The Voyage

by David P. Gontar (June 2015)

A fierce arm thrust out of the shadows and seized her. So Akira was not going to desert her after all. She flung herself around him and feverishly kissed his neck. He was wearing only a thin tee shirt and tattered denims, his body lean and taut in her embrace, yet strangely impassive. His eyes were dim like the brackish water, yet glinted every so often with flashes of his former desire and idealism. She didn’t want to see, and hid her face against his breast, waiting desperately for her frozen tears to melt. 

“Are you ok?”

When she made no answer, he asked again.

“Yes,” he heard her say softly, feeling her shiver.

“Come on.”

It was the October festival. All afternoon the maze of streets had rocked with fireworks and inebriated young men rollicking beneath the divinities they bore on their strong backs. Now the stillness was eerie, like what you might experience in the eye of a typhoon.  

Akira rowed them briskly towards the umbrageous heart of Tenbou Lake. His strokes were clean, pure and almost inaudible as she watched him pull them to love’s terminus. In his canvas satchel she felt the heavy anchor, hempen rope and bottle of liquor. Searching in vain for a spark of that seismic passion which had welded them together, she remained convinced it was still present, somewhere, churning inside him like an invisible dynamo. Akira shipped the oars, letting them drift through the dark. In the rippling glass over which they glided the moon splintered into millions of pieces.

Hardly knowing what to do, Sakura wandered along the shore, dangling her sandals by the straps. The tears came freely now, though she didn’t know why. After all, they had survived, hadn’t they? Then, as she drew near the precinct center, she could hear the merrymakers taking up their great juggernauts. The gods were rousing. Her two older sisters ran up to greet her. For once she was glad to see them. “Come!” they shouted. “Come quickly. Can’t you hear them singing? Father and his friends are waiting for us.” Then they poured their rice wine down her throat. “Yes”, she thought, “the will of heaven cannot be denied.” And as she joined them in their rowdy chanting, the deeds of the kami were hot in her mouth.  

 

 

_________________________

 

Unreading Shakespeare. He is also the author of Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review Press, 2013.

 

 

To comment on this story, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish thought provoking short stories such as this one, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this story by David P. Gontar and would like to read more, please click here.