urged her. “There’s a spring here that the valley folk say gives the best water in the whole forest. That’s if it hasn’t dried up.”
It hadn’t dried up. At the foot of the slope on the forest side of the road, an unexpected outflow of water formed a pool about as big as the circle of a man’s arms. The water—too copious, almost, to havesprung from such small beginnings—made a channel that ran down to the valley. Beside the pool stood a number of outdoor hearths, some new, some old, the clay and stones charred black and hideous inside. In my childhood, my friends and I had built just such a hearth by the spring, and cooked rice and made soup there. In a twice-yearly ritual, each of us chose the group he would camp out with, thereby determining the division of forces among the children of the valley. The outing lasted only two days each spring and autumn, but the influence of the groups thus formed by the children remained valid throughout the year. Nothing was so humiliating as to be expelled from the group one had joined.
As I bent down over the spring to drink from it directly, I had a sudden sense of certainty : certainty that everything—the small round pebbles, grayish blue and vermilion and white, lying at the bottom of water whose brightness seemed still to harbor the midday light; the fine sand that swirled upward, clouding it ever so slightly; and the faint shiver that ran over the surface of the water—was just as I’d seen it twenty years before; a certainty, born of longing yet to myself, at least, utterly convincing, that the water now welling up so ceaselessly was exactly the same water that had welled up and flowed away in those days. And the same certainty developed directly into a feeling that the “I” bending down there now was not the child who had once bent his bare knees there, that there was no continuity, no consistency between the two “I’s,” that the “I” now bending down there was a remote stranger. The present “I” had lost all true identity. Nothing, either within me or without, offered any hope of recovery.
I could hear the transparent ripples on the pool tinkling, accusing me of being no better than a rat. I shut my eyes and sucked up the cold water. My gums shrank, leaving a taste of blood on my tongue. As I stood up, my wife bent down in obedient imitation, as though I was an authority on how to drink from the spring. In fact, I was as complete a stranger to the spring by now as she, who had just come through the forest for the first time. I shuddered. The bitter cold penetrated my consciousness again. Shivering, my wife stood up too and tried to smile to show that the water had tasted good; but her teeth as her purple lips shrank back merely seemed to be bared in anger. Shoulder to shoulder, silent and shuddering with cold, we returned to the jeep. Takashi averted his eyes as though he’d seen something too pitiful to look on.
We went down into the valley through a mist that grew steadily thicker and deeper. In the hush as we carefully let the jeep coast downhill, the only noises about us were the sound of the tires sending small stones flying, the sound of the hood whistling in the wind, and the faint hiss of leaves falling in the open woods—of tall oak and beech with the merest sprinkling of red pine—which covered the ground sloping sharply down from the track to the paved road in the valley. Driven by a force that swept them horizontally, the leaves scattering from the uppermost branches seemed not so much to fall as to drift slowly sideways, setting up the constant tiny rustling as they went.
“Can you whistle, Natsu?” Takashi asked quite seriously.
“Yes, why?” she replied warily.
“If you whistle here after dark the valley folk get mad, really mad. Do you remember that old valley taboo, Mitsu?” he asked with a subdued air not out of harmony with my own present mood.
“Yes, I remember. They believe that if you whistle after dark a
It hadn’t dried up. At the foot of the slope on the forest side of the road, an unexpected outflow of water formed a pool about as big as the circle of a man’s arms. The water—too copious, almost, to havesprung from such small beginnings—made a channel that ran down to the valley. Beside the pool stood a number of outdoor hearths, some new, some old, the clay and stones charred black and hideous inside. In my childhood, my friends and I had built just such a hearth by the spring, and cooked rice and made soup there. In a twice-yearly ritual, each of us chose the group he would camp out with, thereby determining the division of forces among the children of the valley. The outing lasted only two days each spring and autumn, but the influence of the groups thus formed by the children remained valid throughout the year. Nothing was so humiliating as to be expelled from the group one had joined.
As I bent down over the spring to drink from it directly, I had a sudden sense of certainty : certainty that everything—the small round pebbles, grayish blue and vermilion and white, lying at the bottom of water whose brightness seemed still to harbor the midday light; the fine sand that swirled upward, clouding it ever so slightly; and the faint shiver that ran over the surface of the water—was just as I’d seen it twenty years before; a certainty, born of longing yet to myself, at least, utterly convincing, that the water now welling up so ceaselessly was exactly the same water that had welled up and flowed away in those days. And the same certainty developed directly into a feeling that the “I” bending down there now was not the child who had once bent his bare knees there, that there was no continuity, no consistency between the two “I’s,” that the “I” now bending down there was a remote stranger. The present “I” had lost all true identity. Nothing, either within me or without, offered any hope of recovery.
I could hear the transparent ripples on the pool tinkling, accusing me of being no better than a rat. I shut my eyes and sucked up the cold water. My gums shrank, leaving a taste of blood on my tongue. As I stood up, my wife bent down in obedient imitation, as though I was an authority on how to drink from the spring. In fact, I was as complete a stranger to the spring by now as she, who had just come through the forest for the first time. I shuddered. The bitter cold penetrated my consciousness again. Shivering, my wife stood up too and tried to smile to show that the water had tasted good; but her teeth as her purple lips shrank back merely seemed to be bared in anger. Shoulder to shoulder, silent and shuddering with cold, we returned to the jeep. Takashi averted his eyes as though he’d seen something too pitiful to look on.
We went down into the valley through a mist that grew steadily thicker and deeper. In the hush as we carefully let the jeep coast downhill, the only noises about us were the sound of the tires sending small stones flying, the sound of the hood whistling in the wind, and the faint hiss of leaves falling in the open woods—of tall oak and beech with the merest sprinkling of red pine—which covered the ground sloping sharply down from the track to the paved road in the valley. Driven by a force that swept them horizontally, the leaves scattering from the uppermost branches seemed not so much to fall as to drift slowly sideways, setting up the constant tiny rustling as they went.
“Can you whistle, Natsu?” Takashi asked quite seriously.
“Yes, why?” she replied warily.
“If you whistle here after dark the valley folk get mad, really mad. Do you remember that old valley taboo, Mitsu?” he asked with a subdued air not out of harmony with my own present mood.
“Yes, I remember. They believe that if you whistle after dark a
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