When they got home, his mother poured Isaku some wine from a jar. He put it to his lips and felt its warmth spread through his mouth.

His mother took a sip. 'It's good stuff. I've never had anything like this before. Wine made from rice is so different,' she said, shaking her head in wonder. The full-bodied wine not only made Isaku feel hot all over but also put him in a buoyant mood.

'Next spring Father'll be back. I hope he comes back fit and well,' said Isaku to his mother, who quickly turned round.

'Don't be so stupid! Of course he'll come back fit and well. Your father's a cut above any normal man. He's not the sort who gets ill,' she said angrily.

Isaku held a sip of wine in his mouth. Thoughts of how he wanted to become a good fisherman before his father came back to the village pa.s.sed through his mind. Also strong enough to lift one of those bales of rice easily.

The wine started to go to his head, and everything seemed to sway. Drinking the rest of his wine in one gulp, he staggered over to his straw bedding and lay down. He was asleep in no time at all.

When he woke up, the room was almost in darkness. The smell of rice gruel cooking hung in the air, and he could see his little brother and sister sitting beside the fire.

His mother stepped over to the ancestral table and lit the wick protruding from a dish containing some oil. His brother and sister stood up and moved over to the little platter, their eyes glued to the light. It was luminous. Isaku raised himself and gazed at the light; a thin plume of smoke drifted from its flickering flame.

The gay atmosphere in the village continued beyond New Year. Wine in hand, the men visited each other's houses for drinking parties, while the women indulged in chatting over tea. There was even talk of an old man who had said he would happily meet his maker now that he had tasted white sugar.

Every time his mother heard that other families were steaming their rice and eating it, she would shake her head and frown.

'These things don't last for ever. Those who aren't strong-minded in fortunate times will be the ones crying in the end,' she muttered, as though telling herself as much as anyone else. In their house the rice was used sparingly, and only in gruel.

Even on calm days they saw fewer ships pa.s.sing. Most of the rice shipments would be made before the end of the year, and it was rare now for a ship to set sail and risk stormy seas. Not too long after New Year they sighted a large vessel, clearly a clan ship from its crest in the middle of the sail, as it tossed and pitched its way across the horizon before disappearing behind the cape.

At the end of January, Kura gave birth to a girl. Takichi had wanted a boy, and at first seemed disappointed. But he soon came around when the village chief not only gave them a gift of rice and wine but named the baby Tama, or Jewel.

Isaku went with his mother to Takichi's house; she carried a bowl containing a handful of rice. There was a sacred straw festoon hanging in the doorway, and the baby lay asleep beside Kura on the tatami matting lent to them by the village chief. Isaku's mother put the bowl down in front of the baby, where several other offerings had been placed, and then pressed her hands together in prayer. It was said that the souls of dead ancestors would return from across the sea to take shelter in the wombs of pregnant women in the village. Kura's newborn was therefore the reincarnation of such an ancestor: hence the relatives gathering to give offerings.

Isaku sat beside his mother with the other relatives around the fire. They exchanged celebratory greetings and filled each other's cups with wine. Isaku's mother seemed to be thinking of Teru, who had died a year earlier, as she cast her eyes toward the baby. It was said that many years were needed before reincarnation could come about, so no doubt Teru would now still be in the tranquillity offered by death.

The relatives talked about how Kura's performance in the ritual was the reason for the village's having been blessed with O-fune-sama and how joyous an occasion it was to have the village chief naming the baby.

'Tama's certainly lucky to be born when we've got rice from O-fune-sama. If she eats rice, she won't get ill; she'll grow up healthy,' said one of the relatives, to nods of agreement from those listening. Kura looked contented as she lay resting on her side.

The salt-making continued, and Isaku took his turn, spending the night tending the fires on the beach in the middle of a snowstorm. In the morning, after he had put out the fires under the cauldrons, some women came down to the sh.o.r.e carrying wooden tubs. Tami was among them.

Isaku watched as the women scooped the salt from the cauldrons into the tubs. His eyes naturally focused on Tami's body. Her face had become long and thin, and it seemed she had grown a little taller. She was slender now but more solid around the hips, and had suddenly taken on a more womanly air.

A painful, stifling feeling came over him. Isaku knew that Takichi had had relations with Kura when they had happened to meet in the forest, and he longed to approach Tami in the same way. But he could not imagine being able to get near Tami, let alone speak to her if the opportunity did arise.

Tami attached two tubs full of salt to her bucket yoke and walked off through the snow towards the village chief's house. Isaku put out the fire in the little hut and made his way up the path from the beach.

With no more ships pa.s.sing, salt-making lost its meaning. The village was buried in deep snow. At times Isaku and his family would try to warm themselves against the freezing cold by sitting with their backs to the fire. A straw mat hung in the entranceway; by morning it would be as stiff as a board and frozen to the doorposts, so they would have to beat it with a stick to get it free.

Once February came the cold became a little less severe and the sea was calm for several days at a time. When the first sightings of plum blossom were made up in the mountains, the village chief ordered the salt-making stopped. The season for O-fune-sama had come to an end.

6.

The first signs of spring grew more p.r.o.nounced as the days pa.s.sed and the snow covering the village started to melt. The houses shuddered as snow slid off the roofs. Steam floated up from the wet straw of the thatched roofs.

With the coming of spring people became more lively. As the temperature rose the fish came nearer to sh.o.r.e, too, and sh.e.l.lfish started to appear among the rocks. Each household's stock of rice meant that there was no shortage of grain, and with the fruits of the sea also ripe for picking, the villagers could eat well indeed.

Isaku noticed the change in people's faces. A look of contentment replaced the stern expression in their eyes. Some men sat in the sun in front of their houses smoking, while others lay idly on the sh.o.r.e.

Isaku heard that some of the villagers were secretly talking about a trip to sell salt to neighbouring villages. A middle-aged man Isaku met on the path looked dolefully up towards the mountain path and muttered, 'I wonder if we have to go and sell salt this year, too?'

Every year, at the end of February, the salt made during the winter would be carried to the next village and exchanged for grain. But with bales of rice stacked up in each household, there was no need to go selling salt for a measly amount of grain.

The salt was heavy, and carrying it up the mountain path and over the pa.s.s was an unenviable task. People had slipped and broken their legs, and, even walking from sunrise to sunset, it took a full three days to reach the next village.

Isaku's mother would be the one to go from his family, and even she frowned silently when Isaku said, 'Seems quite a few people say they don't want to sell salt.'

One day when the sea was running high, Isaku made his way to the village chief's house, where a meeting was to be held. The earthen floor area was full of men and women. The chief was sitting at the fireside, and beside him was the elder, who rose to his feet and stood in front of them.

'Those chosen to sell salt will leave at dawn tomorrow. I hear, though, that some of you don't want to go. Do you realise how stupid that would be? We go every year. What would the people in the next village think if we didn't this year? No doubt they'd think we'd got hold of something that meant we didn't need any grain. It'd soon be known that O-fune-sama had blessed us with her bounty. Didn't that occur to you?' The old man's voice bristled with rage.

The faces of those a.s.sembled took on an ashen look and they nodded solemnly.

The elder silently surveyed the villagers before saying, 'You'll leave tomorrow morning. The only food you'll take with you will be millet dumplings and dried fish. Not one grain of rice! Don't do anything to suggest that we're not on the brink of starvation.' The old man's eyes again took on a steely glint as he returned to his position by the fire.

The villagers dispersed and Isaku headed home. He told his mother about the elder's speech and then said, 'I'll go this year.'

'A weakling like you carry salt?' his mother snapped.

The humiliation Isaku had felt when he was unable to lift the bale of rice returned. His mother had laughed when she called him a sissy, but this time he could sense contempt and annoyance in the word 'weakling'.

The next morning his mother got up at the Hour of the Ox (about 2 a.m.), made some millet dumplings, and wrapped them in seaweed along with some dried saury. At the Hour of the Tiger (about 4 a.m.) she put on her shoes, picked up a stout walking-stick, and left the house.

Isaku stood in front of the door and watched the line of people emerge from the village chief's house and head off on their journey to sell salt. The sky turned a shade of blue. With bales of salt on their backs, the people steadied themselves with their sticks and advanced with deliberate steps.

By the time they reached the mountain path the morning sunlight was spreading over part of the sea. Eventually the line of people disappeared into the trees, past the last patches of snow on the trail.

They reappeared off the mountain trail seven days later in the early afternoon. Isaku rushed towards the path with the others. The line of people seemed to notice them and stopped. They put down their loads and spread themselves along the path, sitting down or lying flat on their backs. Isaku ran over to his mother. There were bloodstains on her shoulders, and her feet were caked with dirt and blood from burst blisters. Her lips were dry, and her chest was heaving. Isaku and the other villagers used bucket yokes to carry the bales of grain from there. His mother stood up and made her way falteringly down the slope.

The straw bales of grain were stacked up in the yard at the village chief's house. Isaku's mother and the others dragged their sticks wearily into the house and sat down, their legs folded formally underneath them.

Isaku was standing in the yard, but from the atmosphere in the house he sensed that something was amiss. With frightened looks on their faces, every one of the people inside seemed to be clamouring to report something to the village chief. The chief's face turned pale.

Before long the news spread that when the people selling salt had visited the labour contractor, who also doubled as a salt merchant, they had been questioned by two men. These men were from a shipping agency in a port at the southern tip of the island that ran ships on the western circuit; they had come to inquire about a twelve-hundred-bale ship which was missing. The ship, fully laden with rice and pottery, had set sail at the end of the previous year with favourable winds behind her. It seemed that the weather had turned foul along the way, but the people at the shipping agency had not been particularly worried, because the ship's captain was a veteran sailor who had weathered many a storm in the past. But they did mention that the previous spring the ship had undergone major repairs, with rotten timbers, rusty metal fittings and so on being replaced. She was an aging vessel known as the Old Granny; it was thirteen years since she had been put into commission.

The ship would have headed north along the west coast of the island, but had disappeared along the way. She failed to reach her destination, and there were also no signs of her having taken shelter in another port. The ship's captain was an honest man; it was unthinkable that he should have made off in the ship in order to steal the cargo. Either she had been blown far out to sea, where she sank, or she had been smashed to pieces on the coast.

If the ship had been wrecked along the coast, it should be possible to retrieve part of the cargo. Because they a.s.sumed that their search should be limited to the western coastline, this was where the shipping agency had dispatched their men.

The timing of the ship's disappearance more or less matched the appearance of O-fune-sama, but since the vessel that rode up on the reef in front of the village had a capacity of around three hundred bales, it was clear that these men were searching for a different ship. Of course, even if the ships were different, the fact that these men were looking for a missing ship put the village in terrible jeopardy.

Isaku and the others looked anxious as they jostled their way into the dirt floor area and stared at the village chief's face.

The chief moved back to the fireplace and talked quietly with the more senior members of the community. There was still evidence in the village of all sorts of things brought to them by O-fune-sama. While the ship's timber had been carried away into the forest, the rice and other commodities from the cargo had been distributed among the families. If these men had someone guide them to the village and took a look inside the houses, they would find things that people of their station in life would not normally have, and would become suspicious. No doubt they would judge that the villagers had indeed plundered cargo from a wrecked ship.

The bailiffs would come to arrest the villagers and subject them to harsh interrogation. In the course of such questioning, the village's age-old practice of luring O-fune-sama would be revealed. If that came to pa.s.s, the village chief and many others, including women and children, would be doomed to a ghastly end. The village would cease to exist. The fact that the men from the shipping agency had come as far as the next village, and had gone out of their way to question those selling salt, was sure proof that their village was one of the areas where they presumed the ship might have run aground.

All the men in council with the village chief had turned a shade of grey; some were using both hands to stop their knees shaking violently. Isaku himself suddenly started to tremble.

The slightly built village chief said something to the elder, who nodded, got to his feet, and walked over to the a.s.sembled villagers.

'Listen carefully. We're going to hide every last thing up in the mountains. Everything O-fune-sama bestowed upon us. You'll build huts up there to store the things in, but first of all we must get everything into the forest. The huts'll be built afterward,' said the old man in a hollow voice.

The villagers bowed, stood up, and scurried to their houses.

Isaku watched his mother get wearily to her feet, and he followed her as she shuffled along, supporting herself on her stick. When he thought of his mother's gashed shoulders and feet, and how she had doggedly carried all those bales of rice, he felt miserable about his own lack of strength.

When his mother stepped inside their house, she stooped over one of the bales of rice stacked on the dirt floor and lifted it onto her shoulder. The heavy weight was obviously a struggle for her as she staggered out the back door. Isaku followed, carrying the jug of rapeseed oil and a tub of soy sauce.

His mother plodded slowly up the narrow path into the mountains behind the village. Occasionally she paused to catch her breath. Isaku looked on fearfully, worrying that his mother's back might break.

Trees stretched all around as his mother stepped off the path into the forest. Sunlight slipped through the gaps in the forest canopy, allowing peach trees to blossom in the smallest of open s.p.a.ces. His mother laid the bale of rice behind a large rock and sat down, panting for breath, the sweat dripping from her brow.

'Cut some wood with the axe and make a foundation,' she said, getting to her feet and heading back towards the path.

Isaku returned home and grabbed a tub full of wine, his axe and a hatchet, before going back into the forest. He sank the blade of his axe into the trunk of a tree; after felling it he trimmed off the branches with his hatchet and laid it down behind the rock. When he had several such trees lined up side by side, his mother placed the bales of straw on top. It was almost evening by the time they had stacked the eighth and last bale, part of which had already been used, and Isaku covered them with a straw raincoat and some matting.

That night his mother broke out in a terrible fever. Isaku applied a poultice of medicinal herbs to the cracked skin on her shoulders and feet, but pus oozed from the wounds. His mother clenched her teeth and groaned in pain.

The next morning Isaku made some vegetable porridge and fed his prostrate mother, as well as his younger brother and sister, before going into the forest with Isokichi. They worked hard putting together a makeshift hut from pieces of wood. Their main concern was to keep the rain and dew off the bales of rice, so they attached a gra.s.s thatch roof to the planks at the bottom. Shadows of branches swayed on the rooftop.

When they got back home, their mother was sitting by the fire roasting beans.

'Is it all right for you to be up?' Isaku asked, but his mother remained silent. Her face was pallid and sickly, her cheeks sunken, and her splayed legs blue and swollen.

He moved the poultice of medicinal herbs from the corner of the earthen floor area next to his mother.

'Go to the chief's house and let him know that every grain of rice has been carried into the forest and that you've built a hut over it,' said his mother, and she continued to roast the beans.

Isaku nodded and left the house. The western sky glowed bright red, and the sea shimmered below. The colour of the sky reminded him of the blood of the murdered deckhands. He hurried along the village path.

An eerie silence reigned over the village. At this time of year there was much to be gathered on the sh.o.r.e, but there was not a soul to be seen on the beach. Even the children sensed the mood of the adults, and they were not out playing on the village path. After hiding all the rice and other plundered goods in the mountains, the villagers spent their days cooped up indoors, holding their breath. Isaku's mother tended her wounds while she dried the grain from the other village or wove cloth on her loom.

Isaku spent his time repairing his fishing-tackle, occasionally looking out the back door up the path to the next village, or out at the sea. If the men from the shipping agency were to come, it would be either along the mountain pa.s.s or by ship along the coast. There was talk of placing lookouts near the pa.s.s and on the promontories, but this was overruled because, as some people pointed out, if the lookouts were noticed, they would invite suspicion.

Isaku overheard the men of the village discussing how punishment might be carried out. He was terrified. They talked of people being whipped, then dragged around by a rope before being crucified upside-down and stuck with a spear until their entrails hung out. Of people being hacked with a saw before being crucified. If it were found out that they had plundered a ship's cargo and beaten its captain to death, no doubt they would be subjected to a similar fate.

Only one path led out of the village, and to get to the next one had to follow the narrowest of trails carved through the heart of the mountains, traversing a number of valleys and peaks along the way. Isaku had gone to the next village for the first time when he saw his father off into indentured service, and the overpowering impression he had come back with was enough to make him dizzy. Rows of houses, and shops selling all sorts of goods, as well as two-storey buildings to accommodate travellers. The streets were crowded with people, and things that he had only heard about but had never seen, such as oxen, pa.s.sed in front of him with packages lashed to their backs. In the port he had seen cargo ships as well as fishing-boats. He hadn't stopped moving for a second, but cast his eyes about restlessly until he was exhausted.

They had stayed only one night in the dirt floor area of the broker's house, but Isaku would never forget the feeling of sublime tranquillity he'd experienced when they came back over the mountain pa.s.s and saw the houses below. He was sure that he could never live anywhere but his own village.

From the moment he heard that the shipping agents were searching for a missing ship, the next village represented to Isaku all that was mysterious and frightening. The next village was part of the same island, and it belonged to the vast land across the sea. Each village had its own set of edicts, pa.s.sed down through the ages.

Rare though it might be, the coming of O-fune-sama was looked upon in the same light as unexpected schools of fish appearing near the sh.o.r.e, or unusually large quant.i.ties of mushrooms or mountain vegetables being found in the forest. O-fune-sama was part of the bounty offered by the sea, and its deliverance barely saved the people in the village from starvation. For Isaku's village the shipwrecking of O-fune-sama was the happiest event imaginable, but for those in other places, such as the next village, it was an evil deed meriting the supreme penalty. But if O-fune-sama had never graced their sh.o.r.es, the village would have long since ceased to exist, and the bay would have been nothing more than an expanse of sea girded by a stretch of rocks. Their ancestors had lived there, and they themselves were able to continue thanks only to O-fune-sama.

It was said that dead souls from their village would go far away across the sea and, in time, return to find a host among the pregnant women. There was nowhere for them to return to but their own village. If they came back to a place where the rules were different, where happy events were regarded as crimes, the result could be nothing but confusion. If Isaku were to have his own family, he knew that he would have to go to the next village to sell salt and the like, but he was determined to avoid such journeys. He wanted to stay safe in the village, where fixed tenets of living were followed.

At times he thought about his own death. His body being burnt and his bones buried in the ground, his soul leaving the village and heading across the water. A long journey before he reached the place far across the sea where the souls of other dead villagers would be waiting. The spirits had a settlement at the bottom of the sea where everything was bright and clear. Dense clumps of fresh green seaweed swayed like groves of trees, and all sorts of barnacles and other colourful sh.e.l.lfish clung to the rocks, shining like mother-of-pearl.

Schools of little fish, silver scales glistening as they swam, turned in unison as their leader changed direction, just like a flutter of snowflakes dancing in the air.

The sea bottom was always calm and the water temperature unchanging. The dead souls looked like jellyfish in their translucent clothes, and they had a healthy sheen to their hair. They always smiled and they never talked. They were in the state of deep serenity that death brings. There he saw his grandmother, of whom he had only hazy memories, and Teru, his little sister who had died two years ago. The people standing behind them must be his ancestors.

He moved over to them and stood beside Teru. Before he knew it, he, too, was draped in translucent clothes and his face wore a gentle smile. He felt pleasantly warm inside.

At times, some spirits would drift away, seen off by those who stayed behind. They were the souls returning to the village to be reincarnated in the womb through the s.e.xual union of man and woman. And when would reincarnation happen? Most likely a very long time after death.

He harboured no doubts that he, too, had been a reincarnated spirit in his mother's womb. He believed that the settlement of dead souls far across the sea was not just his imagining but existed so clearly in his memory because it was a place he had at one time been part of.

He had no fear of dying, especially since he believed that there was a place to live peacefully after death. But if he were hauled away and killed in an unfamiliar place, he thought it unlikely that his spirit would reach the sanctuary for the dead souls from his village. No doubt his spirit would be doomed to a h.e.l.l full of the souls of grim-faced strangers.

If the men from the shipping agency were to come to the village and find that the villagers had plundered cargo from a wrecked ship, they would be arrested and killed, they would be unable to savour the tranquillity after death. Isaku prayed that the men from the shipping agency would never appear.

The snow had started to melt in the mountains, and the houses shuddered each time the rumbling avalanches reverberated through the village. The flow of water through the small stream that ran between the houses increased to a torrent.

By March the snow had all but disappeared from the mountains; the traces glistened only on the far-off ridges. No people were to be seen on the mountain path, and no boats out on the water.

The chief summoned the more senior members of the community; it was decided that two men would be sent to the neighbouring village. Their mission was to find out what the shipping agencies were doing, and whether or not the village was under suspicion.

The next morning, just as if they were going to do some trading, the men shouldered bales of dried fish and set off up the mountain path. Each had a pair of st.u.r.dy legs, and in no time they disappeared into the forest.

Five days later, around sunset, the men reappeared and hurried down to the village chief's house. Isaku joined the other villagers in front of the house.

The news the men brought put the village at ease. At the salt merchant's where they traded the dried fish for grain, they had inquired in pa.s.sing about the shipping agent's men who had stayed at the merchant's house. The men, they were told, had already returned to the shipping merchant's office at a port on the southern part of the island. They had asked the captains of ships that came into port and visitors from villages along the coast about the missing ship, but had received no clues as to what had happened.

'It must've got blown out to sea in a storm and sunk. Those fellows gave up and eventually went home,' the merchant had said indifferently.

The villagers exchanged delighted looks. The danger was over. However, the chief did not give them permission to carry the rice back home from the forest. They should continue to be vigilant, he decided, just in case.

In the middle of March, the ritual to pray for a good fishing catch was held on the beach, and that day the village chief gave them permission to retrieve their rice from the mountains. That night, the villagers cooked rice for their dinners, as in Isaku's family, where they boiled up rice gruel. Isaku also had a little wine with his mother.

The next day he went out on the water in his boat with Isokichi. At first they could catch nothing but small fry. Once they were into April, however, they began to hook large sardines in great quant.i.ties. They couldn't fish together because the lines would get tangled, so Isaku entrusted the steering to Isokichi and concentrated on catching sardines. Of course, with Isokichi still inexperienced, whenever they came near the reef Isaku would take the oar and work the boat away from the rocks. The skin on Isokichi's hands split and blood oozed out.

The sardine run seemed larger than normal, and even from the boat they could see a teeming ma.s.s of shimmering, silvery scales darting about under the water. The colour of the sea would change where they were densest, and at times whole areas of water would appear to be boiling. If he attached several hooks to his line and dropped it over the side, he felt the line being pulled right away. With sardines on almost all the hooks, it became a ch.o.r.e to remove them.

In the evening when they went in to sh.o.r.e, they would transfer the sardines into tubs and carry them back home, where his mother would skewer them and grill them by the fire. The fish were at their succulent best, and each time some fat dripped into the fire the flames would flare up. To Isaku the taste of the hot sardines was delicious beyond compare.

His mother split some of the fish in half and got his little sister, Kane, to hand them to her as she hung them out on a length of twine to dry.