Extracts are from the book by Pearl S. Buck
My grandfather fell in love with Japan. When I was a toddler he brought me back a tiny kimono made from silky red material. But the old fashioned bookseller’s stamp and the publication date suggest that this must have been chosen for my mother, not for me. The paper is stained and spotted with age.
On the cover the children’s clothes swirl like eddies of foam. The old man’s eyes and mouth gape with darkness. The black water swoops down on the earth like a dragon.
A silver-green band of bright sky appeared like a low dawn above the sea.
“May the gods save us,” Kino heard his father mutter. The castle bell began to toll again, deep and pleading.
I’ve always been afraid of the sea. Even though I love it, crave it, even though I feel trapped by the land. I am always waiting, in every silent pause, for the sea to roll back towards the horizon, the purple rim of the ocean lifting and rising against the clouds.
Depression always comes to me as a dark, clawing wave, tearing everything apart. Destroying every sign of life.
Under the deep waters of the ocean, miles down under the cold, the earth had yielded at last to the fire. It groaned and split open and the cold water fell into the middle of the boiling rocks. Steam burst out and lifted the ocean high into the sky in a big wave. It rushed towards the shore, green and solid, frothing into white at its edges. It rose, higher and higher, lifting up hands and claws.
Now I sit on the south coast. The swell is huge today, every wave seems to tower higher than those before, and with every peak my breath freezes inside my chest, and I am waiting. I am waiting for the wave to swallow everything.
You say you don’t want this life. Your words leave me numb and shaking. My mind is filled with all the cliches that pissed me off so much when they fell from other people’s lips. “It will get better” I can hear myself saying. “I promise…” What the hell would I know?
Life is always stronger than death. Jiya will feel when he wakes that he can never be happy again. He will cry and cry and we must let him cry. But he cannot always cry. After a few days he will stop crying all the time. He will cry only part of the time. He will sit sad and quiet. We must allow him to be sad and we must not make him speak. But we will do our work and live as we always do. Then one day he will be hungry and he will eat something that his mother cooks, something special, and he will begin to feel better. He will not cry any more in the day time but only at night. We must let him cry at night. But all the time his body will be renewing itself. His blood flowing in his veins, his growing bones, his mind beginning to think again, will make him live.
“He cannot forget his father and mother and his brother!” Kino exclaimed.
“He cannot and he should not forget them,” Kino’s father said. “Just as he lived with them alive, he will live with them dead. Someday he will accept their death as part of his life. He will weep no more. He will carry them in his memory and his thoughts. His flesh and blood are part of them. So long as he is alive, they, too, will live in him. The big wave came, but it went away. The sun shines again, birds sing, and earth flowers. Look out over the sea now!”
Kino looked out the open door and he saw the ocean sparkling and smooth. The sky was blue again, a few clouds on the horizon were the only sign of what had passed.
My waves have subsided now, and the earth has begun to flower. I am glad. I came so close to slipping away under the waters, but now I am glad for the sun and the blue sky. I am glad for such small blessings as the smudgy child-sized handprint that I cannot bear to clean off the wall, and the words a new friendship brings me that I string together like a necklace close to my heart. I am glad for the way the sun turns tear soaked eyelashes into rainbows, and the smell of lavender crushed between my fingers.
Now I am waiting again. Waiting for the phone to ring, for someone to tell me how I can help... for someone to tell me that you’ve gone through with it. Life goes on outside but I am waiting.
I’m slipping down the muddy hillside and the waves are creeping higher.
I’ve found a satellite image of Japan at night. A dusting of gold leaf. The edges glow. It’s beautiful. And here, Wellington is a tiny glowing speak. All I can think of is a thousand dark kilometers of ocean spreading between.
I think that I'm falling...
maybe love?
We're all talk...
take my hand
please
don't let go...
*
It is night. Kilometres below a city sparkles like an intricate necklace at the throat of a continent. I love the sense of being somewhere else that is nowhere and could be anywhere as we speed through the night. I feel as though I’m paused on the edge of something. A landscape of possibility waits to take shape from the darkness.
*
I think that I’m falling…
maybe love
is like a wave
don’t let go.
Posted by Fionnaigh at July 12, 2004 07:50 PM