To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

  He seemed so worried about the day's boating trip being called off that he even dragged his two sisters out to the veranda and time and again repeated, "Well? Well? What do you think?" He at last seemed to have reached the conclusion that his father's opinion as the final arbiter was necessary, so he went to wake him up.

  With sleepy eyes my uncle glanced in apparent indifference over the sky and sea. "From the appearance of things, I'm sure it'll be fine before long."

  His words reassured Goichi, but Chiyoko looked at me and said, "I'm worried. We can't rely on such an irresponsible forecast." I could say nothing.

  "Don't worry. It'll be fine," my uncle assured us again and went off to wash up.

  As we finished breakfast, a rain as thin as fog began falling. Yet since there was no wind, the sea looked calmer than usual. My good-natured mother sympathized with us about the unlucky weather. My aunt warned us against going, saying it was likely to turn into a regular rain. Nevertheless, the rest were all insistent.

  "Well then," my uncle said, "all the young people will go, and the old ladies can stay behind."

  "And which side is the old man on?" my aunt retorted, setting everyone laughing.

  "I belong to the younger set today." Whether to prove this or not I don't know, but he stood up, tucked up the bottom of his yukata, and stepped down from the veranda. The two sisters and Goichi followed suit, but without adjusting their clothes.

  "You'd better tuck up the bottom of your kimono like mine."

  "Oh, Father!"

  I looked down from the veranda and observed this strange, rustic quartet—my uncle with his hairy banditlike legs; the two young women in their straw hats resembling the braided hat worn by Lady Shizuka, the heroine of medieval legend; and their brother, his black waistband tied into a knot behind.

  Momoyoko looked up at me and said with a slight smile, "Ichi-san's looking at us as if he's about to make a nasty remark."

  "Hurry up and come down," Chiyoko scolded.

  "Get him an old pair of geta," my uncle said to her.

  I went down. Takagi, who had been expected to come over, had not yet arrived, however. Thinking he had probably put off coming because of the weather, we agreed to start out and walk slowly ahead and send Goichi for him.

  My uncle talked on and on to me in his usual way, and I attuned myself to him. Before long our masculine pace carried us way ahead of the sisters. Once I looked back and saw that they didn't care in the least about having fallen behind—they weren't making the slightest effort to catch up. I could only assume they had purposely lagged behind in order to wait for Takagi. That might be what they should do out of courtesy to an invited guest, but at that time it didn't seem to me the reason. I couldn't feel that such was their motive even if I made allowance for it. I had looked back with the intention of giving them a sign to quicken their pace, but I abandoned that and kept up with my uncle.

  We reached the cape, where the path turned into Kotsubo. There at the side of the headland jutting out was a narrowly cut, sloping path which allowed a single person to pass around to the other side of the cape. My uncle halted at the highest point along the slope.

  Suddenly he called out to his daughters, his powerful voice quite in keeping with his physique. I have to say frankly that more than once I had attempted to look back. But each time I had tried to, I had had—either from shame or self-respect—a sense of something that had stiffened my neck as hard as a boar's so that I couldn't.

  They were more than a hundred yards below us. Takagi and Goichi were close behind them. When my uncle had called out "Yo-ho!" in his booming voice, the girls looked up simultaneously, but then Chiyoko immediately turned to glance behind at Takagi coming along after them. He took off the straw hat with his right hand and waved it toward us. But of the four only Goichi offered any oral response to my uncle's call. He shouted his reply with his hands above his head. Since he had probably trained himself for commands at school, his voice was so loud that it almost echoed along the cliffs and sea.

  My uncle and I were standing at the verge of the cliff waiting for everyone. They came up talking together without changing their slow pace even after my uncle's shout. It seemed to me that they weren't talking in an ordinary way but quite playfully. Takagi was wearing something brown and baggy like an overcoat. He had his hands in his pockets sometimes. At first I wondered about it, thinking it impossible in this heat to be wearing an overcoat, but as he came nearer, I saw that it was a thin raincoat.

  Just then my uncle said, "Ichi-san, it certainly would be fun sailing around out on the sea in a yacht." As if I hadn't noticed it before, I turned my eyes from Takagi to the sea below our feet. Near the beach was an empty white boat quietly floating on the waves. A fine rain thinner than a drizzle was still falling, obscuring the surface of the sea. The trees and rocks on the cliffs on the opposite side of the bay were almost in monochrome, unlike a typical day when they are so distinctly defined. Meanwhile, the four stragglers at last came up to where we were standing.

  "Sorry I kept you waiting," Takagi said, excusing himself as soon as he saw my uncle. "I was shaving and couldn't stop halfway."

  "Don't you feel hot with all that stuff on?" my uncle asked.

  "He can't take it off," said Chiyoko laughing, "no matter how hot he is. He may be elegant on the outside, but underneath he's barbaric."

  Opening his raincoat, Takagi said, "Look."

  He had on a thin short-sleeved shirt, an odd-looking pair of knickers from which his bare legs emerged, black tabi, and a pair of block-like geta.

  "It's a relief to return to Japan from abroad with the freedom to wear whatever I want, even in front of ladies."

  Our party, tramping single file along a road about six feet wide, came to a squalid fishing village, whose offensive odor struck us at once. Takagi took a white handkerchief from his pocket and covered his short moustache.

  Suddenly my uncle put a strange question to a small boy standing nearby looking at us. "Where's the house of the man from the west who came from the south to be an adopted son?"

  "I don't know," said the child.

  I asked Chiyoko why her father had asked the question in such an odd way. The master of the house to whom they had inquired the previous night, she explained, had forgotten the fisherman's name, but said that we would find him if we went into this village asking for such-and-such a person. Hearing this carefree set of instructions and method of inquiry, I couldn't help feeling strangely envious when I compared them with my own meticulousness and rigidity.

  "Will they understand such a funny question?" Takagi asked doubtfully.

  "It'll be a miracle if they can," said Chiyoko, laughing.

  "They'll understand," my uncle said with assurance.

  Goichi, half in fun, asked everybody we met, "Where's the house of the man from the west who came from the south to be an adopted son?"—each time to our amusement. We finally came upon a dirty tea stall in which a young lute player wearing a braided hat on her head, leggings, and a pair of white coverings for the back of her hands was resting. When Goichi asked the question to the elderly keeper of the stall, she quite unexpectedly replied simply, "It's right near here." All of us clapped our hands and laughed. It turned out to be a small straw-thatched house along a slope at the end of about three flights of stone steps from the road.

  We must have appeared a strange group as one by one the six of us climbed the narrow stone steps, each of us in a different outfit. Moreover, it was so amusingly easygoing that not one of us had any clear idea of what was going to happen next. Even my uncle, leader of the troop, though he knew only that we were to go out in a boat, apparently didn't know anything specific, such as whether the fishing was with rods or nets, or even how far we were to head out. As I stepped along behind Momoyoko on those stones worn down by the force of treading feet, I thought it a real pleasure of summering to have been able to abandon myself to this kind of meaningless behavior. At the same time, though, I suspected tha
t behind it all a very important act in a serious drama was being played between a man and a woman. And if there were any part I was to- take in that drama, it could only be in the role of lightly being made fun of by calm-faced Fortune. And finally it occurred to me that if my uncle, dealing artlessly and uncalculatedly in everything, were to give this act its finishing touch unnoticed by anyone, he should be called a playwright endowed with an incomparable deftness of execution. As such thoughts came running across my mind, Takagi, who was right behind me, said, "It's too hot to bear! If you don't mind, I'm going to take off my raincoat."

  The house seemed even smaller and shabbier than when we had looked up at it from below. There was a wooden dipper nailed above the door, a charm against evil with characters written on it forbidding whooping cough to enter the house of the Heikichi Yoshino family. At last we knew the name of the owner. It was to Goichi's credit that he had been alert enough to find it and read it aloud to us. We glanced inside the house, whose ceilings and walls were all in a black luster.

  The only person there was an old woman. By way of apology she explained that since the weather was bad, the fisherman had assumed the party would not come, so he had gone down to the sea quite early. "I'll go to the shore and call him back," she said.

  "Did he go out in a boat?" asked my uncle.

  The woman pointed toward the water. "Looks like that's his boat there."

  Though the mist had not yet cleared, the sky was brighter, and we had a comparatively clear view of the offing where the small boat was lying.

  "That won't be easy to signal," said Takagi, looking through the binoculars he had with him.

  "She's certainly easygoing about it. How on earth can she call it back from that distance?" Chiyoko said with a laugh, accepting the glasses Takagi handed her.

  "It's easy," the old woman replied and hurriedly descended the stone steps in her straw sandals.

  My uncle laughed. "How relaxed country people are!"

  Goichi ran down after her. Absentmindedly, Momoyoko sat down on the dirty veranda. I glanced around the yard, which hardly deserved the name, since it was a mere dozen or so square yards in front of the house. In a corner was a fig tree with only a few green leaves moving in the fishy breeze. On its branches were some unripe figs that barely testified to its ability to bear fruit. An empty insect cage was suspended from a fork in one of the branches. Beneath it a few lean hens wildly scraped the ground with their claws, pecking at the earth with their hungry beaks. What looked like a coop made of wire was close by, and it amused me to see its ludicrous shape irregularly warped like a btishukan orange.

  Just then my uncle said, "It certainly does stink!"

  In a feeble voice Momoyoko said, "I don't want to go fishing any more. I'd like to go home."

  Takagi, who had been looking through the binoculars toward the sea and talking incessantly with Chiyoko, turned around. "What could they be doing? I'll go see." He then turned toward the veranda to put down his raincoat and binoculars.

  Chiyoko, who was beside him, held out her hands even before he began to move. "Give them here. I'll hold them for you." When she took these from him, she again looked at him in his short-sleeved shirt. "Now you're a real Bohemian," she said with a laugh.

  Takagi only smiled helplessly as he began his descent to the beach.

  I silently observed the well-developed muscles around his athletic shoulders, which moved vigorously with the swinging of his arms as he hurried down the stone steps.

  About an hour later all of us were at the beach ready to sail. I was attracted to two tall flagpoles, each embedded deeply in the sand for some festival that had taken place or was about to occur. From somewhere along the sandy beach Goichi had picked up a withered branch washed ashore and was drawing a series of enormous faces and large characters on the broad stretch of sand.

  "All right, get in," said the boatman, whose hair was clipped short, and the six of us clambered without order over the side of the boat. Somehow Chiyoko and I were pushed by the others into the prow, which was partitioned off from the rest of the boat, and sat down knee-to-knee. Before anyone else had a chance to, my uncle ensconced himself like a patriarch cross-legged in the wide middle section—what do you call it, the waist? He shouted for Takagi to sit beside him, probably intending to treat him as the guest of the day, so Takagi had to settle there. Momoyoko and Goichi went astern with the boatman into another partitioned part.

  Takagi looked back to Momoyoko and told her to come and sit with him, since there was plenty of room. She thanked him but did not move from her seat.

  From the first I didn't want to sit on that one thin matting with Chiyoko. I've already confessed my jealousy of Takagi, and I probably was as jealous that day as the day before. But not even a whiff of competitive spirit stirred in me along with the jealousy. Being a man, I may fall passionately in love with a woman someday, but I positively assert that if I had to get involved in a rivalry as intense as the love itself in order to win the object of love, I would sooner give her up by standing aloof with my hands in my pockets, no matter what pain or sacrifice I might have to endure. Others may criticize me as unmanly, cowardly, weak-willed, or whatever. But if the woman is one so wavering between her suitors that she can only be won through that kind of painful competition, I can't regard her as worth the bitter rivalry. It's far more satisfying to my conscience to have the manliness to allow my rival free play in the field of love and for me to gaze in loneliness at the scars of love than to have the pleasure of embracing by force a woman who would not willingly give me her heart.

  "Isn't it better over there, Chiyo-chan? It's a lot more comfortable," I said.

  "Why? Am I in your way here?" So saying, she showed no sign of moving.

  I had no courage to explain that the reason for my suggestion was Takagi's presence there; my words would have sounded too direct or too obviously sarcastic. That a flash of joy spread through me on hearing her reply was good evidence for the inconsistency of human speech and human feeling, and this dealt me a hard blow, so unaware was I of my own weak character.

  Perhaps it was my own imagination, but Takagi seemed more reserved than he had been the previous day. He was pretending indifference to the words Chiyoko and I had exchanged even though he was obviously hearing them. As the boat moved away from the beach, he was speaking with my uncle, saying something about how lucky we were to be having nicer weather, how much better it was not to be exposed to the hot sun, and how ideal the situation was for boating.

  Suddenly my uncle asked in his loud voice, "Well, skipper, what're we going to catch?" None of us, my uncle included, had known what we were going to be fishing for.

  In a coarse manner the fisherman said, "Octopus, that's what."

  This extraordinary answer provided more amusement than surprise to Chiyoko and Momoyoko, who both came out with a laugh.

  My uncle asked, "And where are these octopuses?"

  And the fisherman responded, "Right around here somewhere."

  He placed on the water an oval wooden bucket a little deeper than the kind used in public bathhouses but with a glass bottom and, thrusting his head into it, peered at the bottom of the sea. He called this unusual tool a mirror. He had a few others, which he passed around. Since Goichi and Momoyoko were seated nearest him, they were the first to try.

  The mirrors went around from person to person. "This makes it all look clear. You can really see everything!" my uncle said, full of admiration. While he tends to underestimate most things, probably because of his wide knowledge of numerous aspects of society, he's apt to be easily overwhelmed when confronted by such natural phenomena.

  I took the mirror Chiyoko handed me—I was the last to use it—and looked through it into the sea only to find a most ordinary scene little different from what I had imagined. There among a range of small, jagged rocks sprawled endless masses of dark green seaweed. Their slender stalks wavered back and forth quietly and endlessly to the rhythm of the undulating waves
as though they were being played with by a warm wind.

  "Any octopuses down there, Ichi-san?"

  "Not a one."

  I raised my head. Chiyoko poked her face back into the bucket. The fluttering brim of the straw hat she was wearing dipped into the water and raised tiny ripples whenever it went against the advance of the boat propelled by the fisherman. I looked at her dark hair and the white nape beneath it. I thought that her neck was even lovelier than her face.

  "Are you finding any, Chiyo-chan?" I asked.

  "No such luck. Not an octopus swimming anywhere."

  "I've heard they're very difficult to see unless you're used to looking for them," Takagi explained.

  With both her hands on the bucket against the water, Chiyoko twisted her body toward him even while she was hanging out the side of the boat. "Well, I guess that's why I can't see any." As she bent forward, she jerked the bucket, plunging it in as though playing with the water. "Chiyoko!" Momoyoko called out in warning from the opposite end of the boat.

  Goichi was eagerly trying to thrust around for octopuses without knowing where any were. An odd tool is used for stabbing an octopus, a long and lean bamboo rod about a dozen feet in length with a kind of spearhead attached to one end. Our fisherman held the bucket in his mouth with his teeth, managing the rod with one hand even as the boat kept moving. As soon as he located one of the limp monsters, he deftly pierced it with the long bamboo harpoon.

  A great many octopuses were thrown aboard single-handedly by the boatman, but all were nearly the same size, none of any surprising bulk. At first all of us were shouting at the novelty of each catch, but afterward, even my uncle, man of vigor that he is, seemed to tire of the sport and called out, "It's no fun just to keep catching octopuses this way!"

  Takagi, smoking now, began gazing at the mass at the bottom of the boat. "Chiyo-chan, have you ever seen octopuses swimming? Come over and have a look. It's quite strange." Glancing at me he said, "And how about you, Sunaga-san? The octopuses are having a swim."