deep green changed, rose and swelled into an uneasy white. The sea lost its serenity.
Even as it rose it broke at the skirts, and ragged spots of white from its high belly like a call of inexpressible sorrow became a sharply smooth yet infinitely cracked wall of glass, like a vast spray. As it rose and broke, the forelocks were combed a beautiful white, and as it fell it showed the neatly arrayed blue-white of its crown, and the lines of white became a solid field of white; and so it fell, like a severed head.
The spread and the falling away of foam. Little patches of foam trailing off to sea like lines of water bugs.
Foam trailing off over the sand like sweat from the back of an athlete at the end of his exertions.
What delicate changes passed over the white monolith of the sea as it came in upon the shore and broke. The myriad confusion of thin waves and the fine partings of the foam became in desperation an infinity of lines spewed out over the sea as from silkworms. What a subtle evil, overcoming by sheer force even as it took into itself this delicate white.
Four fifteen.
The sky in its upper reaches was blue. It was an affected, pompous sort of blue. He had seen a similar blue in the library, in a collection from the School of Fontainebleau. Composed all lyrically with just an apology for clouds, it was not a summer sky at all. It was laid over with a saccharine hypocrisy.
The lens had left the shore, and was turned on the sky, the horizon, the sea.
It caught a sheet of spray that seemed to hurl itself into the very heavens. What could it be up to, this single point of foam flinging itself above the rest? Why had it been elected?
Nature was a cycle, the whole to the fragment, the fragment back to the whole. Compared to the fleeting cleanness of the fragment, the whole was dark and sullen.
And was evil a matter of the whole?
Or of the fragment?
Four forty-five. Not a ship in sight.
The beach was lonely. There were no swimmers, and only two or three anglers. The sea without ships was worlds away from dedication and service. Suruga Bay lay utterly sober, without love and without joy. There had to be ships sliding in and out, cutting razor lines of white through this sluggish, flawless perfection. A ship was a weapon of cool contempt against the perfection, gliding over the thin taut skin of the sea and wounding it. Yet going no deeper than the surface.
Five o’clock.
The white of the waves become for an instant the color of a yellow rose, to tell that evening approached.
He saw two black tankers, large and small, making for sea to the left. The fifteen-hundred-ton Okitama-maru , which had left Shimizu at four twenty, and the three-hundred-ton Nisshō-maru , at four twenty-three.
They were like mirages in the mist. Not even their wakes were distinct.
He lowered the lens to the shore.
As they took on the color of evening, the waves were stern and hard. The light had more and more the color of evil, the bellies of the waves were uglier.
Yes. The waves as they broke were a manifest vision of death. It seemed to him that they had to be. They were mouths agape at the moment of death.
Gasping in agony, they trailed numberless threads of saliva. Earth purple in the twilight became a livid mouth.
Into the gaping mouth of the sea plunged death. Showing death nakedly time and time again, the sea was like a constabulary. It swiftly disposed of the bodies, hiding them from the public gaze.
Tōru’s telescope caught something it should not have.
He suddenly felt that a different world was being dragged forth from those gaping jaws. Since he was not one to see phantasms, there could be no doubt that it existed. But he did not know what it was. Perhaps it was a pattern drawn by micro-organisms in the sea. A different world was revealed in the light flashing from the dark depths, and he knew it was a place he had seen. Perhaps it had something to do with immeasurably distant memories. If there was such a thing as a
Even as it rose it broke at the skirts, and ragged spots of white from its high belly like a call of inexpressible sorrow became a sharply smooth yet infinitely cracked wall of glass, like a vast spray. As it rose and broke, the forelocks were combed a beautiful white, and as it fell it showed the neatly arrayed blue-white of its crown, and the lines of white became a solid field of white; and so it fell, like a severed head.
The spread and the falling away of foam. Little patches of foam trailing off to sea like lines of water bugs.
Foam trailing off over the sand like sweat from the back of an athlete at the end of his exertions.
What delicate changes passed over the white monolith of the sea as it came in upon the shore and broke. The myriad confusion of thin waves and the fine partings of the foam became in desperation an infinity of lines spewed out over the sea as from silkworms. What a subtle evil, overcoming by sheer force even as it took into itself this delicate white.
Four fifteen.
The sky in its upper reaches was blue. It was an affected, pompous sort of blue. He had seen a similar blue in the library, in a collection from the School of Fontainebleau. Composed all lyrically with just an apology for clouds, it was not a summer sky at all. It was laid over with a saccharine hypocrisy.
The lens had left the shore, and was turned on the sky, the horizon, the sea.
It caught a sheet of spray that seemed to hurl itself into the very heavens. What could it be up to, this single point of foam flinging itself above the rest? Why had it been elected?
Nature was a cycle, the whole to the fragment, the fragment back to the whole. Compared to the fleeting cleanness of the fragment, the whole was dark and sullen.
And was evil a matter of the whole?
Or of the fragment?
Four forty-five. Not a ship in sight.
The beach was lonely. There were no swimmers, and only two or three anglers. The sea without ships was worlds away from dedication and service. Suruga Bay lay utterly sober, without love and without joy. There had to be ships sliding in and out, cutting razor lines of white through this sluggish, flawless perfection. A ship was a weapon of cool contempt against the perfection, gliding over the thin taut skin of the sea and wounding it. Yet going no deeper than the surface.
Five o’clock.
The white of the waves become for an instant the color of a yellow rose, to tell that evening approached.
He saw two black tankers, large and small, making for sea to the left. The fifteen-hundred-ton Okitama-maru , which had left Shimizu at four twenty, and the three-hundred-ton Nisshō-maru , at four twenty-three.
They were like mirages in the mist. Not even their wakes were distinct.
He lowered the lens to the shore.
As they took on the color of evening, the waves were stern and hard. The light had more and more the color of evil, the bellies of the waves were uglier.
Yes. The waves as they broke were a manifest vision of death. It seemed to him that they had to be. They were mouths agape at the moment of death.
Gasping in agony, they trailed numberless threads of saliva. Earth purple in the twilight became a livid mouth.
Into the gaping mouth of the sea plunged death. Showing death nakedly time and time again, the sea was like a constabulary. It swiftly disposed of the bodies, hiding them from the public gaze.
Tōru’s telescope caught something it should not have.
He suddenly felt that a different world was being dragged forth from those gaping jaws. Since he was not one to see phantasms, there could be no doubt that it existed. But he did not know what it was. Perhaps it was a pattern drawn by micro-organisms in the sea. A different world was revealed in the light flashing from the dark depths, and he knew it was a place he had seen. Perhaps it had something to do with immeasurably distant memories. If there was such a thing as a
Similar Books
