"Where'd you come from?" the boy called out.
"From Hongkong," one of the men cried back, waving his hand.
The women, lying on the deck, a big towel spread under their hips, raised their faces, smiling. Their white limbs jutting out of their swim suits looked unusually alive in the off season.
"Say, that's nice!" the boy muttered to himself.
What he saw was like new fuel poured on the fire of yearning he had for a boat of his own. He grimaced behind his sunglasses. A puzzled Tokiji stared at the boy, who only grunted replies to any attempt at conversation.
"Damn, with a boat like that I could go anywhere I liked," said Tokiji, who knew nothing of the boy's secret wish.
At this remark, the boy was about to pour out his whole plan but stopped short. Any time he ever mentioned "my own yacht" again, Tokiji would just taunt him for his other secret yearning. He had a feeling of pride in keeping to himself what he had seen that night on the Higginses' yacht—an exciting secret for himself alone.
When work was slack during the off season, even more than before, the boy's mind was somewhere sailing in "his boat." Whenever he went to the warehouse in Yokohama, he pocketed pullies and other pieces of boat equipment with an eye to using them on his own boat sometime in the future. In school he filled his notebook with plans and sketches of boats. He got so he hated his studies; now his only strong point among his subjects was English.
One day during a Japanese literature examination the boy poked the student in front of him and signaled him to move his test paper so that it could be seen from behind. The classmate was afraid the teacher would see and did not cooperate. In fact he made such a fuss of refusing that the teacher quickly noticed what was happening.
"If this were an official examination, you'd be expelled from the school," the teacher shouted angrily. "At any rate, you are to hand in a blank paper."
After the class the other boys were very upset at the incident and started to rail at their timid classmate. They called him a traitor for having refused to cooperate, but they in no way blamed the boy for his abortive attempt to cheat.
"Okay, okay. Lay off him!" the boy said, stopping them—but to his timid classmate: "Wait for me after school. I want to talk to you."
The classmate had already turned pale, for he knew the boy's reputation.
Just then the boy recollected the incident at the harbor when he had squeezed money out of the man for urinating on the Sylph. He got rid of the other boys who followed out of curiosity and called the classmate into the shadows nearby. The timid student quickly knelt on the ground and bowed low to beg the boy's pardon.
"You don't have to do that! It won't make things any-better. I won't beat you. All I want to know is if you're ashamed for refusing to help out like that. It was such a little thing, wasn't it?"
The boy eventually extorted his classmate's watch from him, but worked it so that the other offered it to him.
When the victim did, the boy said, "I don't want anything that belongs to you. I'll go myself and change it into money . . . . and pass on the pawn ticket. Redeem the watch when you can, huh?"
The two then took the watch to different pawn shops and left it at the shop that offered the highest price.
A few days later the story reached the ears of the school authorities. They had the boy expelled, but they were kind enough to get him transferred to another school.
Rumors spread among the students that the boy would surely get even with the one who had given the information. Both the classmate and his friend who had informed were careful to go to and from school by various routes. The boy, who had not thought of revenge, heard the rumor and got an idea. One day he waited and confronted the informant. Drawing close to him, he said dramatically: "You got me in this fix, what're you going to do do about it?"
Once again, just as before, his extortion was successful.
The new high school was virtually a district reformatory, since all those who entered in had, like the boy, records from their previous schools. The boy carried a sea knife to school everyday. On the third day he was approached by some of his new classmates and was told to meet them at the back of the gymnasium. To their surprise, he appeared brandishing the large knife.
"It looks like you can take care of yourself okay," said the leader of the group, taken aback by the forbidding appearance of the boy with his well-polished knife.
This rough-and-ready attitude enabled him to go through his new school initiation with flying colors.
The boy knew the nature of the new school and immediately made a name for himself. He was always ready to pick a fight, and would always see to it that he got something from his adversary. He always talked big and loud in front of older students.
To someone who looked as if he might give in he would say, "Hey you, you got some cigarettes, don't you?" or "Do you think you can stare at me like that for nothing?"
Actually this was the very beginning of what was for him a business. He got so good at it that he was almost like some sort of peddler. The boy forced all-out battles on those who would challenge him. His work had given him great strength and nimbleness for his size.
While the others had no such clear-cut objectives in fighting, the boy had a definite cause and purpose and was seldom defeated. Generally, in the midst of a fist fight, each side would hope that his opponent would quit before the fight had gone too far. To give a few blows to the other would be enough to maintain face and self-respect. After such a rally, each one would be convinced of his own victory. It was the same as with duelists who stop their affair of honor as soon as it results in bloodshed, even if just from a scratch. Such exchanges of blows among students might be called just one more of their fantastic social customs. But the boy's method was more purposeful; the fighting had to be continued until one side gave in. To the boy, "business" would not pay if the other side did not collapse completely. Peace overtures were just a waste of labor. If his opponents had known why he was so reckless, they would have avoided fights. But they did not know and so were easy picking—good "business."
Soon, to those who could not guess his motives, he became notorious for going out of his way to pick a fight. The boy became an institution at the school.
"It's like the old saying, 'Don't let a lunatic play with sharp objects,'" said a man who saw the boy showing off with his knife to the others.
The business of brawling was profitable to the boy, even though opponents were limited. His body began to show cuts and bruises. But, encouraged by his first several successes, the boy began to attack village lads and boys from other schools on his way to and from home. He would first assume a superior air, behaving in a lordly manner so that he might attract the other's attention. Then he might suddenly change, becoming vulgar and coarse, all to keep the victim off balance. While his opponent was falling for the bait, the boy would suddenly attack him with a flurry of unexpected blows.
But one day the boy was set upon by some friends of the boy whose watch he had pawned. While two of them twisted and held his arms firmly behind him, a third freely pommeled his face until it was beaten and swollen. In the boy's mind was the thought that he would cut down on his "business." Then he was kicked in the groin and fell to his knees. He had managed to dodge the blow slightly, but still the pain made his insides twist in agony. A premonition that he might be crippled or die flashed into his mind—and stayed with him.
As the three left, the boy half-heard someone say, "You've got a lot of guts for a little shit, haven't ya?
In the boy's mind was only a vision of a brilliant white yacht floating majestically on the water.
The boy's desire for a yacht acted as a kind of challenge or revenge against the formerly unknown world that had opened up to him after he saw the two scenes on the Sylph.
When the boy went back to school after an absence of several days, he told one of his cohorts about what had happened, adding: "When they kicked me in the balls, I thought I was finished. It
still hurts, too! Been too bad if I'd got put out of action before I ever had a woman."
Then he suddenly felt ashamed of admitting that he was a virgin. He feared he had lowered his position. But his friend took him up on it at once.
"Well, that's something! Haven't had a woman yet, huh. When you're well enough to use your two walking legs, I'll give you a chance to try the one in between! I know a place we can go. I haven't been there for a long time—it'll be better if we two go together."
The boy could hardly say no, and he reluctantly drew upon his carefully saved money. But still at the same time he was impatient, looking forward to going to the brothel in town.
The girl's name was Haruko. He felt dizzy when he looked at the pattern of her kimono hung up on the wall of her room, and the sheets spread on the bed were plaintive in their whiteness.
In the air of the room there seemed to be an excitement, rising, falling, permeating the boy's whole body; and his body seemed to be suspended, immobile in the midst of it all.
A deep emotion surged through him repeatedly, making him say to himself: I'm here, right now I'm here.
"First time you've been to this kind of place, isn't it?" the girl asked.
"Yeah," he replied honestly.
Mud had spattered on the boy's ankles from the walk through town and now the girl cleaned them for him. He associated the girl's warmth with something that he dimly recalled in his subconscious. Then he pulled back his legs lest she somehow feel through his limbs the thumping of his heart.
That night sleeping beside Haruko he dreamed. In the dream he was lying on his stomach in the sunshine on the deck of his yacht, which lay at anchor in the deep water of an inlet near an old castle.
He was gazing out at sea, his arms tightly holding the vessel as in an embrace. He was happy to be on deck in the warm sunshine. Then the boat gradually changed into the dim figure of his long-dead mother. He recalled the dream that he had had before. He was not sure what his mother had done, but her arms and breasts seemed warm and comfortable. Then he seemed to be lying smeared with blood after a fight, lying on the sand at a beach. Many people passed by, but none paid attention to him. He felt lonely and cried out. Someone bent down to help him. At first it was the friend who had been with him the previous night, then strangely it turned into Mrs. Higgins, and later to another woman he did not know at all.
Haruko was waking him up.
From then on the boy would draw money from his savings to buy a woman for a night, but he did not let it affect his main plan of making money to buy a yacht. He tried other girls but always returned to Haruko.
When winter came and with it the off season, it was not the deserted harbor nor the moored yachts that tied the boy's heart to his dream—it was, strange to say, Haruko's body.
Two images filled his mind now when he dreamed of his own yacht. They had been given reality by the sensual experience of knowing Haruko's body and of lying on the deck of the Sylph. But the deeper inspiration sprang from the vision of the sea the night before the race and from what he had witnessed later on board the vessel. His own yacht was to be forever sailing between the two untracked worlds of the sea and of sex.
The vessel sailed straight past Motomura for home. At sunset, the beacon lights of the three lighthouses at Shimoda, Mikomotojima, and Irozaki showed at regular intervals. The wind was blowing at six or seven meters a minute. On the distant sea to the right, where night was coming on, there were two sails. They might be yachts that had already circled the island or ones that were just about to. The ships themselves could not be discerned from the darkness of the sea.
Mr. Higgins looked at his watch and chart.
"We'll win if things go well, because it looks as if we'll get to the finish by ten. I think I'll take a nap while I have a chance."
Mr. Higgins retired to his cabin with his wife, leaving the tiller to the boy.
The running lights were on. The boy stooped and bound the rudder, climbed up and threw himself down on the roof. The sky was crowded with stars as it had been the previous night. There were so many that some surely would spill over and fall, but none left the beautiful starry array.
The boy tried to make figures out of the stars. He saw one group in the shape of a ship's wheel, but it lacked a center. Then he found one for the center.
"There it is!"
The star, however, was not right in the center, for there were no encircling stars to make up the wheel. So he tried to form another circle around the star he had found. While he was trying, the stars that had been forming a circle had already begun to scatter.
"The stars won't stand still at all!" said the boy to himself.
He knew without looking at the compass or the charts that the yacht was rushing full speed toward its goal. But for this self-confidence, the boy would have been desperately miserable, miserable enough to cry.
Alone on the roof he experienced a sense of expectancy. But for what he could not tell. He tried to call back the scene he had witnessed before the Oshima Race. Maybe it was just one of those glowing illusions which appear in the dark only for a moment. Illusions will not stay in the memory for long—only their reappearance is anticipated and longed for. It was exactly as if the scene had been illuminated for a moment in the dark by lightning. If another bolt of lightning should dash on the water and a pillar of flames should shoot up for a moment, the boy would only stare at the scene and swallow up his breath. His sense organs, awakened by the scene he recalled, were unconsciously waiting for something to happen.
All of a sudden he heard a woman's cry, and then another. They were faint cries, but the boy was startled and listened intently. His body was tense just as it had been before the start of the race on the previous night. He was alert now but heard nothing more, only the noise of the waves as the boat sped through them. With a fair breeze blowing, the stays made no noise and the white spinnaker bellied out like a floating parachute in the night sky.
"I wonder why Mr. Higgins didn't set the sails before he turned in when the wind was the same," the boy said to himself. "He'll be pleased to find we're moving faster when he wakes up. Well, I'll do it myself."
So saying, he took a look at the tiller and then started to go below to the cabin to get a needle and thread to fix the sails.
He went down the ladder and bent to grasp the handle of the door. He happened to glance through the little window in the door. An unexpected scene caught his eyes. His body quivered and he stepped back a pace, breathing quickly. The two figures in the bunk were in a deep embrace; their behavior was more beautiful and more tender than he could ever have imagined. The pretty white arms of the woman trembled slightly as they tried to support the two bodies against the boat's movement. The woman lay there, her head bent back, her breasts raised, her mouth open and uttering soft cries. For a moment the boy felt that his eyes met hers through the window of the cabin door, and he quickly withdrew and hurried to his own quarters.
Was this what the boy had been expecting? The scene he had witnessed through the window had kindled a smoldering flame that had lain dormant within him until that moment. Now, his whole body seemed to be inflamed—the violence of it affected all his senses.
It was strange that he was eagerly recollecting his memory of the mother he had parted with in childhood. During summer the boy had often seen lovers petting in the vicinity of the harbor or on the beaches. They aroused some of his interest but mostly gave rise in him to a feeling of dirtiness and contempt. But what he had witnessed on the boat was so moving and beautiful that he was carried away by the vision. His heart leapt within him. All he wished was that the boat would reach the finish sooner.
Mr. Higgins awoke and came up on the deck just at nine o'clock.
"Well Markie, we'll soon be at the finish," he said.
Mrs. Higgins, looking rather tired, followed him up. The boy looked fearfully at her face. He tried to discern some part of a secret from her depths.
But the boy became sullen
as he looked at the once familiar face of Mr. Higgins as if he were a stranger. His feelings were a mixture of irritation and hatred.
Off Takeyama they caught the signal of the frigate anchored nearby as it recognized the Sylph. They soon sailed past the rocky cape of Shibazaki, tacked towards the harbor, and sped past the finish line. After getting a signal from the frigate, the harbor bell was rung to announce their arrival as the winning boat.
"It's nine twenty-seven. We've done it in twenty-five hours and seven minutes!" Mr. Higgins shouted.
Twelve minutes later the Toridon came in, followed in seven minutes by the Gay.
Mr. Higgins's yacht had finished twelve minutes ahead of the second boat. He made an exaggerated leap to hug his wife. Then he came over and shook the boy by the hand.
But there was no new sense of excitement at the victory as far as the boy was concerned. His face was pale as he silently spent the time immediately following the race putting things in order.
He went straight home.
Like the dream he had after he knew Haruko's body for the first time, the rapture of loving a young girl in which he lost everything would pass to the thrilling memory of what he had seen aboard the yacht that night, and further to the yacht of his own.
Were the pleasure he found in Haruko and the excitement he felt when he saw that scene aboard the yacht the same?
They were clearly different. But, was it the difference between his feelings for Mrs. Higgins and those for Haruko? He was perhaps in love with Mrs. Higgins without being aware of it. The boy could not look at her without acute embarrassment. She must have been the first to represent the ideal woman, attracting him both by her kindness and by her prettiness. But how could he tell the difference between the love for the mother from that for the lover, when even adults often fail to.
What the boy really wished was to do what he had seen aboard the yacht. "I'll have my own yacht and make love just like that!" Now the boy's burning passions fused his two worlds into one.
Season of Violence Page 11