The Harmony Silk Factory

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Johnny?” I said when I found us alone for a moment. “It looks a frightfully complicated machine. You’re not just guessing, are you? We don’t want to land ourselves in more trouble.”

The pallor had lifted from his face and he seemed well again. His right shoulder lifted in a half-shrug and he returned to his work without speaking to me.

“I see, still in a mood. Fine. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care to know what’s wrong with you. I’ve stopped being concerned about your well-being. But I am concerned about my well-being and that of the others on this boat. All I ask of you is that you stop messing about with that machine and let Kunichika deal with it instead.”

He looked up, smirking with an ugly curled lip.

I said, “That doesn’t become you.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t do it.”

“I know,” he repeated, “that you’re still concerned about the well-being of the others on this boat.” His voice was mocking and hard.

“Look here, I’ve had enough of your nonsense,” I said, my face flushing with anger. “You’re a pathetic little child. Something troubles you — God only knows what, because you won’t talk about it — and you deal with it by being thoroughly uncommunicative for days on end, surfacing only to pour vitriol on the ones closest to you. Let me tell you this. If I don’t look out for you, who will? I know what Kunichika is up to — of course I do. I see it too.”

Again, that hard laugh. “You see nothing,” he said, and he returned to his work.

I left him and found a small triangle of shade cast by a stack of boxes. After a few minutes Kunichika sat down beside me. “Strange thing, the sea,” he said, sighing as if with exhaustion. He seemed friendly and gently comic, resigned to a long wait.

“Is it?”

“Yes, it has a peculiar effect on the minds of men. It affects their thinking.”

“Really — how interesting. And women? Does the sea do funny things to them too?”

“I would think so, but sadly I have not had the opportunity to observe many women at sea.”

“Well, here’s your chance to observe one at close quarters. A fine specimen, too, I’m sure you’ll agree. Not that there’s anything I could tell you about your new subject. Your students at the university will read your paper with the utmost interest, I’m sure.”

“What was all that about just now?” he said, his voice changing suddenly, becoming sharp and incisive.

“What?”

“You seemed to have had a very long discussion with Johnny.”

“Wasn’t much of a discussion, I assure you.”

“An argument, then.”

“I’m afraid to disappoint, but it wasn’t that either.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Ask him.”

He relaxed against the boxes once more, his body resuming its casual, weary posture. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to pry, I was just being inquisitive.”

“The strange effects of the sea, I expect.”

He smiled. “You’re good friends, aren’t you? I think you mean a lot to Johnny.”

“Good friends? Not particularly. Have you got a cigarette?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Why do friends argue?”

“The strange effects of the sea,” I repeated.

“Perhaps. We’re all very tired, I think.”

“Are we really going to find the Seven Maidens — or is this all going to end in disaster?”

“If we can get the boat moving, we’ll find them.”

“You seem very certain of that.”

“You seem unusually pessimistic, Peter.”

“Those maps of yours — I had a look at them. They’re very detailed, aren’t they? I didn’t think there were such maps of the Straits.”

“Those maps are all we have,” he said, rising to his feet. He stood over me, blotting out the sun. “Please don’t interfere with my things.”

HE WAS WRONG. We did not find the Seven Maidens, they found us. We sailed into their shallow crystal waters as if we were lured there, guided by the wind and the invisible current into those sheltered shores, whose calm façade disguised Pandemonium, the place of demons. The serpentine curves of the talcum-white beaches, the coyly swaying palms, and the soft, deep cladding of forest — how were we to know that these were the high capital of Satan and his peers? We had been succoured, it seemed. We ate, we slept, we washed the fiery brine from our souls. We set off again, hope and vigour renewed. We did not know that we were sailing on a burning lake; we thought that we had found paradise, but in truth we had already lost it.