Free The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo Page A

sorry, but I didn’t want this sickness. I never asked for it.”
    “Neither did we. It’s like
we
have it. Last year, I was supposed to marry Yukihiro, and now his family has put a stop to it. Because of you. And you made it all the worse when you went and hid. Then everybody found out, the whole island. The police came and searched our house and the fields. Came back many times.”
    “And what if I had returned that day? What would all of you have done?”
    “At least we could have maybe sent you here quietly, told the neighbors that you went away to live in Tokyo or that you died or something.”
    They glance at each other for a fleeting moment.
    “That’s what Father said.”
    Another glance.
    “And I agree with him. Better one dead than the whole family.”
    “Well, it is as if I am dead. You will never hear from me again.”
    “Too late for all that. I will never come back here. They made me bathe in disinfectant before I came in here and they made me wear this bodysuit, like I’m the one who’s sick. I told them your name and they asked me to describe you. Where were you from? When did you come? As if I haven’t been humiliated enough by you, and then they make me go through all that.”
    Those are the final words the sisters will ever speak. The older sister stands up, leaves the room, and goes back through the disinfectant bath before getting on the boat that will take her over to the mainland, from where she will catch another boat to take her the seven miles to Shodo Island.
    Late that night, after her sister’s visit, she does it for the first time. That first trip across to Key of the Hand Island, almost three years before, has given her courage to expand as much as possible the perimeters of Nagashima. It is August. The water is the warmest it will be all year. It’s late; she stands at the edge of the dock, her dock. It is dark; even the outline of Key of the Hand Island, four hundred yards away, is difficult to pick out. She stares to where she knows it is and, in time, finds it. But when she turns her eyes away and then tries to relocate it, once again she must search. The moon has already long ago followed the sun over to the rest of Asia.
    She slips off her sandals and, without thinking, she’s in the water. Hardly a splash or ripple left behind.
Within half a second, not a trace. She stays underwater for a third of the way—it isn’t all that far—the shore not much more than one hundred yards at its farthest point, and at other places, half that. A few years ago, she could have made it the whole way across on a single breath.
    Twice more she goes under; her lungs have lost much of their strength, not because of the disease so much as that she is out of practice. She tries judging the shore by the sound of the scallop farms clicking in the water, but she doesn’t do a good job of it, scraping her chest and stomach against the bottom of the shore.
The other shore. The shore of Honshu. The town of Mushiage.
    She walks the stony beach, sits at the edge of a wooden dock. She has to catch her breath, not only from the swim but also from the realization of where she is. The other shore. How easy it was. The realization that she could run away is nearly too much for her. Run as fast as she can. She has about five hours before dawn. How far away could she be in five hours? Twelve, fifteen miles? She does a quick calculation, then laughs at herself. Where does she run? Whom does she run to? She has no clothes other than the thin cotton robe she wears, no shoes—her sandals are back on the dock—no money. No chance. Like the few others who have tried. One patient, three years ago, drowned in this very channel. Several others were caught, and after spending a long time in the isolation building, they were paraded past the other patients, searing, mocking into their memories not to try it.
    It isn’t all that long before she is dry. August, even past midnight, is hot enough to dry her. Across