18mm Blues Page 3

  At age twelve she officially became an apprentice ama. Required to practice diving by retrieving speckled pebbles in the shallows. Forbidden to go out to the sea. It was boring for her. She was already too advanced an underwater swimmer, knew how to hyperventilate before going under and how to preserve the oxygen she took down with her by relaxing and never expending unnecessary effort.

  She was tall for her age, taller by a head and thinner than any of the other apprentice amas. Such a long, slender neck that her contemporaries called her jotu, crane. She was self-conscious of her slimness until Harimi told her it was something that had been held back two generations for her, that great-grandmother Amira had been similarly constructed.

  It indeed did seem that her slenderness made her a better swimmer, allowed her to slice through the water with more speed and surely more grace.

  She became a full-fledged ama at age fourteen. Began accompanying mother down the steeps of deep water, sharing those special regions with her. They swam along the bottom nearly within reach of each other, pointing things out, signaling. Mother would indicate an abalone and swim on, leaving it for Setsu to pry at its cling and take up to the boat to father. Pleasing father, allowing him to brag at night in the tavern about how many Setsu had brought up.

  Pearls.

  When Setsu was seventeen she found an oyster that had done its best to hide from her in an inconspicuous underwater crevice. The pearl in it was like its soul, she thought, a lustrous twelve millimeters round. She was reluctant to sell it, kept it for a while wrapped in a square of silk in a tiny white lacquered box. She thought possibly it was the part of her spirit that was great-grandmother Amira that convinced her to let it go to a dealer in Kanazawa. She put the money away.

  By then, as expected, sister Michiko had also become an ama. And sister Yukie, the youngest, had begun apprenticing. Michiko was never a consistently good diver. One day she’d dive acceptably, the next she’d use any excuse to get out of having to go down. She confided to Setsu that when she was only thirty feet under she felt as though she were being crushed, and at sixty feet she often was overcome with panic. Yukie apparently would be even less of an ama because she really didn’t want to be one, was merely tolerating the path of tradition.

  Father died.

  And Hegurajima was not the same. The presence of his. absence was everywhere. His ashes were kept in a porcelain jar within a blue brocaded silk box. Placed on a widened window ledge from which the sea could be seen. One afternoon at dusk, mother took the urn out a hundred yards from shore. Removed its lid rather ceremoniously. Scattered the ashes. They were momentarily a gray, unwilling wisp on the surface, then the vigor of the sea took them.

  That didn’t help enough. A few weeks later mother decided on more drastic action: they’d move. All the way across the southern midsection of Japan to the prefecture of Mie. A hamlet there called Wago was almost entirely inhabited by amas.

  As soon as they were halfway settled in a small rented house nearly sides against sides with two other similar Wago houses, they began diving. Not from a boat as they were accustomed, but from the shore. It wasn’t a lenient, sandy shore. There were jagged rocks all the way to the waterline, even when the tide was out, and the surf was intent on pounding belligerently against them. Setsu tried to locate a spot where the suck and pull was not so strong, where she and Harimi and Michiko could safely enter the water. Finally, an ama who was familiar with those shores showed Setsu a nearly concealed narrow inlet, little more than a slot really but protected so it offered easy enough access.

  Numerous amas were working these waters, and although in a sense they were competitive, they weren’t territorial. The mother sea and its offerings, according to ama code, were there for them all.

  Some days, but only some, Yukie also dove. Long before then she’d completed her apprenticeship and was a capable diver. Unlike Michiko, being underwater didn’t disturb Yukie, except that it wasn’t where she ever wanted to be. Harimi didn’t take her to task for having such an attitude, didn’t call her lazy or any of that. Neither did Setsu. Setsu felt that this phase of Yukie’s would eventually be dispelled by the ama spirit that, surely as her heart, was in her. For the time being, however, while they dove Yukie would usually watch from the perch of a rock high enough so not even her feet could get wet.

  Harimi was diving differently. Setsu noticed. For one thing Harimi wasn’t resting frequently enough. Nor was she coming up from being deep slow enough to compensate for the changes in pressure. Several times after she’d surfaced Setsu saw trickles of blood from Harimi’s nostrils. Worst of all Harimi was taking greater chances, swimming down into treacherous places that in the past she’d have avoided, such as chasms created by piles of boulders that very well might at that moment choose to be disturbed, cave in and bury her.

  It got so that when they were diving, Setsu had to be so mindful of Harimi she was unable to give adequate attention to what she herself was doing. She had a long talk with Harimi, during which, without being disrespectful, she more than merely mentioned Harimi’s foolhardy behavior.

  Harimi didn’t deny it. With caring eyes into caring eyes, Setsu suggested that Harimi stop diving, at least for a while. Not a word of resistance from Harimi. She admitted that her self-endangering ways had been deliberate. She promised to stay out of the water. Anyway, she said, diving was no longer as gratifying for her as it had been, probably never would be again.

  So, then it was up to Setsu and Michiko to earn the money that was needed. Each day they sold their catch to the men who waited onshore, wholesalers who in turn sold to other wholesalers at the seafood market in Nagoya. Setsu learned early that it didn’t pay to bargain too hard with the dealers. Whenever she had, they’d left her standing there with her catch and no one to sell it to except a local dealer, who, aware of the circumstances, paid her even less.

  September came to Wago, and quite suddenly the sea turned cold. The diving season was over. For something to do many of the amas went to work at the tuna cannery in Suzaka.

  During the third week of that month an unpredicted typhoon blew up from the East China Sea. The cultured pearl farms located in Ago Bay were especially hard hit. Many of their wooden slatted rafts out in the bay were demolished or extensively damaged. The underwater netting attached to those rafts was ripped every which way, and from the pocketlike containers of those nets hundreds of thousands of pearl oysters were strewn over the bottom of the bay—oysters that had been implanted with nuclei and were well along in the lengthy process of developing pearls.

  The pearl farmers were distraught, stood to lose everything. They knew all too well that oysters were temperamental creatures. Oysters disliked being disturbed and might demonstrate that by dying. Their only recourse was to retrieve as many as they could as gently as possible.

  Everything would depend on the amas of Wago.

  The pearl farmers struck a liberal deal with them: so much for each live oyster each diver retrieved, nothing for the dead ones. It would be costly, but such incentive was needed—the water was cold and getting colder by the day.

  The amas went to work.

  For warmth most of them waited until the sun was well up before beginning. A few, including Setsu, Michiko and Yukie, started at first light. Skimmed along the bottom filling their baskets, oyster after oyster increasing their earnings. Fortunately the bay wasn’t very deep, at the most about seven fathoms in some areas, on the average about four, so Setsu, Michiko and Yukie were each able to make ten or twelve consecutive dives before having to climb up onto one of the rafts and sit within a blanket until their skin regained color and their teeth stopped chattering. To chase their shivers they drank hot sake from a thermos and swigged cups of plum brandy.

  Yukie was being extremely helpful, not a peep of complaint from her. She worked as arduously as either Setsu or Michiko, matched them dive for dive. Setsu was proud of her, told her so.

  They dove for five days straight and would have kept on i
f it hadn’t been for a dispute among the pearl farmers. The oysters all looked alike. They were all of the species Pinctada martensii or, as they were called, akoyas. Not large, only about four inches in diameter. How then could the pearl farmers determine which oysters and how many belonged to whom? Three days bickering before equitable portions were settled upon.

  Setsu, Michiko and Yukie returned to work. The water seemed much colder. No matter, they dove determinedly. Twenty out of every hundred oysters they retrieved were dead, adding to the increasing dead piles located at various points along the shore. Ago was an irregular bay with a great many coves and islands and small inlets. When Setsu, Michiko and Yukie had gleaned one place they moved to the next. After twenty-three days, well into October, the bottom of Ago had been mostly picked clean and the rafts and holding nets repaired and all the surviving oysters placed back into their peaceful pockets.

  The Yoshida amas celebrated their windfall by taking the train to Nagoya for a day of shopping. New shoes, some tortoise-looking barrettes and some ribbons for their hair. Setsu bought Harimi a new dress mostly made of silk, a green dress of such a lively shade and pattern that Harimi had to be persuaded into it. They had a noon meal at a modest restaurant off Sukara-dori, then went to the Tokugawa Museum of Art, where they marveled at all forty-three parts of the Genji-monogatariemaki scroll by Fujiwara Tahayoshi.

  The following spring.

  Harimi stopped blaming Hegurajima and began expressing her longing for it. She decided to return there, but only for a visit, with her brother and his wife, she said, a short stay.

  Setsu knew better.

  No sooner was Harimi gone than Yukie left for Tokyo. No amount of reasoning from Setsu could talk her out of it. She was meant to be a city girl, she contended, could take care of herself. For a start she had nearly enough money from her Ago Bay earnings.

  Setsu realized then why Yukie had dived so earnestly at Ago. She knew approximately how much money Yukie had and how swiftly and dispassionately Tokyo would eat it up. It was painful for her to imagine Yukie at the mercy of Tokyo. At the train station along with her good-bye Setsu stuffed into Yukie’s purse what remained from her own Ago earnings and, as well, some from her pearl savings. Instead of crying when the train pulled out she bit on the knuckle of her thumb.

  That same spring was the one of William.

  William from San Francisco.

  He occurred the day Setsu was diving alone from the rocks a few miles from Toba. Observing her from an impersonal distance. By now Setsu was used to such watching by foreign tourists. Normally after ten minutes, when they hadn’t seen as much as they expected (perhaps a flash of bare breast or bottom every so often but all else happening underwater out of sight), they went away.

  Not he. An hour from the time when she’d first noticed him he was still there. Wasn’t that in a way a tribute? she thought.

  She’d taken three catches ashore to transfer them to her larger basket and still he kept his distance. So, on the fourth time it was somewhat forgivable that he came closer. Not intrusively close but close enough for his raised voice to be heard by her.

  “I would like to take photographs of you,” were his first words. He had two serious cameras slung around his neck. “I’m a professional photographer. I want to photograph you.”

  Setsu returned to the water but she didn’t stay in as long as before. Brought back only a single small awabi for her main basket.

  He’d come closer so there was no need for him to shout and, keeping his eyes fixed on her face, not once scanning her nudity, he told her his name and what he was and verified by presenting her a card.

  “I’ll pay to photograph you,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re beautiful.”

  Setsu concealed that she was flattered. “How much will you pay?”

  He told her.

  She thought it too much, more than she’d earn over three weeks of diving. She kept that to herself, consented with one stoic nod.

  It wasn’t until near the end of the second roll of film that he asked her to smile, just the trace of a smile, calm, gentle. It went well with the fragility of her face, didn’t disturb the composure of her cheeks and eyes.

  She was naturally graceful, her wrists and hands never without tone. Perhaps that was due to all the stretch and length that had been required of her body underwater. He said, this William, that it was impossible to take a bad picture of her.

  She was surprised how susceptible she was to compliments.

  The whirr-cluck after whirr-cluck of the shutters. The intervals as he dug into his jacket pockets for more film to reload. Those were opportunities for her discreetly to study him, to see how tall he was and to like his brown hair and intensely blue eyes. She decided he had a kind American face and very competent fingers. She wasn’t sure of how she felt about the chest hair that showed at the V of his unbuttoned shirt.

  They were by then calling each other by name, occasionally sharing laughter, relating and responding as two people usually do when caught up in a mutual endeavor. And when, after two, nearly three hours, the photographing was done and Setsu dressed and took up her baskets and she and this William American walked together in the direction of Toba, they both felt regret that it was over.

  And so it wasn’t.

  He had rented a car. Drove her to her house in Wago. She dropped off her baskets of catch and went on with him to where he was staying: a ryokan-type hotel called the Toba Seaside.

  He never once hurried her, and that was good.

  She never once pretended coyness, and that was good.

  He didn’t believe in the original sin and in her Shinto beliefs there hadn’t ever been one.

  She felt for the first time in her life that she was as beautiful as she truly was. He caused her to feel it all the more with his considerate lovemaking.

  She stayed the night, and in the morning slept beyond his quiet departure. On the floor next to the sleeping mat she found a slip of hotel notepaper bearing in his neat printing his full name and his San Francisco address and telephone number along with the words please write or call.

  During the next few weeks Setsu looked at that slip of paper numerous times. It helped her see William again. However, she did not look at it so much after she’d missed her period and was told she was pregnant. She folded it three times and carried it in her pocket with other things awhile. It became so soiled and frayed that ultimately she discarded it.

  She legally named the child Ayako after her maternal great-grandfather. The boy was now eight years and eight months old, and there he was, barefoot, bareheaded, nothing on but a pair of white cotton twill shorts hanging from the studs of his hipbones, his innocent skin deeply sunned, so the whites of his Asian-shaped eyes appeared all the more white. There he was, evidently feeling confined by this boat but not being a trouble, standing opposite her in the prow, unaware that he was being lovingly studied, preoccupied with wondering the sky as the night was beginning to bring out stars.

  His middle name, out of respect, was William, and she preferred to call him that, or Chi’sa sakana (little fish), her pet name for him because he was such an excellent swimmer.

  Setsu both loved and liked him. Never in her eyes was he regretted, never a mistake but a blessing. And he was devoted to her. She had kept him close, with her wherever, and whether or not that was good for his psychology it kept him out of range of the ridicule most part-East part-West children are subjected to.

  Night now.

  Michiko rolled out the three sleeping mats, placed them, as usual, side by side on the deck. The three lay upon them within touch of one another but not yet touching. Setsu allowed her warm friend tiredness to overcome her. Her last thoughts before sleep were a premonition and a promise: despite today’s lack of success this pearling trip was going to be very profitable. And when it was over they would go home to Hegurajima and to Harimi there, who now enjoyed diving only every so often for memories
.

  THE NEXT MORNING

  As soon as there was definition to go by, Bertin got the boat under way. In and out between the islands for a half hour before shutting down and throwing out the drogue. There was no special reason for stopping there off the tip of that island. Bertin merely had a hunch that was where they should try the bottom.

  He was wrong. Although he didn’t give Michiko, who would be diving today, much chance to explore the area. When she went down twice and came up with nothing, Bertin started the engine and signaled her to come aboard.

  All day it went like that. Bertin didn’t give any one place enough time, impatiently hopped around, from here to there, listening to his hunches, and no doubt that was the reason why, as the sun was going, all they had to show for the effort were three small pearls of a quality worth no more than a drink at some bar.

  Bertin again anchored the boat leeward of one of the islands and well into the night sat on the aft deck gulping from a bottle of cheap brandy. Cursing everything, the entire situation all the way back to Miller and his fucking three nines. Should have listened to people he’d met who’d once been involved in pearling, Bertin thought. Evident now that they were right about all the pearl oyster beds having been picked clean and all the places where pearl oysters had been so abundant being now polluted. All this effort was just another of his asshole tries for the big money, Bertin told himself—constantly in his head but never in his hand.

  Double gulps from the bottle didn’t quench his bitterness.