The Pearl Diver (3 page)

She walked away from town, feeling as if everyone she passed knew about her. But how could they? None of her spots were visible under her thin cotton jacket. A girl passing through town. How soon before everyone knew? Before the doctor told one person, and then it would spread like the fine red sand that blew in from China every winter? Covering everything.

She had never been to Miyako’s house, had only been as far as she was that afternoon, up by the thicket of bamboo along the path leading to it. That was where she waited, trying to allow the sunlight, weaving its way through the bamboo, to distract her from her thoughts, the flecks of dust floating, the illuminated insects flittering through the beams. Tried.

Although the diving season was over, Miyako still went to the sea during autumn, where she passed a few hours each day. Only a week had passed, she thought. The following diving season twenty-nine weeks, two hundred and three days, to go. Or more. That thought was too much. She tried going back to the midafternoon sun and the bamboo.

She saw Miyako approach around the bend, about fifty yards down the path. Walking deliberately, strong, short steps—a half waddle. When Miyako was about ten yards away, she stepped out in front of her.

Neither of them took a step closer. Did she already know? Impossible. But maybe not so impossible.
The look on Miyako’s face told her that she knew, but maybe it was her own look that told Miyako something was terribly wrong.

“What brings you up here?” Miyako asked. Still, neither had made the next step, forward or back, locked in the moment like at the bottom of the sea, all time stopped.

“I’m sick.” The words choked and garbled.

“Sick?”

“Remember when I cut my arm a couple of months ago?”

Miyako didn’t speak, only nodded.

“I’m sick,” she said again.

Miyako took a step toward her, then another.

“Leprosy.”

Miyako didn’t move, her next step severed by the word.

“From that cut?”

“No, the spot was there before I cut my arm. Last week, I found another—on my back.”

Miyako appeared as though she wanted to retrace those two steps she had just taken, but her stubbornness wouldn’t allow it.

“What are you going to do?”

“The doctor says I have to go to a sanatorium.”

“When?”

“I have to talk to my family first. Soon. The doctor told me that I can never dive again because I could spread the disease through the water to the other divers, to the children who play there in summer.”

Neither moved nor talked. A distant ship wailed its horn. She took a couple of steps toward Miyako, bowed deeply to her, and walked away, looking back only once when she reached the bend, and Miyako was still standing where she was when she had left her.

Back in the warehouse, a couple months’ worth of paper bags pyramided in the corner, she waited for Miyako’s knock on the door. She thought of her family and how it had been six weeks since harvest. How she had never returned, only left Miyako’s, and, after wandering aimlessly for hours, how she had ended up in the warehouse. How she had opened the door, closed it, fell asleep, woke up, felt hungry, wrote a note and then placed it on Miyako’s door, and the next day there was a knock and the lunch box sitting outside.

And that was how it had been every day, and for how many more, she couldn’t even imagine. She knew only that she was standing up because she had heard the knock; it was time to get her lunch and allow the five seconds of sunlight, which the open door provided, to flood into the warehouse.

Without peeking through the crack, she opened the door. There was no paper bag out there, only two policemen. She stepped into the afternoon—the cloudy skies lashed at her eyes—closed the door behind her, knowing that the dim bar of sunlight that had snuck into the warehouse had already been strangled.

The policemen led her away, keeping a distance. She turned and wondered about that day’s lunch, and when it arrived, how long would it sit outside before the rats got to it, how long before Miyako stopped leaving the food?

She faces the back of the man digging the oars into the water, watching him bury her past in the heavy mist of the Inland Sea. His rowing is fluid but tense. Icy waves slap at them. Today, she wishes for Kenichi’s motorboat. If the man didn’t know where they are going and what is awaiting them on the other shore, they would probably be facing each other right now, perhaps even speaking. If he didn’t know where they are going and what is awaiting them, maybe he would even glance at her once in awhile. A normal-looking nineteen-year-old girl.

She opens the cloth in which the lunch has been wrapped. Cold, hard rice. The rice balls simple, covered in dried seaweed. If this were a normal day, she would consider herself lucky. Rice. A rare treat all through the war and even now, three years after. She eats two of them. No enjoyment at all, only to fill her up. She asks the man if he would like some. She sees his shoulders tighten, perhaps two strokes with the oars a little out of rhythm. Quickly, he recovers. His silence colder than the rice or the wood of the boat or her ears.

Looking over the side, she tries imagining the depth of the water, but she can’t concentrate. She leans back and holds her breath, counting the strokes. Fifteen. Twenty. Forty. She could continue keeping the breath within her, but she stops, noticing that the mist has thinned out and that Nagashima is close. Close enough to tell that the trees are pines and not cedars. If the water wasn’t so rough, she’s sure she could see the bottom of the sea. Jump right off and touch it. Her place.

He breaks his rhythm, rowing faster now, maintaining that pace until they hit the rocky bottom, throwing her against the side of the boat.

He never even steps off the boat, but for the first time on this long day, he faces her. She, on the cement dock; he, working the oars once again. Always with his back to the place he is going, facing the place he is leaving. She watches him edge away. He must be exhausted, but, wanting so desperately to get away from this place, he rows and rows. But he isn’t that far away, perhaps fifty yards, when he does stop. The boat wobbles, shifts under his weight as he removes the left oar from its latch; he picks it up, as far away from the blade as is possible. He leans over and, using the blade of the oar as a shovel, scoops and flings into the water the two rice balls she left behind for him.
They disappear like stones. He replaces the oar and begins digging, his back to her past.

AS our generals hang in the December wind, the time line of her isolation begins. It is the future Emperor’s fifteenth birthday, forty-one years before he will begin his reign.

She stands here on this dock—the receiving dock—watching the man row until he, like the rice balls, fades into the sea. The sea. From this day on, it will forever be different for her. Not hatred—she will never hate it—only something that separates. It had always been something that she thought connected—island to island, fishermen to home. But today it is, and always will be, a separator.

Two men, wearing doctor’s masks, lead her along the narrow dock, past several rowboats much like the one she arrived on. They pass a small shack, many kinds of farm equipment under its tin roof. She feels sick to her stomach, the cold rice like lead. She stops, catches her stomach from leaving her.

“Hurry up, there’s much to be done,” one of the men says, a few steps ahead.

A couple of deep breaths help a little and she follows the men into a large building, splotches of ivy clinging on the outside walls. A wooden shoe box is off to her right.
The ceiling is higher than any she has ever seen before. She removes her shoes, and as she is about to place them in the box, a woman wearing thick rubber gloves comes out of nowhere, rips them from her hands, and drops them into a burlap sack.

“Into that room and place all your belongings in one of those bags.” Still, the men are several steps away from her. Never closer.

Dirty curtains, covering the glass on the door, are lifted by the wind brought in through the entrance. She steps inside, and before she can even close the door, her stomach is lost all over the floor. The smell of chemicals staggers her. The room is large, made even larger by the ceiling. A nurse hands her a bucket and a rag.

“Close that door and clean this up. When you’ve finished, go over there behind the curtain and remove everything.”

She throws up again. The nurse’s rubber boots flop as she hurries away.

She cleans up, a stain left behind on the floor, then goes over and opens the curtain. A woman, old enough to be her mother, sits naked on a dirty mattress. Her left hand in front of her pubis, her right can cover only half of her breasts.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

She walks out of the curtain-partitioned room.

“Hurry up and get undressed.” The nurse points her back to where she has just left.

The older woman turns her back to her, the long, bent fingers still where they were when she first entered. Red spots on her back. Some larger the farther down one looks. Her hair is like a swallow’s nest after a typhoon, strewn all over, eggs long gone. Her face, round as a ramen bowl, is untouched except for one red spot under her right eye. She moves as far away from the woman on the bed as she can, turns her back, undresses. She hides her change purse inside the pocket of her jacket.
The room is cold; many times she has been colder—those early-May dives—but the shame she feels gives this cold a raw edge to it.

The curtain snaps open. She stands, for the first time in her life, naked before a man. Like those of the woman on the edge of the bed, her hands, too, instinctively cover the most private parts of her being.

“Move your arms and stand up straight,” the doctor orders. She hears the words, but his mouth and nose are covered by a white mask, making it difficult to follow what he says.

“Stand up straight!” She sees his mask move up and down, again hears the words, sees the doctor’s eyes behind black-rimmed glasses that sit crooked on his nose. He steps toward her. She uses the side of the bed as a support but feels her knees weaken, and with her arms still covering her, she hits the floor. The ceiling is a clear blue sky. Endless. The older woman speaks words she doesn’t understand; her hideous claws touch her face.

“Don’t touch me!” she screams. “Nobody touch me!”

The older woman jumps away, her hands back to her body.

“Get up so we can disinfect you,” yells the doctor.

She reaches for her clothes, but they are gone; stabs at a bedsheet, but there is only a mattress. She starts to cry.

“Stop this foolishness.”

The doctor clenches her arm, jerks her up by it. He has her above the elbow, the thick rubber glove a slimy cold, like a raw oyster in January. She’s taken into another room. The doctor tells her to lie on the bed, a plastic sheet atop it. First on her stomach. He checks behind her ears, the nape of her neck, under her arms, down her back, all the time making these sounds like he is sucking his teeth. He spreads her legs; the glove hurts as he touches her down there, makes all her skin ache, as if she’s sliding naked on ice. She notices, on her left arm, a large bruise already beginning to spread from where she fell on the floor. Spreading over the diving scar within the spot. Years ago. She keeps her eyes on the spot, the blue-green-black bruise scattered inside, around it. Keeps her eyes on it, tries to create a map from it. Yakushima. Like the island of Yakushima, round except for a little deviation on the top left side. His hands down the backs of her legs, the soles of her feet.

“Turn over.”

She does, knowing nothing that she is doing. Chilled tears dribble, drip down the side of her face, plunk against the plastic bedsheet.

His hands over her breasts, against her stomach, inside her, down her thighs, across her diving-scarred knees, her feet, between her toes.

“Get up,” he says, leaving the room.

The worst is over. You have been through the worst. She keeps telling herself this.

A nurse comes in and leads her to the back of the building. Colder than she has ever been. A startling smell of chemicals.

“Keep your eyes closed.”

She is covered, drenched, in the chemical odor. A second layer of skin. She inhales, trying to strangle tears that want out. Her throat burns, her nose drips, and her eyes release, this time, boiling tears. Her skin scoured all over, but still the cold rubber glove between her legs. She is led out of the room, given a thin robe, and is standing before a young man at a desk. Sweating. Shivering. Her upper left arm hurts where the doctor grabbed her, the red spot on her forearm without feeling, the bruise spreading.

“I have a few questions for you, but these are only for our records. Your life begins here right now, at this very moment. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Where are you from?”

“Shodo Island.”

“Okay. Your number is two six four five. Don’t forget it. Two six four five. Repeat it.”

“What about taking down my name?”

“I told you to forget everything. Name and all. Wipe it out of your head as if it were never there. Same for your family. Everything for you begins here today, right now. Your number, what’s your number?”

“Two six four five.”

“Again.”

“Two six four five.”

“Now you must choose a new name.”

“But I have a name.”

“Didn’t you listen to what I told you? You have caused great shame to your family, and for their sake, have your name struck from the family register. As if . . .” He pauses.

“As if I were dead.”

His eyes don’t like what she said.

“Today is the beginning of your past. December the twenty-third, 1948. You are born today. It will be easier on you if you think of it this way.”

“But I haven’t thought of a new name.”

“You have until tomorrow.”

The groaning of the rowboats tied to the wooden dock outside. Thinks that is what she hears. She stares up at the ceiling. She is tired, more tired than the man who has rowed her here. Even he must be home asleep by now.