Flowers of Grass (Japanese Literature Series) by Fukunaga Takehiko

Author:Fukunaga, Takehiko [Fukunaga, Takehiko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Norton
Published: 2012-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

The day before the camp was to close, we gave up the afternoon archery session in order to pack. Then, during the hours left until dinnertime, we went for a walk through the tangerine orchard.

The orchard, just behind our lodge, grew on a sunny, southern slope facing the sea. A twisting hillside trail took us up to where golden tangerines glowed among green leaves on heavily burdened branches. We could easily have eaten our fill, but these were sour, summer tangerines, and we weren’t that hungry. They puckered up your mouth till you made a face. Still, all the leaves rustled when you picked a big one from its branch, and it left a fine spray on your face when you sank a nail into the golden rind. That fresh sensation never palled on us, there in the spring sunshine and the soft sea breeze.

Fujiki and I sat down together under a tree that afforded a good view. Over our heads drooped tangerine-laden branches, while voices droned on sleepily in the distance. The sun was sinking toward the west, and backlit clouds hung on the horizon like a white curtain. Below us the cliff dropped away to a vast expanse of sea. Low waves crept turtle-like across it, glittering in the sun. “They look like an unbroken sheet of benzene nuclei,” he murmured to himself. We each lazily peeled a tangerine and dropped its sections into our mouths.

“That other evening when we were out there,” I asked, “weren’t you afraid?”

“Hmm.” He thought about it a while. “No, not especially.”

“How well can you swim, anyway?”

“I can’t swim at all.” He laughed.

“What? You can’t? I don’t believe it! You’ve really got guts!”

“I’m hopeless at it.”

“Then you must have been afraid. Didn’t you think you might die?”

“Yes, I did. I wasn’t afraid, though.”

“But look,” I pressed him with an irony inspired by our closeness, “you tried to stop me, didn’t you, when I went to get the oar?”

“I wanted to be with you then.”

“Why?”

“I thought I might die, and I felt I might be able to love you if I died that way.”

“So it’s no good any more, now?”

“Now? Now I’m alive, and I can’t see the need to love anyone.”

“It was just that one evening, then?”

“Yes. I suppose it’s because I was sure I was going to die. It’d be so miserable to die alone.”

Fujiki stared down at the sea with the sweet, melancholy look that was typical of him.

Cupid must have already fluttered off by then, on his little wings, and I just hadn’t noticed. I gazed at his profile and convinced myself that the sense of beauty it conveyed was more spiritual in nature than physique. Love transcending death, love of the kind I’d known while we drifted over the moonlit sea, could never again sound its unearthly note. Loving that spirit meant loving this profile, this slight, fleshly body. There was no contradiction involved. Just as I loved Fujiki, Fujiki—yes, Fujiki—did love me: that thought alone brought boundless happiness.

The

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