I felt somehow heavyhearted as we left Miyazaki. Route 10 to Kagoshima was flat, with nothing unusual about it. Kyushu’s mountainous terrain had come to an end.
The ballad began at a leisurely pace, with soft, deep rumble of a bass, like a 4B lead pencil, with the heartbreaking sound of a guitar shimmering in the light.
There is nothing to say;
I’ll not be going home.
The dying day
As I walked with her,
Gazing at the river,
A train passing over the bridge…
The cold spring water at the train crossing in South Aso was again coursing through me. Slow, penetrating…
“I like this ballad.”
Though the day was dying
I walked with her;
Though the day was dying
I walked with her.
Blood was flowing through that reckless man. His bluntness had a gentle tone, as though to say that it is all right to weep.
All, whatever their appearance,
Have vanished one by one.
And at the very end
We two long remained
Until we grew weary as well.
Would Nagoyan, in some time yet to come, be walking with her at the end of the day through the streets of Tokyo, streets unknown to me? Had he done so before? And at that time, would all that was happening now be quite gone from my mind?
I need nothing;
I need nothing else.
As long as she’s there…
Though the day was dying
I walked with her;
Though the day was dying
I walked with her.
“In the live version, it goes, ‘Even as I was freaking out, I walked with her’.”
This was our song. I rewound the tape again and again and listened to it.
Such was my mood. I was happy to listen to it all the way to Kagoshima. It was just the right tune for this beat-up old car. And, slowly but surely, even talking was becoming irksome, for I could see the dead end looming before us. And beyond that lay depression. I quickly picked up the song and sang my own words.
I sing ’cos it’s hot; I sing ’cos I’m scared.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
Even as I was freaking out, I walked with her.
The sky before us was clouded over. I realized later that this was not due to the weather, but rather to the volcanic smoke of Sakurajima. The mountain was slumping into the sea. From the streets of Kagoshima across the bay came flickering reflections of light. Even from that distance, I was struck by how large the provincial capital was. And yet, the excitement I had felt at seeing Miyazaki was not there. Something rather significant seemed to be missing.
We rode in air-conditioned silence into the city. It certainly had a grand appearance, with many more imposing buildings than we saw in Miyazaki. There were bronze statues all around and rows of neatly trimmed, bonsai-like trees. Despite all of our foolishness, the life of the community was proceeding quite normally.
“Look at all the white cars!”
“Oh?”
“I’ve heard that with all the volcanic ash that falls, black cars don’t sell. I wonder if we’ll get any today…”
“Not in th’ summer, I s’pose. The direction of the wind changes wi’ th’ season.”
Years before, while still a child, I had heard about Kagoshima from my Aunt Yasuko. She was herself from the city. My mother’s younger brother, my Uncle Toshi, had met and wed her years before when he was working there. I was trying to remember it all, when I heard Nagoyan shriek. (I mused whether there was any day in the year that he didn’t shriek at least once.)
“Whit is it wit’ ye now?”
“My company! The Kagoshima branch.”
“Where?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mark for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.
“Whit o’ it?!”
“Well, wouldn’t it give you the jitters? Everybody working as usual, while we…”
“While ye’re getting’ yerself drowned and pishin’ in yer breekums?”
“Never mind,” replied Nagoyan sullenly. But he had clearly lost his high spirits. We passed Kagoshima University, and though I might have ignored them, the sight of the campus and the students caused me to fall into a funk as well. There they were, going to school as usual, chatting about their love lives or their part-time jobs.
How stupid it all seemed. And yet that kind of life, which we had put behind us, now lay once again in full view.
Our parents, the hospital, and the police would be still looking for us, but none of these people here would know our faces. The odd-looking Luce with its Nagoya license plate would probably arouse no attention. We were, to be sure, missing persons, but still somehow getting by.
And yet, I thought of at least calling my parents sometime.
We continued on through the city streets, still traveling the national highway. I gently mumbled that this way was leading to the end, but all he did was sing – in a somewhat hoarse voice – “Love is Blue.”
At Ibusuki, we went into a hot springs. The water was quite hot, so I made quick work of it and returned to the changing room, where I wondered, as I luxuriated in front of the electric fan, whether Aunt Yasuko had come from here. She died when I was still in middle school, so I don’t remember her very well, though I do know that she always spoke to me in standard speech. At the time, it had seemed refined and elegant. She told me that there was near her native town a mysterious island to which one could only cross when the tide was out.
“And then the sea makes way for a sandy pathway that one can walk. Let’s go there some day!”
“Like Umi-no-Nakamichi in Fukuoka?”
“Umi-no-Nakamichi is a broad and splendid road running through the sea, isn’t it? I’m talking about a narrow sand path that’s almost always buried under the water. It’s rare that we can walk it.”
I wrote an essay about that when I was in the fourth year of primary school, but Kagoshima was far away, and my aunt died before we could go there together. I wondered whether the place she was talking about was nearby.
I called out resolutely to the man fanning himself at the reception desk, “Is there not a place near here where ye can walk ower the sand t’ an island?”
He told me, speaking in Kagoshima dialect, that I must be thinking of Chirin-ga-shima.
“Yes, yes. Is it far?”
“No”, he said. “Quite close.” I was to turn just before the
national recreational village, and as it was just half-tide, I wouldn’t have any trouble.
I thanked him in a loud voice and bowed. “’Tis nuthin’,”
he replied.
There was indeed a sand path, formed like a gently curving S, that led to a green island shaped like a beret tossed onto the sea, with a slight indentation in the middle.
“If you built a castle here,” remarked Nagoyan, “it would look like Mont St. Michel.”
The sensation of walking on top of the sea was quite pleasant, but it was nonetheless hot. The heat seemed to bear down like searing, transparent crystals, penetrating the skull.
“Eeeeh!”
Nagoyan had screeched again. I looked and saw lying in the sand a dead starfish some twenty-five centimeters in diameter.
Gazing toward the Kagoshima side of the sea that was now partitioned by the sand path, I saw rising up into the offing something resembling a yellowish ball.
“Whit’s that?”
Nagoyan too let out an exclamation, as he turned to look. The ball disappeared, then reappeared, popping up out of the water. It was moving in our direction. I could make out a bald head and then realized that the swimming form was that of a sea goblin.
In the shallows, which went on for a remarkable distance, the goblin now stood straight up and walked toward us, swaying its arms back and forth as it parted the waves. Though hardly tall, it seemed to have no trace of body fat – a real six-pack – and had a chiseled face. It was wearing dazzlingly crimson swimming trunks, so that when the waves receded, bringing its nether region into view, I didn’t know where to look. Nagoyan glanced at me, as though to plead “What are we to do?” but as our eyes had met, I thought that we would have to exchange greetings. The goblin – or I should now say Red Trunks, a yokanise, all right – came closer, then looking directly at us, asked, “Let me take your photo.”
There was no salutation, no inquiry as to where we had come from.
“Photo?”
In echoing the question, Nagoyan sounded as though his voice were emanating from the crown of his head. I responded that we hadn’t any camera.
To my surprise, the yokanise produced from a mountain of clothes he had piled next to the dead starfish, a throwaway.
“Let’s use this to get you two on film.”
“But ye’ve other photos on it.”
“Only the local scenery. And that’s something we’ve always got.”
So saying, the yokanise had us stand with the island in the background.
“Here we go: one, two, three…” He pressed the shutter.
“How about one with you too?”
Before I could get the words out, the man had, with a grin, wound the film and offered the camera to Nagoyan.
“Really…?”
“The sun’s strong, so be careful.”
We bade him farewell and continued on our way to the island.
“A bit of an odd character,” whispered Nagoyan.
“Ye call a man like that a yokanise.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s the local word fer a hunk”
It was one of the few words of the dialect that I knew.
“Eh? Is he your type, Hana-chan?”
Nagoyan was rolling with laughter.
“No, no!” I blushingly protested, but Nagoyan went on laughing as far as the island.
The way across the tiny beach of Chirin-ga-shima abruptly ended with a cliff covered in tall grass; there was no path to the other side. At the edge of the beach was a gray rock bulging into the sea. It seemed to me that the entire area had been sealed off.
“Is this all there is?”
“It’d seem so.”
“So we can’t go onto the island.”
“’Tis a dead-end.”
“Hmm. So it is.”
“We have no choice but t’ turn aboot.”
The way back was nothing but long and hot. The starfish was still lying dead where we had seen it, but there was no sign of the hunk in his red trunks. Now that I thought about it, I realized that while he had had his clothes there, he was without a towel. An odd thing to remember.
“Here it was, wasn’t it?”
Nagoyan was also thinking of the man.
“Say!”
It was only for an instant, but I detected a fragrance, a strong fragrance.
“Now that’s a pleasant scent!” said Nagoyan.
“Lavender!”
“It’s lavender!”
Wafting across the path where no a single blade of grass grew was the distinct scent of lavender.
I stood motionless, deeply breathing in the fragrance I had yearned so long for.
“Hana-chan, the tide’s coming in.”
If Nagoyan hadn’t said that, I might have remained there forever.
The sandbar had waned to a mere sliver, as the sea moved from both sides to reclaim it. We quickened our pace in the burning sun and at last completed the last leg back. Reaching solid ground, we glanced back: the waves had washed away our path.
“It’s quite gone,” said Nagoyan.
“It’s time we were goin’ back,” I declared. It was the first time I had uttered the idea. Nagoyan responded only with a tight-mouthed nod. When we came to the traffic light that would put us on the national highway, he remarked, “But this isn’t the end of our journey, is it?”
“Don’cha wanna go as far as the Satsuma Peninsula?”
It occurred to me that it was there that I wished to bid farewell to the departing summer.