“Come to me. . . .” Reiko’s whisper sounded in his ear. When he heard it, he remembered that night at Hayama, which already seemed like part of the far-distant past. Now, in place of the bracelet transistor radio whose music had irritated him as they lay together, there was piped-in music that filled this narrow airport-hotel room. For Onodera, Reiko’s amber skin seemed to have kept the scent of sand, of sand still warm from the torrid rays of the sun. In the very nadir of drunkenness, desire flamed up, and he grabbed hold of her desperately, roughly caressed her breasts, fixed his mouth upon hers, and did not let her go until, finally, he had wrung passionate, drawn-out cries from her.
“I want to get married,” said Reiko, her panting body, awash in sweat, held fast within his arms. “I looked for you all over . . . afterward. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Why?” he whispered, his cheek pressed against her breast, white in contrast to the rest of her torso, still tan from last summer’s sun. “Why me? You have all sorts of fine boy friends. Me, whom you met only once ...”
“And the night we met I made love with you on the beach, didn’t I?” Reiko smiled. “I was drunk, yes, but still... I wonder why. Why this man who had just appeared . . . why did I suddenly feel I wanted you? The group that was there that night —I knew most of them for a long time, but I never let any of them make love to me.”
“Well . . . you were drunk,” said Onodera, smiling.
Reiko pinched his back lightly with her nails. “I was awfully embarrassed afterward, you see. I thought maybe you’d think I was a sort of nymphomaniac, somebody who slept with anybody at all. But then I realized something. Because I did make love with you, I knew that you couldn’t be the kind of man who would think that of me.”
But why? Onodera asked her, holding to the question. Why had she picked him?
“I don’t know, but . . . That night . . . How was it now?”
She had felt as though she wanted to look at the sea, Reiko whispered. She loved scuba diving, and she had tied a women’s record in it. When she sank down, head over heels, all alone, into the gloomy depths spreading out above, below, on every side of her, she loved the isolation she felt at that moment, the chill water gripping her.
“I feel lonely then, I feel so isolated I want to break into tears, but I feel happiness, too. I’m like a fragment of a falling star plunging through empty space, but I’m totally happy. The cold water embraces me. And though I’m all alone, the blue-black water, the wavering seaweed, the fish swimming like clouds of silver ... I feel as though I’m one with all of these. And that’s when this forlorn, isolated happiness that makes me want to cry takes hold of me. . . . But wait! Now I see. I felt just this way, you see ... the first time you held me in your arms. Why, I don’t know, but the feeling was just the same. Even though I didn’t know then that you piloted a deep-sea submarine, I sensed the sea inside of you. That’s it! It was as though the vast, limitless sea, which had ever held me in its embrace, had seen the tears behind my mask and had taken the form of a young man and taken me in its arms.”
Reiko then took his head in both her hands and, lifting it, looked deeply into his eyes. Her expression was like that of a little girl.
“Will you marry me?”
Instead of answering, Onodera gripped her naked body with crushing force, sucked her lips into his mouth, and once more thrust himself forcefully into her still-wet body. It was as though, holding his breath, he were plunging deep down into the warm waters of a tropic sea. Kicking out, reaching out, twisting his body, pushing his breath to the limit, plunging deeper, still deeper. Then in the inky blackness of the ocean floor, with his lungs about to explode, he took hold of the stars that glittered gold, scarlet, blue in the depths. And then those stars burst into brilliant fragments that spread over the sky, scattering to every corner of it. Not uttering a sound, eyes fast shut, panting fiercely atop Reiko’s hot, sweaty belly held fast beneath him, Onodera at last came up from the depths and felt the buoyant ease of floating upon the waves. Head down, still breathing heavily, he experienced the rest that Reiko’s body had led him to.
He remembered then that it had been over a year since he had last been with a woman. And the woman had been Reiko. Since then, a year and a half. . . day after day, he had sat sealed within that steel ball, operating instruments, moving rapidly from one site to another, fighting wind and waves, carrying on the endless labor together with men whose eyes fatigue and anxiety had fixed in a glittering stare.
“You’re tired, aren’t you?” Reiko suddenly asked. Her beautiful lips abruptly parted, and her warm tongue licked up a single tear, which had wet his cheek without his having noticed it. As he took her in his arms again, this time gently, cherishing her, he repeated over and over to himself: I must rest. I must rest with this woman. What I thought was mere fatigue was my grief in the face of the fantastic disaster of Japan sinking . . . my fear, my heartbreak.
✦ ✦ ✦
No more than a few days after the government’s decision to make a public announcement within two weeks, a disquieting rumor began to spread through the country. A terrible earthquake and volcanic eruptions far more destructive than the last were going to hit Japan. This time Tokyo would be leveled, and Chiba and the Sagami Bay coast would sink to the bottom of the sea. There was nothing to do but to flee abroad for a time. Though the newspapers had not printed one word of it, the rumor spread rapidly. People whispered about it with anxious faces in offices, in homes, on the street. Every airline was swamped with requests for tickets abroad for whole families. The planes of every international airline that flew into Japan left loaded to full capacity every day, and even though more planes were put into service, reservations piled up three months in advance. Steamship lines, too, began to sell out their passenger reservations.
The government was hit from all sides with questions prompted by the rumors. The faces of newspapermen gradually altered, their eyes became bloodshot, and the press room of every ministry began to echo with angry voices talking over the phone. Though there were still some days left till the opening of the special session, members of the Diet, were holding crowded meetings every day and harassing ministry officials with questions, demanding to know what was going on. Among the public, especially in Tokyo, the flood of wild rumors grew more intense. White-collar workers left the work on their desks untouched, but they came together in little groups in corners of their offices as though they needed contact with one another. What is going to happen, I wonder? Just what are we going to do? Is the government going to do anything for us or not?
Taxi drivers began to greet their customers by saying: “Is it true, do you think—about Tokyo going to sink?” Bookstores sold out everything having to do with earthquakes and geology. Everyone had become convinced that something was impending.