The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro Read Free Book Online Page A

hobble on their stilts. He came to where my husband and I were standing on the rocks and tied his boat. And to this day I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he tricked us. We were too trusting. With the island so near, this boatman took away my husband and left me waiting on the shore, after forty years and more of our being husband and wife and hardly a day apart. I can’t think how he did it. His voice must have put us in a dream, because before I knew it he was rowing off with my husband and I was still on land. Even then, I didn’t believe it. For who couldsuspect such cruelty from a boatman? So I waited. I said to myself, it’s simply that the boat cannot take more than one passenger at a time, for the water was unsettled that day, and the sky almost as dark as it is now. I stood there on the rock and watched the boat getting smaller and then a speck. And still I waited, and in time the speck grew larger and it was the boatman coming back to me. I could soon see his head as smooth as a pebble, now with no passenger left in his boat. And I imagined it was my turn and I would soon be with my beloved again. But when he came to where I was waiting, and tied his rope to the pole, he shook his head and refused to take me across. I argued and wept and called to him, but he would not listen. Instead he offered me—such cruelty!—he offered a rabbit he said had been caught in a trap on the island’s shore. He’d brought it to me thinking it a fitting supper for my first evening of solitude. Then seeing there was no one else waiting to be ferried, he pushed away, leaving me weeping on the shore, holding his wretched rabbit. I let it run off into the heather a moment later, for I tell you I had little appetite that evening or for many evenings after. That’s why it is I bring him my own little gift each time I come here. A rabbit for his stew in return for his kindness that day.”
    “The rabbit was intended for my own supper that evening,” the boatman’s voice broke in from across the room. “Feeling pity, I gave it to her. It was simple kindness.”
    “We know nothing of your affairs, sir,” Beatrice said. “But it does seem a cruel deception to leave this lady alone on the shore that way. What was it made you do such a thing?”
    “Good lady, the island this old woman speaks of is no ordinary one. We boatmen have ferried many there over the years, and by now there will be hundreds inhabiting its fields and woods. But it’s a place of strange qualities, and one who arrives there will walk among its greenery and trees in solitude, never seeing another soul. Occasionally on a moonlit night or when a storm’s ready to break, he maysense the presence of his fellow inhabitants. But most days, for each traveller, it’s as though he’s the island’s only resident. I’d happily have ferried this woman, but when she understood she wouldn’t be with her husband, she declared she didn’t care for such solitude and refused to go. I bowed to her decision, as I’m obliged to do, and let her go her own way. The rabbit, as I say, I gave her out of simple kindness. You see how she thanks me for it.”
    “This boatman is a sly one,” the old woman said. “He’ll dare to deceive you, even though you’re from the outside. He’ll have you believe every soul roams that island in solitude, but it isn’t true. Would my husband and I have dreamt long years to go to a place like that? The truth is there’s many permitted to cross the water as wedded man and wife to dwell together on the island. Many who roam those same forests and quiet beaches arm in arm. My husband and I knew this. We knew it as children. Good cousins, if you search through your own memories, you’ll remember it to be true even as I speak of it now. We had little inkling as we waited in that cove how cruel a boatman would come over the water to us.”
    “There’s truth in just one part of what she says,” the boatman said. “Occasionally a