The Pearl Diver (5 page)

Then, the week before, she saw a man cross over to the island and knew that she, too, must cross.

The sea recedes, leaving less than a yard from her to the rocks that have begun making the path to the island. Before going back to begin her day, a beautiful red rock at the bottom of the suicide cliff catches her eye. She picks it up. Almost like coral, she thinks, bits of white shells fossilized in it, a glossy black swath sweeping over the stone, as if someone has swooped, only once, a calligraphy brush along it. She carries the stone back up the slight grade leading away from the sea.

While giving Miss Min a massage, she asks about the island. Miss Min arrived here in 1943, when she was brought over from her homeland as a war slave along with her brother to work in the Kyushu coal mines. At the port, she was discovered to have leprosy and wasn’t sent to the mines, but here. Although less than ten years separate the two of them, Miss Min’s disease is much further along. While giving massages, she tries not to get involved too emotionally with the patients, tries not to think too much, but with Miss Min, it is most difficult. Sitting before her is not a woman in her early thirties, but twenty years older than that. Hardly a shadow of what she must have been less than ten years ago remains.

She likes Miss Min, who, almost always while she is giving her a massage, tells stories—real or not, she isn’t sure. Sometimes she listens intently to the stories; at others, she allows the words to meld into the rhythm of her kneading hands.

“Have you ever crossed over to that small island?” she asks Miss Min.

“Why would I want to?”

“To see what’s over there.”

“I’m sure somebody’s been there. There’s that giant
torii
gate.”

“Let’s go sometime.”

“Are we allowed?”

“I don’t see why not. Not much of a place to escape, is it?”

“Not much of a place.”

Two days later, they wait together at the dock, watching the water peel itself from the stones.

“We have only about an hour and a half before the sea comes back.”

She takes Miss Min’s hand, the fingers having collapsed to half their size.
The hand is ice-cold, although the autumn air hasn’t yet shaken all of summer from its breath.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I told you I can’t swim.”

“Who needs to swim. You can walk, can’t you?”

“What if the tide comes in early?”

“The tides have been following the same schedule for a lot longer than we’ve been around. Why would they change today?”

She helps her onto the stones, some of them nearly knee-high, yet to be dried by the sun and wind. Miss Min’s feet are mangled; she wears flat plastic insoles in her boots to help her walk. Most of the rocks are sharp, almost crisp, volcaniclike rock. Like the rock she cut her arm on at the bottom of the sea. Each step sends flocks of water bugs scrambling, as if the rocks are moving.

They stand under the
torii
gate; it must be three times higher than they. Miss Min is breathing heavily, the trip across much more of a strain on her. Atop the gate, there is a gathering of stones thrown by somebody. It brings good luck if one lands there. But when? Has their luck changed? Since there is a gate, there must also be a Shinto shrine of some sort.

“I’m going to go over there. Do you want to come?”

“No, I’ll stay here. Don’t go far. The tide is going to come back soon.”

“There is no far to go here, Miss Min. And the tide won’t return for more than an hour. I won’t be long.”

She goes around the shore of the island; it is not marble-shaped as she had thought. When she gets to the south side, there are some large rocks, much like those across the way at the suicide cliff. Light brown, the bottoms wearing slippery skirts of moss.

“Miss Fuji!”

The panicky voice of Miss Min. A few minutes away, she hurries as best she can, and Miss Min is sitting there hugging her knees to her chest.

“What is it?” She is puffing from the short run.

“The tide is coming. The tide.”

“That’s not the tide; it’s from that boat passing by. I told you that the tide won’t be returning for more than an hour.”

Her tone comes out much harsher than she wants, leaving a hurt look on Miss Min’s face.

“Come on, I’ll take you back.”

They make their way across the almost-dry rocks. She leads Miss Min back to her room, helps her off with her rubber boots, takes the orthopedic insoles out to air them, and, although it is not yet even noon, puts out the futon for her. She is careful to place the soiled side of the futon on the thin straw mats that cover the dirt floor. At least we have the straw mats, she thinks, recalling those early months, when it was the bare dirt floor they slept on. She covers Miss Min’s feet with a blanket, reaches underneath it, begins to massage a bit of warmth back into them. She knows that Miss Min feels little, if any, of it at all, but she is past this frustration. Miss Min is talking a little bit about her family and how they were cabbage farmers back in Korea, says she can’t even eat cabbage to this day. But she isn’t listening to her, only thinking about the island and how it didn’t appear as she had thought.

Two weeks later, she returns alone. The pathway opens up in the early afternoon. She retraces her steps from the last time and gets to the place around back where the large rocks jut into a long, narrow peninsula out into the sea. A strange place, the circle part of the island is covered with wild green growth, all of this in the back only bare rock. She takes out a pen and paper and starts to draw. She’s never been much of an artist, but still she manages a decent outline of the island. Maps. As long as she can remember, she has always loved them. Would study them as a child, making shapes of dragons or people or whatever. Twisting and turning the maps every which way, creating a different image by doing so.

She continues on around the island; it takes a few minutes to walk. Past the
torii
gate, there is what appears to be a path leading up to the top of the hill. She looks at Nagashima and is surprised by how close it is. Around, in the back of this small island, much of Nagashima is hidden and it feels mysteriously distant. Now, when she turns around, a panorama of Nagashima’s east coast is visible: the living quarters, the office, the hospital, the cliff, the small farming area. About the only areas she can’t see are the receiving dock, the building where they all spent that horrible first week, and the crematorium—the northwest end of Nagashima, which faces Honshu and the town of Mushiage. She sees a few people walking around in the distance, but she doesn’t think anyone sees her. Doesn’t believe that anyone pays this place any attention.

She turns her back on Nagashima, takes the path, which is overgrown with fernlike plants and weeds and whatever else. It is only a five-minute hike up, about eighty feet above the sea. Although the day is quite bright, it is dark and cool going through the tunnel of bamboo, maples, cedars. Near the top, she first sees the small shrine, but her eyes are ripped from that when she sees a man sitting on the last of the three cement steps leading to it.

“Mr. Shirayama.”

“Miss Fuji. Is this your first time up here?”

“Yes.”

“I come up here once a week, or whenever I can get away.”

“I didn’t think anyone came here.”

“They don’t. You’re the first person I have met here.”

She turns around to get a view of Nagashima, but all she can see is the tangle of trees and brush. She turns opposite, but Shodo Island is invisible, as is Honshu, as well as the Inland Sea.

“Wonderful place, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s why I come up here. Like a whole different world.
You can’t see the place, can rarely hear a thing other than your breath, maybe a heron or gull.
When I first came up here a couple of years ago, I thought of cleaning the overgrowth, but I realized that this place is special because you can’t see anything. Sit down.”

She does, and takes notice of the moss growing on the small red shrine, not much taller than she is. The wooden roof, too, has some moss on the north slope, sprigs of grass poking out of its head. There is even a wooden money box to toss in an offering. A couple of dirty one-yen coins lie there. Not their black oval-shaped money, but that of the rest of the country. A churning in her stomach. She hasn’t seen or touched this money since her first day here, when it, along with everything else, was taken.

“I don’t know whose it is. Maybe belonged to one of the staff.”

“Maybe,” she answers. There could be a hundred of those coins sitting there, a thousand, and they would be as useful to her as the rocks on the shore. They sit there, two soiled coins, no bigger than a fingernail, and they taunt her. This Mr. Shirayama knows, for they taunted him the first time he saw them.

“What do you think about getting rid of them?”

“Of what?” she asks.

“The coins. You take one and I’ll take one and we’ll throw them as far as we can.”

She regards him, this man, less than five years older than she is, but the disease has taken away much from her image of what he must have looked like before getting sick. He looks back at her; they exchange a strange look, something between agreement and disagreement.

“What’s Buddha going to say about us stealing from him?” she asks finally with a light smile. Mr. Shirayama studies her, thinks that she is quite beautiful, the disease hardly touching her, and if he didn’t know why she was here, he would not notice anything wrong.

“I think Buddha, or any other god, would understand. We’ll replace them with two of our coins. They have more value here. Then it’s more contributing than stealing.”

She picks up one of the old coins, hands it to him. He takes it, throws it off into the trees. Not much of a throw, but at least it is out of sight. He hands her the other coin. She holds it a short while before placing it in her pocket.

“Go ahead and throw it. You’ll feel better.”

“I want to drown it in the sea.”

They both laugh. It feels good to laugh, makes Mr. Shirayama feel good to share this place.

“What’s the name of this island?” she asks.

“Don’t know if it has one.”

“It should.”

“I’ll let you give it one, Miss Fuji. I’ve chosen enough names. What’s that you’ve drawn?”

“A map of this island. Not a very good one, I’m afraid.”

“May I see it? I love maps.”

“Sure.”

She stands up and turns full circle.

“Where’s your wheelbarrow?”

“Too difficult to bring up here.”

“I can’t remember you without it.”

“It’s good to get away from it for a while.”

“What do you grow in your garden, Mr. Shirayama?”

“Mostly squash and beans, some tomatoes.”

“Do you like it?”

“I like the fact that I can nurture, bring something into this world. Sort of the same thing that you do, Miss Fuji.”

“I don’t farm.”

“Yes, I know. But when you massage the patients, you bring their bodies back to life for a while. If only in their minds. Sort of the same as farming.”

“I guess maybe it is.”

She takes back the map, places it on the steps, and puts another piece of paper atop it. She traces another map of the island and gives it to him.

“Thank you, Miss Fuji. I think it’s a good map.”

“Come on, we must get going before the sea erases our path back.”

ARTIFACT Number 0214
A rough, yellowing hand-drawn map
of the small island

She places the sketch of the island on the wall of the room she shares with six other patients.
Twists and turns it fortyfive degrees every few days until she discovers the shape of it. For many days she thinks, finally deciding on the name: “Key of the Hand Island.”

ARTIFACT Number 0230
Copy of the Order of Culture certificate
received by Dr. Kensuke Mitsuda—the first
director of Nagashima Leprosarium—for
his significant contribution to the arts and
sciences, November 3, 1951

He wears a black tuxedo, sits in the front row of the state room, along with the four other recipients.
When his name is called—Dr. Kensuke Mitsuda—he rises slowly, every movement sharp, as if he has rehearsed them many times. Barely able to bend his feet in the shiny black shoes, he slides more than steps. When he arrives in front of Emperor Hirohito, he puts his arms straight out, perfect parallels, and is handed the medal in a purple velvet–lined box, the linen-lined lid open. He bows his seventy-fiveyear-old body deeply, holds it there, arms still out, the medal in his hands. Dr. Mitsuda comes out of his bow and retraces his steps, sliding backward one, two, three steps, never turning his back on the Emperor.

ARTIFACT Number 0229
A bottle of Chaulmoogra oil

She wouldn’t remember this; it was before her time. The thick Chaulmoogra oil, extracted from the nut of the Hydnocarpus tree, would course through the patients’ veins. So thick, they could feel it. Looking at some of the veins, especially those in the forearm, one could see it crawling through like an earthworm. They dealt with the pain, knowing that maybe, maybe. Sometimes they rubbed their skin with it. Some hoped in those days, hoped that with each worm that crawled through them that piece by piece it would carry the disease away with it. But there were relapses, and the worm no longer provided hope, only pain. Then, six months after Miss Fuji arrived, a new hope arrived as well.

ARTIFACT Number 0231
A whetstone

Every day, observing their bodies, she sees, smells, touches her future. She isn’t certain when this future will come, only that, each night, it is a day closer. And it is by the maps of their bodies that she can tell how long they’ve been here, how much longer until she arrives there. She can do it sometimes with her eyes closed, but at other times she must open them.

The skin:

Seeing the patients laboring with shovels, picks, wheelbarrows, their shirtless torsos bone-dry in the scorching July heat. Several women in their gray-and-white-striped cotton robes working alongside, not a bead dribbling from under their cropped black hair. The Nagashima baseball team, midway through the game, skin dry as charcoal. Massaging a patient, pressing a little too hard, his skin tearing like an onion’s, large faults left behind. She remembers the dry, rough skin during the diving season, how her fingertips would split from the cold water and warm air, the stabs of pain when washing the rice before cooking it. Many patients don’t budge as she applies the bandages, don’t even turn around. Skin hairless, shiny as a polished stone.