The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea Read Free

tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming. Full of the glitter and the frenzy of night, the horn thundered in, conveying from the distant offing, from the dead center of the sea, a thirst for the dark nectar in the little room.
    Tsukazaki turned with a sharp twist of his shoulders and looked out toward the water.
    It was like being part of a miracle: in that instant everything packed away inside Noboru’s breast since the first day of his life was released and consummated. Until the horn sounded, it was only a tentative sketch. The finest materials had been prepared and all was in readiness, verging on the unearthly moment. But one element was lacking: the power needed to transfigure those motley sheds of reality into a gorgeous palace. Then, at a signal from the horn, the parts merged into a perfect whole.
    Assembled there were the moon and a feverish wind, the incited, naked flesh of a man and a woman, sweat, perfume, the scars of a life at sea, the dim memory of ports around the world, a cramped breathless peephole, a young boy’s iron heart—but these cards from a gypsy deck were scattered, prophesying nothing. The universal order at last achieved, thanks to the sudden, screaming horn, had revealed an ineluctable circle of life—the cards had paired: Noboru and mother—mother and man—man and sea—sea and Noboru. . . .
    He was choked, wet, ecstatic. Certain he had watched a tangle of thread unravel to trace a hallowed figure. And it would have to be protected: for all he knew, he was its thirteen-year-old creator.
    “If this is ever destroyed, it’ll mean the end of the world,” Noboru murmured, barely conscious. I guess I’d do anything to stop that, no matter how awful!

CHAPTER TWO
    S URPRISED , Ryuji Tsukazaki woke up in an unfamiliar bed. The bed next to his was empty. Little by little, he recalled what the woman had told him before she had fallen asleep: Noboru was going swimming with friends in Kamakura in the morning; she would get up early and wake him, and would come back to the bedroom as soon as he left . . . would he please wait for her quietly. He groped for his watch on the night table and held it up to the light that filtered through the curtains. Ten minutes to eight: probably the boy was still in the house.
    He had slept for about four hours, after falling asleep at just the time he would ordinarily be going to bed after night watch. It had been hardly more than a nap, yet his head was clear, the long pleasure of the night still coiled inside him tight as a spring. He stretched and crossed his wrists in front of him. In the light from the window, the hair on his muscled arms appeared to eddy into golden pools; he was satisfied.
    Though still early, it was very hot. The curtains hung motionless in front of the open window. Stretching again, Ryuji, with one extended finger, pushed the button on the fan.
    Fifteen minutes to Second Officer’s watch—stand by please . He had heard the Quartermaster’s summons distinctly in a dream. Every day of his life, Ryuji stood watch from noon to four and again from midnight to four in the morning. Stars were his only companions, and the sea.
    Aboard the freighter Rakuyo , Ryuji was considered unsociable and eccentric. He had never been good at gabbing, never enjoyed the scuttlebutt supposed to be a sailor’s only source of pleasure. Tales of women, anecdotes from shore, the endless boasting . . . he hated the lowbrow chatter meant to sweeten loneliness, the ritual of affirming ties with the brotherhood of men.
    Whereas most men choose to become sailors because they like the sea, Ryuji had been guided by an antipathy to land. The Occupation interdict forbidding Japanese vessels to travel the open sea had been revoked just as he was graduated from a merchant-marine high school, and he had shipped out on the first freighter since the war to sail to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Later he had been to India