Читать книгу Subduction - Todd Shimoda - Страница 9

Shortly before sunrise, a loud crack woke me up and a jolt threw me half off the futon. I’d been in a few earthquakes, of course, but never one as intense as if it were directly under me. The bending and rolling made the timber-framed inn creak and groan like a wooden ship caught in a typhoon, not that I’d been in a wooden ship in a typhoon. I was sure the inn was going to collapse and crush me.

Then the movement stopped suddenly and completely.

I got up and the room spun. It could have been an aftershock or a hangover. Funny, I thought weirdly, a better word for hangover would be aftershock. The body goes in a kind of shock from too much alcohol.

When the spinning slowed, I went down to the ground floor. In the middle of the main room, the landlady smiled excitedly. “Big one,” she said and patted a wooden pole that served as a main column holding up the inn. She muttered something about her grandfather, and righted the lamps and picked up books and other items tossed onto the floor. The power flickered then went off.

After I helped her, I went outside and looked for damaged buildings or smoke. The danger from an earthquake was often from the fires that followed: split gas lines, toppled water heaters, cigarettes tossed aside when a quake hits. After the Great Hanshin Earthquake, many of the fires were started when the electric power was restored. Sparks from downed power lines or toppled home appliances ignited escaping natural gas or kerosene. The wooden structures on the island would catch on fire just as quickly. I didn’t see any fires or smoke in the immediate area, so I headed to the clinic to see if there were any injured people.

No one was in the clinic, but files and equipment had spilled onto the floor. I left them where they were and went back out. After I’d walked past a few buildings with no apparent damage, I came to a house that had collapsed, its heavy, tiled roof intact on the walls tipped onto their sides. It was the house I’d been in yesterday with Mari and Mrs. Nagano.

I ran to the ruins that still had dust rising from it. I bent down and yelled into the rubble. “Hello? Mrs. Nagano? Hello?” I listened but heard no sounds. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

“It’s okay,” someone called out. Mari and Mrs. Nagano were coming my way. Mari stopped and began filming with her video camera, catching Mrs. Nagano walking to the house.

When she got to me I said, “I’m glad you weren’t in there.”

The old woman stared mutely at the remains of her home, and said something over and over.

Eiichi, I finally deciphered.

“Eiichi, Eiichi,” she wailed again.

Mari came over to us, still filming. “Eiichi was her husband. He died years ago.”

Mrs. Nagano picked at pieces and held them to her chest before putting them down. I worked at getting some of the rubble off the road.

When I had done all I could, I said, “I should see if everyone else is all right.”

Mari said, “I’ll go with you, in case you need help.”

I liked that idea. “Which way should we go?”

“Most live near the community hall. We can head in that direction.”

After we walked a while, Mari asked, “How is the inn?”

“A few things fell off shelves or were knocked over. Other than that, I didn’t see anything major. Mrs. Takahashi is fine.”

“Good,” Mari said.

We went over to a house that was intact except for a large crack and a few roof tiles on the ground. Mari started filming. “Hello?”she shouted into the home.

anything that

may happen

I opened the door and yelled inside. “Anyone in there?”

There was no response. I made a quick look inside, saw lots of clutter on the floor, but no person. Mari was filming me as I walked back out. I picked up the loose roof tiles on the road and stacked them near the house. Mari filmed me doing that too. I tried to look good for the camera.

We started walking again. “How is your documentary coming along?” I asked her.

“That’s hard to say. I didn’t have a final product in mind when I came here.”

“Anything surprising?”

“I wasn’t really expecting anything in particular, so I can’t say I’ve been surprised. I have been struck by the strong feelings the residents have about the island, and their dogged determination to stay.”

“Have you found out why that is?”

“Not yet. It isn’t something I can, or should, articulate in a few words. And I wouldn’t want that. I want to discover it in a slow, patient way, through their individual stories.”

That made sense. I decided that’s the way I should find out more about her.

An elderly woman waved to us from a small house. She was sitting in front of the open door. Surrounding her were stacks of cigarette cartons and cellophane packages of dried fish and squid. Mari introduced me to Fumie Kubo. A widow, her husband, Toichi Kubo, was a fisherman. She made a living selling packaged dried fish, cigarettes, boxes of tissues. She told us her house was okay, and her stock undamaged. I was sorry to hear that the dried fish had made it through the earthquake.

We walked past a few more empty homes that had minor damage, before a woman called out from the front of a house. The building was two stories and it would have been elegant when it was built.

“Hello,” Mari called out to the woman. She was Chie Harada, a bright-looking woman who seemed less suspicious of me than the others. She said she lost some dishes, but other than that, her house made it through the earthquake without damage.

When we left, Mari said, “She and her husband used to run a small hardware business for the fishing fleet. Tackle, hooks, screws and bolts. Their business folded when the fishing was no longer profitable.”

“There used to be a fishing fleet on this little island?”

“A small fleet,” she said. “I’m doing some research into what happened to it.”

“Looks like some of them are trying to resuscitate the industry, one boat at a time. They’re kind of old to be going out fishing, aren’t they?”

“Probably, but the idea keeps them alive.”

The community hall was about the size of two homes, with a large main room, a kitchen, a closed door with a sign that read Administrative Offices. Next to the door was a wall of letterboxes labeled with residents’ names. The power had been restored.

Several tables and chairs were placed around the main room, and a few of the residents were seated at them with several plates of food spread out on one of the tables. Octopus prepared several ways: marinated in vinegar, grilled, boiled. Plates of sushi rice in tofu skin pouches, salted greens, and yellow daikon radish pickles. On each table was a tea pot or two.

A post-quake celebration.

Mari called me over to a table where Ouchi was sitting. He was using a damp cloth to clean a cut on his arm. The cut ran jaggedly in his dark, waxy skin starting above his wrist and ending at his elbow.

I said to Ouchi, “You should have come to the clinic.”

He gave me one of his weak coughs in response.

I asked Mari if there was a first aid kit in the hall. She asked Ouchi, who hesitated then pointed toward the back of the hall. “In the supply room,” he said.

While Mari went to get the kit, I told Ouchi he really could use some stitches and a tetanus shot.

“No stitches, no shot,” he grumbled.

I couldn’t force him to come to the clinic, so I patched him the best I could with what I found in the first aid kit. In thanks, Ouchi gave me one more grumble and cough.

Mari and I continued our walk. All the buildings suffered some damage but most of it was minor. When we came to Yoshi’s, I half-jokingly said we should stop in. Mari said, “I could use a drink.”

Outside, sweeping away pebbles dislodged from the earthquake with a straw broom, Yoshi enthusiastically greeted us. Well, he greeted Mari enthusiastically.

“How many?” Mari asked him.

Yoshi laughed. “Only one.”

Mari explained, “One bottle of beer was broken.”

“That’s good,” I said. “A one-bottle quake. We can’t be losing our most precious resource. Food and water can go, but not the booze.”

“You learn quickly,” Yoshi said.

In the bar, Mari and I shared a beer, talked with Yoshi about the damage. He seemed to already know the damage each islander and home had suffered.

Clearing up our spot at the bar, Yoshi said, “Are you going to the shrine? I hear it needs a bit of shoring up after the last quake. And it’s always good to thank the gods for surviving a shaker.”

Mari asked me, “Want to go?”

I said, “Do they sacrifice a virgin to appease the gods?”

“Know any?”

“After living here for not too much longer, I’ll feel like one.”

Mari ignored my comment. She asked Yoshi, “Are you going to the shrine?”

“Me?” Yoshi said. “No. It would spoil my image.”

The large entrance gate of the shrine had once been painted bright red; now there were only a few chips of paint scattered around the graying wood. The columns, beams, and carved decorations were faded and cracked. A series of torii gates had been placed over steps hewn out of the rock that climbed up to the shrine.

“It’s called the Shrine of Many Steps,” Mari said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

Mari gave me a little laugh.

On the first few steps, coins were scattered about. I guessed that most of the islanders couldn’t make it all the way up to the altar to the offering box, so they climbed as far as they could, and then tossed the coins after they’d prayed.

About halfway to the top was a small overgrown garden. The bonsai pines were no longer trained and had grown spindly. Moss had escaped its rock borders and spread like an unruly haircut.

I asked Mari if there was a priest at the shrine.

“No, the last one died several years ago. Sometimes one visits from another island, but there hasn’t been one since I’ve been here.”

We climbed the rest of the way and saw a few islanders working on a fallen post that supported the roof of one of the levels. Harada, as always, seemed to be in charge. They had tied a rope around the top of a pole and looped it though a hole in the other post. They started pulling in time with a rhythmic chant while Mari filmed.

The post tilted up slowly and I joined in, pushing it until it thudded into place. Harada tapped in a dowel to secure it. “There,” he announced, “that’ll hold it until the next shaker.”

I helped them shore up a few more of the posts. They didn’t shower me with appreciation, but they didn’t refuse my help either. When we finished, they even gave me a little bow of thanks.

The afternoon turned quickly to night. Mari walked toward a house—larger than the rest of those on the island—on the upside of the road. I followed her and we walked over the stone steps to the door. Inside, the old building smelled of earth and wood and charcoal, as all homes a hundred years ago must have smelled. Mari slipped off her shoes and stepped up to the straw mats that covered the floor. I did the same.

We walked slowly on the worn, yet comfortable mats. “Whose house is this?” I asked.

“It belonged to Furuta, the owner of one of the fishing fleets.”

Turning down a corridor, we came to an inner courtyard, open on the back side to the rocky slope of the island. The courtyard was small, barely room for three or four people to stand. A small spring bubbled invisibly, a gurgle of mineral-laced water flowing across the rock face and into a drain.

Mari stepped into the courtyard and lit a candle with a match. With the candle she lit several other candles placed around the courtyard. We sat on a raised floor that surrounded the courtyard on three sides. She watched the candlelight without talking. When I sat next to her, I felt calm for the first time in months.

we

will

Then the ground shook in an aftershock. The building creaked for two or three seconds, and I worried the candles would tip over and start the house on fire. But then just as quickly, all was quiet.

Mari moved slightly, a barely perceptible shift into me. We stayed in that position, without saying anything, only the sounds of the spring and a very distant sound of the ocean’s energy expending itself on the island’s rocks.

Then she leaned more, and slumped down, turning her face slightly so that her cheek was on my upper arm. She gave a little jerk, as if she was crying, and I shifted and pressed against her. She made a breathy whimper when I leaned toward her. She tilted her head to expose more of her face. Her head turned again, and as I was leaning in to kiss her, I heard a movement in the house.

I looked up and saw a person moving through the shadows. When the person disappeared around a dark corner, I got up slowly and went into the house. I didn’t see anyone, and went out front. Not too far away, toward the ocean, I heard a rock skitter down the slope. I followed the sound, and tried to see who it was.

But I didn’t see anyone.