The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima Read Free Book Online Page B

it.”
    The two walked along side by side, Shinji holding the flashlight and guiding Hatsue along the difficult path as though he were a ship’s pilot. There was nothing in particularto say, so the usually silent Shinji began to talk stumblingly to fill in the silence:
    “As for me, some day I want to buy a coastal freighter with the money I’ve worked for and saved, and then go into the shipping business with my brother, carrying lumber from Kishu and coal from Kyushu.… Then I’ll have my mother take it easy, and when I get old I’ll come back to the island and take it easy too.… No matter where I sail, I’ll never forget our island.… It has the most beautiful scenery in all Japan”—every person on Uta-jima was firmly convinced of this—“and in the same way I’ll do my best to help make life on our island the most peaceful there is anywhere … the happiest there is anywhere.… Because if we don’t do that, everybody will start forgetting the island and quit wanting to come back. No matter how much times change, very bad things—very bad ways—will all always disappear before they get to our island.… The sea—it only brings the good and right things that the island needs … and keeps the good and right things we already have here.… That’s why there’s not a thief on the whole island—nothing but brave, manly people—people who always have the will to work truly and well and put up with whatever comes—people whose love is never double-faced—people with nothing mean about them anywhere.…”
    Of course the boy was not so articulate, and his way of speaking was confused and disconnected, but this is roughly what he told Hatsue in this moment of rare fluency.
    She did not interrupt, but kept nodding her head in agreement with everything he said. Never once looking bored, her face overflowed with an expression of genuineSympathy and trust, all of which filled Shinji with joy.
    Shinji did not want her to think he was being frivolous, and at the end of his serious speech he purposely omitted that last important hope that he had included in his prayer to the sea-god a few nights before.
    There was nothing to hinder, and the path continued hiding them in the dense shadows of the trees, but this time Shinji did not even hold Hatsue’s hand, much less dream of kissing her again. What had happened yesterday on the dark beach—to them that seemed not to have been an act of their own volition. It had been an undreamed-of event, brought about by some force outside themselves; it was a mystery how such a thing had come about. This time, they barely managed to make a date to meet again at the observation tower on the afternoon of the next time the fishing-boats could not go out.
    When they emerged from the back of Yashiro Shrine, Hatsue gave a little gasp of admiration and stopped walking. Shinji stopped too.
    The village was suddenly ablaze with brilliant lights. It was exactly like the opening of some spectacular, soundless festival: every window shone with a bright and indomitable light, a light without the slightest resemblance to the smoky light of oil lamps. It was as though the village had been restored to life and come floating up out of the black night.… The electric generator, so long out of order, had been repaired.
    Outside the village they took different paths, and Hatsue went on alone down the stone steps and into the village, lit again, after such a long time, with street lamps.

T HE DAY CAME for Shinji’s brother, Hiroshi, to go on the school excursion. They were to tour the Kyoto-Osaka area for six days, spending five nights away from home. This was the way the youths of Uta-jima, who had never before left the island, first saw the wide world outside with their own eyes, learning about it in a single gulp. In the same way, schoolboys of an earlier generation had crossed by boat to the mainland and stared with round eyes at the first horse-drawn omnibus they had ever seen,