Kk 11 a

Shortly after this the rains came and forced us to shelter for days on end inside the cave house. The tracks became torrents, the forest became a swamp. I longed for the howl of the gibbons instead of the roar of the rain on the trees outside. It did not rain in fits and starts as it did at home, but constantly, incessantly. I worried over our beacon, that was becoming more saturated now with every passing day. Would it ever dry out? Would this rain ever stop? But Kensuke was stoical about it all. “It stop when it stop, Micasan,” he told me. “You cannot make rain stop by wanting it to stop. Besides, rain very good thing. Keep fruit growing. Keep stream flowing. Keep monkeys alive, you also, me also.”

I did make a dash up to the hilltop each morning with the binoculars, but I don’t know why I bothered. Sometimes it was raining so hard I could hardly see the sea at all.

Occasionally we sallied out into the forest to gather enough fruit to keep us going. There were berries growing in abundance now, which Kensuke insisted on gathering – he didn’t seem to mind getting soaked to the skin as much as I did. We ate some, but most he turned into vinegar. The rest he bottled in honey and water. “For rainy day, yes?” he laughed. (He loved experimenting with the new expressions he had picked up.) We ate a lot of smoked fish – he always seemed to have enough in reserve. It made me very thirsty, but I never tired of it.

I remember the rainy season more for the painting we did than for anything else. We painted together for hours on end – until the octopus ink ran out. These days Kensuke was painting more from his memory – his house in Nagasaki, and several portraits of Kimi and Michiya standing together, always under the cherry tree. The faces, I noticed, he always left very indistinct. He once explained this to me. (He was more and more fluent now in his English.)

“I remember who they are,” he said. “I remember where they are. I can hear them in my head, but I cannot see them.”

I spent days perfecting my first attempt at an orang-utan. It was of Tomodachi. She would often crouch soulful and dripping at the cave mouth, almost as if she was posing for me. So I took full advantage.

Kensuke was ecstatic in his delight at my painting, and lavish in his praise. “One day, Micasan, you will be fine painter, like Hokusai, maybe.” That was the first shell painting of mine he kept and stored away in his chest. I felt so proud. After that he insisted on keeping many of my shell paintings. He would often take them out of the chest and study them carefully, showing me where I might improve, but always generously. Under his watchful eye, in the glow of his encouragement, every picture I painted seemed more accomplished, more how I wanted it to be.

Then one morning the gibbons were howling again and the rains had stopped. We went fishing in the shallows, out at sea too, and had very soon replenished our stores of smoked fish and octopus ink. We played football again. And all the while the beacon on the hilltop was drying out.

Wherever we went now we took the binoculars with us, just in case. We very nearly lost them once when Kikanbo, Tomodachi’s errant son – always the cheekiest, most playful of all the young orang-utans stole them and ran off into the forest. When we caught up with him he didn’t want to surrender them at all. In the end Kensuke had to bribe him – a red banana for a pair of binoculars.

But as time passed we were beginning to live as if we were going to be staying on the island for ever, and that began to trouble me deeply. Kensuke made repairs to his outrigger. He made more vinegar. He collected herbs and dried them in the sun. And he seemed less and less interested in looking for a ship. He seemed to have forgotten all about it.

He sensed my restlessness. He was working on the boat one day and, ever hopeful, I was scanning the sea through the binoculars. “It is easier when you are old like me, Micason,” he said.

“What is?” I asked.

“Waiting,” he said. “One day a ship will come, Micasan. Maybe soon, maybe not so soon. But it will come. Life must not be spent always hoping, always waiting. Life is for living.” I knew he was right, of course, but only when I was lost and absorbed in my painting was I truly able to obliterate all thoughts of rescue, all thoughts of my mother and father.