station across the street. She enters a convenience store, picks out a couple of rice balls—one salmon, the other pickled plum—and a bottle of green tea. When the girl at the register tells her the total and puts it in a bag, she realizes that she has left her money in the suitcase.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot my money. I’ll be right back.” She hurries out of the shop, feels that everyone is watching her. Keeping her head down, she doesn’t lift it until she hears the water against the dock, and it is this which reminds her of how close she is to Nagashima. How good it will be to see Mr. Shirayama once again.

  Untying a fishing boat is easier than she had imagined. Instead of coiling the rope inside the boat, she leaves it on the dock. No need for a rope where she is going. Much of the town is eating dinner now; the fishermen will not be coming out to their boats for another few hours.

  She ignores the small motor, pulls out the oars, points the boat eastward. The bridge is off to her left. Facing straight ahead, she rows; her suitcase falls against the side of the boat, and she leaves it there. She begins to turn the boat in a northerly direction. Now, she can look freely in two directions and not see the bridge. There are many stars out tonight, stars that she has missed; the city lights swallow most of them. It is the stars that keep her attention until the boat scrapes the rocky bottom and comes to rest on the shore.

  acknowledgments

  The following sources were of invaluable help in writing this novel: Fukuoka University Medical Library; Bethany Leigh Grenald’s online article on the pearl divers in Japan; the World Health Organization’s archives; the Leprosy Mission’s website; Minoru Yasuhara’s wonderful photos of Nagashima; the HIH Prince Takamatsu Memorial Museum of Hansen’s Disease; and the book Leprosy in Theory and Practice, by Drs. R. G. Cochrane and T. Frank Davey (John Wright & Sons, Ltd.).

  I’d like to thank the following in Japan for their help and support on this novel: the Nagashima Leprosarium, for allowing me to roam the island; all the patients at Nagashima, in particular, Mr. Tanigawa and Mr. Usami, for their incredible courage and for sharing their lives with me; Mrs. Ikenaga and Mr. Shimura, patients at the Kumamoto Sanatorium; Mr. Tadashige Fujimaru, my first friend in Japan; Hisako Okamura, for allowing me to see Nagashima with my own eyes; Doctor Yoriaki Kamiryo; my Yukuhashi Cosmate and Jono Cultural Center students; my Japanese in-laws; Yuki and Sayon, for their love of reading; and my wife, Aya, and son, Sam.

  In the United States: my family of women—my mother and sisters, Kim and Teresa; Grandma Talarigo for her stories; Uncle Dick for his letter; and my father, Grandpa Talarigo, and Grandma Carlos, so much of this book is you; Colum McCann, for his faith and friendship; my publisher, Nan Talese, and my wonderful editor, Lorna Owen, for her passion for this book and helping to make it better; and finally, to Karin, wherever you may be.

  epilogue

  There are times, while walking here in the morning or going back home at night, that I think of how so many of the patients began their isolation in my town. The dock where the ferry used to take them across the channel was less than half a mile from where I grew up, from where I still live today.

  Since I am one of the newer nurses—I’ve been here for less than two years—I have many duties. Some of them are medical-related, but there are many times when I have to do things outside of the medical realm. For the past couple of months I have spent a lot of my time up in the building they call the Lighthouse, along with Mr. Shirayama, sorting through all these items.

  We haven’t thrown out all that much, mostly pushing things around, the towering ceiling echoing each grunt and groan. Some of them are quite large—old desks, cabinets, shelves—and those we have left where they stand, until we can get some of the staff to help move them. But many things in there are small, tiny as a hand, a nail of a finger, even. And it is some of those that we are setting aside, things that cannot be parted with.

  Everything is sorted into categories—medical, patients, entertainment, historical, miscellaneous—and by periods of time—prewar, the forties and fifties, the sixties and seventies, and the most recent times, from the eighties up until now.

  There is a story for each thing in here—many of the things have multiple stories—sometimes bringing back a moment so vividly that Mr. Shirayama is lost for an unknown amount of time, sitting there, holding the item, remembering. For a while, I say nothing, then break him from his thoughts, ask him to tell me about it. There are times when it takes no more than a minute; others, half the morning. When he is finished, we set the item aside, categorize it, and move on to the next.

  I remember a staff member taking me around the place when I first came here as a nurse and I kept thinking, it isn’t as bad as I had thought. There were TVs, gardens, flowers along the cement pathways; the patients had electric wheelchairs, nice clean rooms; there was a small supermarket. And this is how I continued thinking about the place for my first two or three months working here. It wasn’t until I was out on a walk with Miss Fuji that my thoughts started changing. We had stopped down at the dock and were admiring Key of the Hand Island and the Inland Sea, which was calm as glass. My hands rested on the handles of her wheelchair. We stood that way for quite a while before she spoke.

  “If you didn’t know what was behind you, this would be a beautiful place.”

  That is when I began looking at this place differently, began asking myself, What was this place like all those years when none of us were paying any attention? I started noticing those old ivy-smothered buildings that remained, the rotting boats, the old sheds, noticing what was underneath all the gloss, as Miss Fuji calls it.

  Nearly every moment that I am with her, I want to tell Miss Fuji who I am, but as of yet, I haven’t, haven’t quite found the courage to do so. Sometimes, I feel that she senses it, but maybe that is only me. I’m certain that someday I will tell her, probably one of those things I will blurt out before I can stop myself from saying it.

  This hot September morning, I help Miss Fuji with her sponge bath and her
clothes. She doesn’t want to eat much; she never eats much in the mornings. While she eats the peaches I have readied for her, I put away the futon, move the table back into the center of the room, open the curtains.

  Although it is hot, a nice breeze comes up from the Inland Sea every once in awhile. Today, Miss Fuji wants to go to the Hill of Light and see the flower gardens planted around the large bell. I push her up the hill, for she refuses to get one of those electric wheelchairs. It isn’t all that steep and there is a sidewalk winding its way up. A sweat has broken out on my face and I wipe it off with a small hand towel. I go and sit on the middle of the three steps leading to the platform where the bell is. The chrysanthemums envelope the platform, and, like the ones I used to buy so many years ago, they are still the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen. Miss Fuji gets out of the wheelchair and starts up the steps. I stand to help her, but she gently swats my hand away.

  She pulls back on the wooden pole hanging from two large chains and throws it at the bell, sending a loud rumble all over the place. She does it again and looks over at me.

  “Your turn.”

  I step up to the bell and throw the wooden pole, its rumble echoes, and I feel its vibration throughout my body. When I can feel it no more, I do it again.

  Miss Fuji is standing there watching me.

  “Can you hear the bell over in Mushiage?”

  “Yes.”

  We say nothing else. She starts down the steps; this time she lets me take her hand.

  Sometimes when the sun is warm and the channel still, I take my lunch down along the shore to the small inlet that faces Mushiage. There are times when I sit and eat my lunch while watching the channel, other times when I remove my shoes and socks and wade out knee-high into the water. And it is from there that I imagine that I see two small children, my brother and myself, over there on the mainland, playing on the shore, answering the waves of a pearl diver with waves of their own.