Monica Kilian
The Sadness of Strangers
She arrived every year in August, the woman from Wakayama. Year after year she signed herself into the same bed & breakfast in old Broome town, on the remote pearling coast of Australia. She first recorded her name and address in neat Japanese script, then, very carefully, in English: Kameko Ito, Wakayama, Japan. And beneath that she inscribed her signature, a fretwork of complex loops and swirls.
Every day just before noon she walked down Port Drive to the Japanese cemetery and went to sit beneath the large acacia tree shading the graves at the far end. She remained there, hardly stirring, until the sun painted her face with gold before sinking into the horizon.
Once, Dave the caretaker came up to her just before closing time and asked what she was waiting for.
"I'm collecting the sadness of strangers," she said, peering at him through unblinking eyes as crusty and distant as those of the old sea turtle that paddled lazily around the jetty pilings on summer afternoons."
Dave backed away, wishing the week would pass quickly and that she wouldn't be back the following year. But she returned that August, and the August after that.
No one knew for sure when she had first arrived to sit beneath the tree in the cemetery, but most agreed that she had been coming for nine years, perhaps ten. Some claimed they had seen her for thirty years. And an old-timer even swore he had first noticed her a good eighty years ago, but no one believed him, because he had lost his sight when he was fifty and his mind when he turned eighty-seven. The owners of the bed & breakfast were new, but their predecessors had told them to expect the woman from Wakayama every year.
They also couldn't agree on her age.
"If she's been coming for eighty years, she must be stone old," Julia said to George, the old man who had lost his mind. "At least a hundred. But my grandmother says she doesn't look a day over sixty." Julia's grandmother was sixty-nine, her once fair skin rumpled and spotted and leathery from having spent her life under the sun. The woman from Wakayama looked younger, Julia's grandmother had said enviously.
"I saw her last year," Dave said. "She was so old and decrepit, she could hardly walk. I don't think she'll be back."
But she was. In the third week of August, when Julia and Dave were driving to the jetty for a meal of fried squid, they spotted the woman up ahead, making her way south down Port Drive. She moved with the rolling gait of old age, leaning on a stick with every second step, her feet dragging up clouds of red dust that dispersed behind her in a fine mist. Her left hand held a white parasol high above her head, like a portable cupola.
"There's that woman again," Dave said. "I told you she was ancient." He slowed down so Julia could have a better look.
The woman stumbled over a twig and was pitched forward so abruptly it seemed inevitable that she would fall. Dave stopped the car and was about to get out to help her up, but she managed to steady herself with her walking stick, her parasol waving back and forth as she regained her balance.
"It doesn't look like she's going to make it on her own," Julia said. "Why don't you offer to take her to the cemetery?"
Dave rolled down his window. "Excuse me, would you like a lift?" he asked, but she kept her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her and continued walking without acknowledging his presence. She lurched to the left and to the right and back again, following the rhythm of her walking stick as she shuffled through the red roadside dust.
Dave repeated his offer and drove next to her for a while, but when she didn't take notice of him, he stepped on the gas and sped off.
The next afternoon, Julia drove to the cemetery on her own, thinking about the last time she had walked among the graves, many years ago, when her grandfather was still alive. The cemetery was shabby then, full of prickly weeds, empty beer cans, and stray dogs with red eyes that growled at her as she passed by, clutching her grandfather's hand. But Dave said the grounds were tidy now, swept clear of debris every day and locked for the night.
Dave told her where the woman always sat, and Julia walked slowly through the gates towards the large acacia at the back. There she was, the woman from Wakayama, sitting slightly hunched forward, her white parasol marking her presence.
Julia slowed. She no longer knew why she had felt compelled to come to the cemetery and would have turned back had she not felt foolish doing so—the woman had a direct view of the gate and may well have seen her enter. Nevertheless, Julia continued to dawdle, pretending to be absorbed in the headstones carved with Japanese script that she could not read. She hadn't been to the cemetery since well before her grandfather died, but she still remembered the graves where he had lingered and told her the stories about those whose bones lay beneath the hard orange earth. Many graves were of young men, adventurous pearl divers who perished when cyclones hurled their luggers into the snarling seas, or who succumbed to the bends, to crocodiles, and to the deadly stings of jellyfish. Her grandfather could read all the inscriptions, but he had never bothered to teach her. Or perhaps she hadn't been patient enough to learn.
Julia passed one of the few headstones she could read. Ryotaro Takaya. Died on the thirty-first of March, 1915, aged twenty-three. It was not a notable cyclone year. Perhaps he was taken by a shark, or died in agony from the bends, his eyes bulging, his strong body twisted like an old, gnarled tree. Or perhaps he was stabbed in a brawl in Sheba Lane, in a fight over a girl, or a gambling debt. She was sure her grandfather had known his story, passed it on to her, but she had forgotten.
Julia inched her way among the graves towards the acacia tree, stopping at a cotton palm that marked the end of a row. A few more steps and she would be in whisper distance of the woman, who sat facing westward, as motionless and upright as the stones rising from the ground.
The woman's eyes were closed, and she had clasped her hands together in front of her chest, holding the parasol in a remarkably steady grip. In repose, her face looked tired and fragile, her skin folding like wrinkled parchment draped loosely over her bones. She was of slight built, her frame no larger than that of a ten-year old child, and she hardly took up any space at all. Still, Julia hesitated to approach her, so complete to herself did the woman appear. Julia might even have turned around and gone back, had the woman not opened her eyes, directing her gaze straight at her.
Julia made a slight bow. "Would you like some help? Do you need something?"
The woman didn't answer, didn't even acknowledge her presence. Julia felt foolish. The woman was looking directly at her, she must see her. "Can I get you something?" Julia asked in a loud voice. No answer. She turned to go, feeling annoyed and defeated.
"I am collecting sadness." The woman's voice was firm, belying her great age.
Julia turned to face her. "How can you collect sadness?"
"When my husband died, long ago, I could not feel his spirit. It was as if he hadn't died at all. So I came here to see where it happened."
"He died here in Broome?"
The woman gestured to a tall, slim stone column next to the tree. "Hiroshi Ito. He drowned in the sea."
Julia drew closer to the memorial. To the memory of the twenty-two souls lost from the Cossack Swan on the fourth day of April 1902. Then there was a long list of names, all Japanese. She skimmed through them. There was no mention of Hiroshi Ito. And 1902? It was impossible that the woman had been alive then. She turned back to the woman who continued to sit, gazing steadily westwards, her face gilded by the rays of the plump yellow sun. "But this happened more than a hundred years ago. Surely--" Julia stopped. She didn't want to sound like she suspected the woman was lying, or that she was mad.
As she looked at the inscription, she remembered standing on this very spot with her grandfather, many years ago, when she was a young child and impatient to get back home, where her friends were waiting. "This is boring. Can't we go home?" she'd said, tugging at his hand.
He had held her firmly. "We need to stand here a little longer."
"Why?"
"To remember the strangers," her grandfather said. "To give them respect. To feel sad for them in case no one else did." And then he closed his eyes and remained motionless for a long while.
It had made no sense to her.
"April the fourth, 1902," the woman said. "Hiroshi Ito was one of the divers on the Cossack Swan. He promised he would come home to me after that last trip. I had a feeling he wouldn't be back, but he said I shouldn't worry. He was a good diver. He wasn't from Okinawa, or Wakayama, but he was a good diver. Brought up many shells, many shells."
Julia scanned the memorial again in case she had missed the name. But she hadn't – there was no Hiroshi Ito. "Would you like me to take you to your hotel? Or perhaps you'd like some water."
The woman shook her head. "No water. And I will leave when the sun sets."
"Mrs. Ito," Julia said gently, "I checked twice, and Hiroshi Ito is not listed. Perhaps you got the year mixed up?"
"Count the names," the woman told her.
Julia counted. Twenty-two souls were lost, but there were only twenty-one names. "One is missing. Perhaps they didn't know who it was."
"They knew. But they had too much sadness for themselves, no sadness left for the stranger."
"The stranger?"
"They were from Okinawa, the divers of the Cossack Swan. Hiroshi was from Hokkaido. A different world. He was born in the snow, but he always dreamed of diving for the pearls that grow in the warm ocean."
Julia had heard the names of the places the woman mentioned, but she never thought they would be strangers to each other. "But weren't they all Japanese?"
"Okinawans are not really Japanese," the woman said. "But that doesn't matter. Hiroshi was not from a diver family, he was not supposed to know how to do it. Famous divers, they come from Wakayama, from Taiji, from Okinawa. Never from Hokkaido. For the pearl divers, he didn't belong. He was like a stranger."
Julie vaguely remembered her grandfather telling her that most divers had come from Taiji, a small whaling town in Wakayama, and many also from the islands of Okinawa. They were famous, they were the best. No one knew their secrets, no one could match their skills. They swaggered through the streets of Broome, their heads high, their pockets full. Masters of the sea.
"They had no sadness left over for Hiroshi," the woman said. "That is why I am here. To collect sadness from strangers. I have almost finished. Last year I hoped it would be the last time. But then when I returned, he had died."
"Who had died?"
"The old man who came to stand by this stone every day when I was here. He gave much sadness, and I hoped it would be enough." The woman raised her old turtle eyes to Julia. "You were here once, too. But you didn't understand."
Her grandfather had died just over a year ago, but Julia hadn't accompanied him to the cemetery since she was about nine years old. She stared at the memorial and pictured him there, as he stood with her, a little girl who was impatient and bored and also a little scared of the graves, many embedded with sea shells forming simple patterns, like a child's board game, forever frozen in time. She remembered how he read out the names and told her the stories of the men who had been lost at sea. Had he known one was missing, the stranger for whom there was no more sadness left? Her grandfather -- a kind man, a smiling man, a contented man. How could he have had sadness to give? She thought of the headstone on his grave, of the inscription he had asked for and which she finally understood: Give your sadness to strangers.
The woman sighed. "Too many times already, too many times the sadness ran out, and I had to start over again, returning as a young widow to collect it so I could join Hiroshi in peace. The man who came here was generous. In twenty years he gave enough sadness that I grew old fast. I don't want to start again."
Julia closed her eyes and thought of Hiroshi Ito, the stranger on the Cossack Swan, the diver from Hokkaido for whom there had not been enough sadness to give his widow her peace. She pictured him struggling into his heavy canvas suit, his breath locked into the copper helmet, dropping into the water, going down, down, down, till his feet touched the bottom of the sea where the oyster shells grew. Tugging at the breast rope, the air rope, giving signals, feeling for signs from above. Suddenly four pulls from the boat: come up! But not too fast, watch out for the bends. Two pulls on the air pipe: give me more air, more air. The swell increases as he pushes up, the ropes sway this way and that. More air, more air! Non-stop pulls from the boat: come up, come up! He sees his breast rope swaying, fraying. He tugs: send another rope! More air, more air, more air! His breast rope snaps, his air hose flattens. He sees his wife, tears rolling down her face, imploring him: don't go! He screams into the helmet, gurgles the last of the air. And his sight turns black, and he hangs in the water like a puppet, floating among sharks and manta rays and fish, bumping against another sightless diver, one of the masters from Okinawa.
When Julia opened her eyes again, she saw the woman shuffling slowly, stiffly through the cemetery, a fragile silhouette in the orange blaze of the setting sun.
The woman from Wakayama never returned. And when Julia went to the Japanese cemetery a year later, she counted twenty-two names on the memorial by the acacia tree.
©2005 by Monica Kilian
