18mm Blues (3 page)

Surfacing with the awabi she handed the basket up to the boy.

Bertin rushed down the side deck and yanked the basket roughly from the boy. Probed for pearls in the exposed flesh of each of the awabi. None. By then Setsu had climbed aboard, and, as Bertin was about to discard the awabi into the sea, her hands took firm hold of the basket while her huge dark eyes took hard hold of Bertin's eyes. After a long moment he relinquished the basket and returned to the stern.

The black lacquered bowl contained the reason for Bertin's irritation. Only six pearls, including the
baroque
, and the baby pea-size one was the best of the meager lot. The other four were of better size but marred with pocks and pimplelike protrusions. Certainly a far cry from the fortune he'd anticipated. At this rate he wouldn't make enough to offset the cost of fuel. He busied away that thought by pulling in the drogue, starting the engine and moving the boat up and out of the channel to the protective leeward side of an island. Got close up as possible, dropped anchor.

He sat in a folding chair on the aft deck, drinking red wine from a tin cup, gnawing at a hunk of hard strong cheese and longing for some proper bread. The wine wasn't a good burgundy so the tinny taste from the cup didn't matter all that much. And the cheese, he wasn't even supposed to be eating cheese. A doctor had told him cheese would cause his kidneys to make stones. Hell, his stones were probably as good as those, he thought, glancing at the contents of the black lacquered bowl. Perversely, a lighter mood suddenly poured into him and he almost laughed aloud at where he was and what he was hoping for.

On the foredeck Setsu was being tended to by Michiko and the boy. Michiko had poured two pails of fresh water over Setsu to rinse the saltwater residue from her. Then, before the air could dry her, Setsu lay on the deck while apricot oil was massaged into her skin, the molecules of the oil taking the moisture of the water with it as it penetrated. Special, longer attention was paid her legs and feet, for they had done most of the diving work. Michiko tended to the left and, simultaneously, the boy to the right. The boy had become good at this and enjoyed doing it and there was just as much care and love in his hands as there were in those of Michiko, who let him continue on Setsu's ankles and insteps and toes while she prepared the raw supper. She washed the awabi more thoroughly before slicing them because Bertin's fingers had been into them.

By the time supper was over the long twilight was waning. Setsu sat with her back against the cabin trunk, Michiko, beside her, had eyeglasses on and was writing postcards that she'd picked up in an everything store in Ban Pakbara. The boy was restless, getting up and down, wandering the foredeck but minding Setsu by keeping to it. He had her patience, she thought, and that caused her to catch upon an instance when she'd been about his age and showing her patience, as for perhaps the hundredth time she listened to her grandmother Hideko Yoshida recite family history and pridefully tell of her great-grandmother Amira's exploits as an ama.

For twenty generations or more, as far back as could be remembered of anyone being told by anyone, the women of the Yoshida family had been amas. An honorable profession, romantic in the way it demanded female courage. How mystical and practical the gathering up of the offerings of the great mother sea!

Originally the family had lived on the island of Tsushima out in the Korean Straits. In the early 1800s all the Yoshidas, including even most distant cousins, migrated to the village of Wajima in Noto prefecture. There were many amas living in Wajima, an entire society of amas, so the Yoshidas felt comfortably in place and before long had earned a respected standing.

It was customary for most of the amas of Wajima to spend the diving season (from late spring to early fall) working the more generous waters out around the island of Hegurajima, thirty miles from the mainland. In the eyes of the Yoshida amas of that time no place could have been more beautiful, and eventually they'd grown so attached to it that throughout each off-season their spirits longed for Hegurajima. They heeded the longing, gave in to it, moved one and all out to that island and settled on its northernmost tip close by the lighthouse. From then on Hegurajima was where they thought of as truly home.

And it was where, shortly before the turn of the century, the West discovered these Japanese women who dove. It was thought and expressed then how contrary they were to Victorian convention. So actively brave and, scantily clad in revealing wet white (if at all), they plunged into the sea time and time again in search of pearls. Incredible how deep they went and how long they remained under. They were able to better stand the coldness of the water because of something special about their female bodies, it was said. By all means worthy of curiosity, an attraction one would never regret going that far out of one's way to see: the amas of Hegurajima.

That was during the time of great-grandmother Amira, whom Setsu had always been told about so much. Very early on it got so Setsu would enjoy reciting aloud to herself practically word for word those stories about the great ama, the great-grandmother, Amira Yoshida.

For example, the account of how Amira had taken part in the 1905 pearl fishing season of Ceylon. Never had there been another to equal it. Forty thousand persons from almost every direction assembled on what had only a week before been a desolate stretch of beach on the Gulf of Manaar. All sorts. Picture them. Delicate-featured Singhalese, muscular Moormen, thick-limbed Kandyans, Weddahs, Chinese, Jews, Dutchmen, half-castes and outcasts. There were boat repairers, mechanics, provision dealers, cooks, clerks, coolies, servants, priests and pawnbrokers. Even jugglers, acrobats, fakirs, gamblers, beggars and, of course, many women on hand to sell themselves. Such a babble of languages! What a confusion of activity! Everyone intent on what might be gained from the pearls that ironically were mere irritations to the oysters that contained them.

Five thousand divers! Imagine such a number, five thousand. Most were Ceylonese Moorman and Lubais from Kilakari, also many Tamils from Tuticorin, Malayans, Arabs, Burmans. Not many Japanese and only a few amas, however those few were by far the best divers and the most industrious. On days when the seas were considered by others to be too rough to dive safely, the amas, Amira among them, defied the undertows and worked the bottom as usual.

The boat from which Amira dove was an oversize dhow that had come there from Bahrain. It was painted bright orange except for its figurehead, a crudely carved interpretation of a serpent, that for some reason was painted blue. The boat had one large square sail of hand-woven cloth and riggings made of twisted date fiber. The captain or master or
sammatti
, as he was called, was a bearded and dishonest Persian, who had an uncanny talent for picking out which of the oysters brought aboard by the divers contained the choicest pearls. Defying anyone to object, either the divers, line tenders, the boiler or the pilot, he would open those certain oysters, remove their pearls and store them in his jaws. No matter that it was prohibited, that every oyster was supposed to be contributed unopened to an aggregate that would at the end of each day be divided among all. Great-grandmother Amira would glare at this Persian, silently but explicitly, to convey her mind. Despite numerous opportunities not once did she ever secret a pearl anywhere upon or within her body.

The usual depth she was required to dive was ten fathoms (about sixty feet), which was no strain on her, as she had been down twice as deep. During each dive she gathered as few as fifteen or as many as fifty oysters.

By midafternoon when the boat headed for shore it was often bringing in twenty thousand.

Those were divided daily, unopened, with the divers of each boat receiving a one-third share, of which a third went to their rope tenders. The question then for Amira was whether she should open her oysters and have her compensation be the value of whatever pearls, if any, they might contain. Or to sell her unopened oysters on the spot to one of the many pearl merchants. Amira seldom gave it a second thought and when she did she only had to picture herself sitting forlornly amidst a pile of empty shells.

She sold to a shrewd Indian, a Chettie from Madura, who dressed quite fashionably in semi-European attire, carried a walking stick and wore patent leather boots, which, as the days passed, were being abraded and dulled by the beach sand. To ensure that she continued to sell her unopened oysters to him, he always forlornly reported that those he'd bought from her the day before had been entirely without pearls—or had contained only a few nearly worthless seeds. Amira knew, of course, that he was exaggerating, to put it politely, and she would have preferred it if he'd admitted that they were accommodating each other.

By decree of the Ceylonese government, the season of 1905 ran from February twentieth to April twenty-first. Sixty days were scheduled but only forty-seven were worked because of holy days and storms. The total number of oysters taken was 81,580,716. (It was estimated that 20,000,000 more were illicitly opened.) The catch yielded pearls that brought at local worth 5,021,453 rupees ($2,000,000). In 1905 money it was an enormous amount.

Right after that Ceylon season Amira returned home to Hegurajima. The sum she brought with her was not a fortune but far more than any Yoshida ama had ever earned. With it she paid to have a small but sufficient house built for her sister and to have rooms added to three other of the Yoshida houses situated closely together there on the point near Hegurajima light.

Although great-grandmother Amira died many years before Setsu was born, from this manner of hearing history and elaborating with imagination, Setsu felt she knew Amira well. In fact, one of those rooms that Amira had added on eventually became Setsu's bedroom, so Setsu thought of Amira as a benefactor as well as an ama that she should live up to.

There was never any doubt that Setsu would be an ama. She believed, as did others, that she'd had the secrets of the profession passed on to her while still in the womb. Hadn't her mother continued to dive for months after Setsu had begun kicking and rolling within her? Hadn't Setsu been born early, in a
hiba
, one of those meager stone houses along the Japanese coast meant to be where an ama might take temporary refuge?

Even before Setsu was old enough for deep water she would go out in the boat and help while Harimi, her mother, dove. The boat was a wide, high, fat-bellied rowboat, and Setsu enjoyed the dry thumping sounds it made whenever she or her father moved about in it or something struck its sides. Father would often have her tend the line that was attached to mother's waist, and she'd feel the tugs and tensions of it as mother, like a large fish, moved along the bottom ten or so fathoms below. (It occurred to Setsu years later how umbilicallike it was, but with the dependency reversed.)

At age twelve she officially became an apprentice ama. Required to practice diving by retrieving speckled pebbles in the shallows. Forbidden to go out to the sea. It was boring for her. She was already too advanced an underwater swimmer, knew how to hyperventilate before going under and how to preserve the oxygen she took down with her by relaxing and never expending unnecessary effort.

She was tall for her age, taller by a head and thinner than any of the other apprentice amas. Such a long, slender neck that her contemporaries called her
jotu
, crane. She was self-conscious of her slimness until Harimi told her it was something that had been held back two generations for her, that great-grandmother Amira had been similarly constructed.

It indeed did seem that her slenderness made her a better swimmer, allowed her to slice through the water with more speed and surely more grace.

She became a full-fledged ama at age fourteen. Began accompanying mother down the steeps of deep water, sharing those special regions with her. They swam along the bottom nearly within reach of each other, pointing things out, signaling. Mother would indicate an abalone and swim on, leaving it for Setsu to pry at its cling and take up to the boat to father. Pleasing father, allowing him to brag at night in the tavern about how many Setsu had brought up.

Pearls.

When Setsu was seventeen she found an oyster that had done its best to hide from her in an inconspicuous underwater crevice. The pearl in it was like its soul, she thought, a lustrous twelve millimeters round. She was reluctant to sell it, kept it for a while wrapped in a square of silk in a tiny white lacquered box. She thought possibly it was the part of her spirit that was great-grandmother Amira that convinced her to let it go to a dealer in Kanazawa. She put the money away.

By then, as expected, sister Michiko had also become an ama. And sister Yukie, the youngest, had begun apprenticing. Michiko was never a consistently good diver. One day she'd dive acceptably, the next she'd use any excuse to get out of having to go down. She confided to Setsu that when she was only thirty feet under she felt as though she were being crushed, and at sixty feet she often was overcome with panic. Yukie apparently would be even less of an ama because she really didn't want to be one, was merely tolerating the path of tradition.

Father died.

And Hegurajima was not the same. The presence of his. absence was everywhere. His ashes were kept in a porcelain jar within a blue brocaded silk box. Placed on a widened window ledge from which the sea could be seen. One afternoon at dusk, mother took the urn out a hundred yards from shore. Removed its lid rather ceremoniously. Scattered the ashes. They were momentarily a gray, unwilling wisp on the surface, then the vigor of the sea took them.

That didn't help enough. A few weeks later mother decided on more drastic action: they'd move. All the way across the southern midsection of Japan to the prefecture of Mie. A hamlet there called Wago was almost entirely inhabited by amas.

As soon as they were halfway settled in a small rented house nearly sides against sides with two other similar Wago houses, they began diving. Not from a boat as they were accustomed, but from the shore. It wasn't a lenient, sandy shore. There were jagged rocks all the way to the waterline, even when the tide was out, and the surf was intent on pounding belligerently against them. Setsu tried to locate a spot where the suck and pull was not so strong, where she and Harimi and Michiko could safely enter the water. Finally, an ama who was familiar with those shores showed Setsu a nearly concealed narrow inlet, little more than a slot really but protected so it offered easy enough access.