It was all up with him, all over.
He pissed himself, and started crying. Above, the boat floor. Below, the sea. The only exit was occupied by his wife. Hiroyuki had no space left to live.
He was like a conger eel caught in a trap. His wife's corpse was the rubber flap at the opening of the eel tube. With arms and legs akimbo, she clung with grim tenacity to the opening to prevent his passage.
Hiroyuki didn't have the strength left to laugh at the irony. A man who'd trapped countless conger eels in dark tubes was now snared himself and waiting for death.
With the pounding of the waves, the roar should have been a lot more thunderous, but it was strangely calm all around. Death was approaching with a steady tread. There was no escaping it.
As he thought of his imminent death, a notion popped into his mind. Twenty years ago, around when his mother disappeared, Hiroyuki's father had narrowly escaped death. Hiroyuki had never doubted his father's story. But now, with death staring him in the face, he understood the truth. Just as Hiroyuki had done, his father had killed his wife and used his fishing as an alibi for disposing the body out at sea. His father's mental troubles had nothing to do with having hit his head. His terrible deed had slowly driven him mad.
The same blood ran in his veins, and the past was repeating itself. Even if Hiroyuki were to return home alive and somehow manage to bring up his son single-handedly, Katsumi would no doubt end up doing exactly the same thing. Where to sever the awful chain?
In death. All he had to do was die. With the death of both his parents, his son would grow up in a new environment. The thought made it a little easier for Hiroyuki. Perhaps he could meet death with composure.
Then he heard two sounds coming from above, with a brief interval between them. There it was again, two sounds. It was not the waves striking the boat; it sounded more artificial.
At first he listened vacantly. But when he fathomed the meaning of the sound that was penetrating his brain, he became alert and thrust his face upwards. There was still a little air left. A few more knocks came from the exterior of the keel.
His body reacted reflexively, his right hand clenching into a fist and banging against the bottom. As if in response, two sounds from above. And now Hiroyuki, thumping the bottom twice. From above, another answer of two knocks.
He was saved!
Just when he'd given up hope of ever getting out alive, he was given a second chance. Hiroyuki had witnessed a similar scene a few years ago. A rescue boat from the Maritime Safety Agency was rushing to the aid of a fishing vessel that had capsized as a result of poor handling. Hiroyuki, who'd been fishing, interrupted his work to pull alongside and watch. The rescue squad used the same procedure to check if anyone had been trapped in the cabin. They straddled the keel of the overturned boat and knocked on its bottom, reassuring any survivors that help was on the way; they would send down their divers if anyone responded. The divers took an extra regulator down with them to insert in the mouth of the survivor. Other fishing boats had also gathered around to watch the operation, and when the trapped fisherman emerged safely from the sinking boat, there was some wild cheering.
The sounds he now heard raining down from above were to let him know that the Maritime Safety Agency had come to his rescue. Hiroyuki had lost all sense of time. He wondered how long ago the boat had capsized. It was just conceivable that a patrol boat had discovered him by chance.
Hiroyuki roared with joy at his good fortune. He had been granted a new lease on life; he'd be able to breathe real air once more.
He thrust his face under the water and looked down. He expected to see his wife blocking the opening, but she wasn't there. She had vanished. Perhaps a wave had caught her and washed her out of the well. She was probably sinking deep just then. Hiroyuki tried hard to believe that this was the case. Without his wife's body, no criminal charge could be proved against him.
Just when everything had looked so desperate, his fortune had suddenly changed for the better. Almost as soon as his wife's body had disappeared, effectively disposing of itself, the rescue team had found him. Hiroyuki could not wait for the divers to come get him.
Suddenly, his body was hugged by powerful arms. They were here!
He could hear no voices, but he felt the reassuring words in his stomach: 'You're all right now.'
Hiroyuki felt for the diver's arm and clung to him. The diver put his arm around Hiroyuki's shoulder and inserted a regulator snugly into his mouth. Holding the mouthpiece tightly between his teeth, he drew in air. It had the aroma of a highland plateau; never had air tasted so sweet. Determined to never let go of it, he bit deeper into the mouthpiece, sucking in the air over and over again.
He was ecstatic. Once back in the land of the living, he would be able to love them all, his son, his daughter, even his senile father. The shell that encased him was cracking and breaking off like the lie it had always been. He was sorry not everything could be the same again. He was going to beg for his wife's forgiveness. He had no idea how to apologize to the dead. His desire to do so, however, was genuine.
Hiroyuki had taken it for granted that the diver would escort him in a downward dive. But he felt himself suddenly floating up instead. In an instant, he was gazing at the keel of the Hamakatsu, which was now barely afloat.
Resembling nothing more permanent than a leaf on the water, the boat looked as if it would go under at any moment. The patrol boat made its way towards them. People jostled about on the deck; they all seemed to be shouting things, but Hiroyuki couldn't hear their voices.
He could see all around him, all of the sea and the sky. Bursting through the clouds, shafts of light poured down onto the crests of waves as they broke and spewed their foam. Catching the light, the spray scintillated like jewels hurled in every direction. This was the sea he had known from childhood. Cape Futtsu stretched straight toward him. The wind and waves were strong. Never had he seen the sea so sublime, it shimmered. A sense of relief enveloped him, and his body felt lighter and lighter.
A phrase he'd never once uttered in his life came to him now: All clear!
He spoke the words and they felt good. He spoke them once more.
The patrol ship retrieved the two bodies simultaneously. It was obvious that one was that of a woman who'd been dead for two or three days. The other was that of a man who'd just breathed his last. What this meant would be understood in due course.
What they would never understand, however, was why the man had died with the woman's cadaver locked in his embrace. He certainly didn't look like he'd clutched at a straw in panic-stricken desperation. Far from anguished, the man's expression was serene. Something else that troubled the rescue team was that the woman's right thumb was plunged down to its base in the man's mouth. How on earth could the dead woman insert her thumb into the man's mouth? Nonetheless, that was how it looked to those who saw the corpses.
The man must have bitten down hard on the thumb, for his jaws refused to unclamp even after the recovered bodies had been laid on the deck of the patrol boat. When they pried his mouth open and removed the thumb, they found that it'd nearly come off. They tried giving the man artificial respiration to see if he could be revived. It was useless. He showed no signs of returning to life. He was dead. They could have saved him if they'd reached him just a few minutes earlier.
The man's serene expression, however, soothed the rescuers' feelings. It wasn't easy to bite down so fiercely and at the same time wear such a serene expression. But this man had accomplished the contradiction.