Contents of Bottle-1

Father, Mother, Everyone,

At long last, a boat has come to rescue us from this deserted island.

From a large ship with two smokestacks, two rowboats were dispatched in order to navigate the stormy
seas to the island. It appeared that you, mother and father, were on the boats, mixed among all of those
who had come to see us off, and we were overcome with homesickness. Someone waved a white
handkerchief in our direction, and in an instant we understood.

We understood that all of these people and you, our mother and father, must have seen the message
from our first bottle, and that you have come to save us.

White smoke rose from the ship, and a high-pitched whistle blew, as if to say we’re coming to save you
now. It was so loud that all of the birds and insects of this tiny island flew away and vanished in the
distance over the wide ocean.

But for the two of us, that whistle was more terrifying than the final blasts of Judgment Day. We
couldn’t help but think that heaven and earth had been torn asunder, the light of the Eye of God and
flames of Hell blazing together before us.

Oh. My heart is racing; my hands are shaking too much to write. My tears have blinded me.

In a moment, the two of us will climb a cliff facing that giant boat so that you might see us better,
mother and father. So that all of you and the sailors you’ve brought along and begged to save us will see
us clearly as we drop, clinging to one another, as we cast away our bodies and die.

The sharks that swim in these waters will surely devour us.

And then, after that, this letter than we’ve shoved into a bottle and set adrift will be picked up by all of
you on the boat.

Oh. Father. Mother. We are sorry. We are sorry, we are sorry, we are sorry. Please, know that from the
beginning we were not worthy of being your precious children, and give up on us. And to those who
came all the way from our distant hometown in order to save us, give them our condolences. We are
truly sorry. Please, please forgive us.

And after that, father, mother, hold each other close and return to the real world. Have pity on us and
our miserable fate, for having to die the instant we were given a chance at salvation.

Our bodies and souls are not able to atone for the sins we have committed. This is simply retribution for
the horrible things we have done on this deserted island.

Please forgive us for not confessing more than this. We are fools who are worth no more than shark’s
prey. Ah. Farewell.

We can be saved by neither God nor humans.

Your Sorrowful Children

Contents of Bottle-2

Oh, inscrutable God!

Is there no other way to end this suffering but death? When I climb the cliff we call God’s Footrest
alone, there are always two or three sharks swimming in the water below. I don’t know how many times
I’ve peeked into that abyss and wondered. . . even now, I am considering casting my body aside. But
then I think of poor Ayako, I sigh so deeply it’s as if my soul is crumbling, and I climb back down the cliff.
I understand all too well that if I die, Ayako will follow me soon after.

How many years has it been since Ayako and I drifted to this deserted island after being separated from
our caretaker and her husband, the sailor? It’s as though it’s always summer here, and though I never
know when Christmas or New Year’s is, I would guess that at least ten years have passed.

At the time the only things we had were a single pencil and knife, a notebook, a magnifying glass, three
beer bottles filled with water, and a small copy of the Bible. That was all.

But, we were happy.

On this small, verdant island there was rarely anything more troublesome than an ant—no dangerous
birds or beasts, not a single deadly insect crawling along. There were mynas and parrots, birds that I had
only ever seen in paintings, magnificent butterflies the likes of which I had never seen nor heard of. For
myself at eleven, and Ayako, who was barely seven, it was easy to find enough food from what was left
over. All year there were coconuts, pineapples, bananas, fragrant red and purple flowers, and the eggs
of small birds. We sharpened sticks and hunted fish and birds.

We gathered these things together, and using the sunlight and our magnifying glass, made fires out of
driftwood so that we could cook and eat.

I found a clear pond one day while searching among the rocks on the island’s eastern edge during low
tide, and so I built a shelter from the wreckage of the ship for Ayako and me on a nearby beach. I
gathered dried grasses for us to sleep on. After that, I fashioned a makeshift storehouse in the side of a
rock using parts from the boat as shelves. Eventually our clothing was worn away by the wind and rain
and the edges of stones and we were forced to live naked, like savages, but each and every morning and
evening we climbed God’s Footrest, read from the Bible, and prayed for our parents.

We wrote a letter to our parents, placed it within one of our precious bottles, sealed it tightly, and after
kissing it many times, threw it into the ocean. The bottle circled the island, adrift on the ocean’s
currents, before vanishing into the distance, never to return. As a signal for anyone who came to save
us, I placed a pole made from a large tree at the highest point of God’s Footrest and hung fresh leaves
from it.

We fought sometimes, but we were quick to make up. I decided to make Ayako my pupil and taught her
the scriptures and how to write. As we thought of the Bible as our God, Father, Mother, and teacher,
and as it was a thing even more precious than our magnifying glass and beer bottles, we placed it on the
highest shelf of our makeshift storehouse. We truly were happy and at peace. It was as though this
island were Eden.
*

We were so happy on the island that I kept waiting for the Devil to find his way in. And of course, he did.

I don’t know when it began. As the months and years passed, it was as if Ayako’s body had transformed
into something miraculously beautiful, like the glimmer of light off a flowing mountain stream.
Sometimes she seemed as bright as a flower-spirit, and others as seductive as the whims of the Devil.
For reasons I couldn’t understand, uncivilized thoughts began to cloud my mind, and I grew distraught. It
was when Ayako said my name and looked up at me, her eyes bright and innocent, and my heart began
to beat with a new kind of excitement, that I understood.

Around that time Ayako’s attitude also began to change. Like me, she was acting completely different
from before; she grew more and more homesick, and glanced at me often with tears in her eyes. And
then, as time went on, she seemed more embarrassed, or perhaps saddened, by physical contact.

We stopped arguing altogether. Instead, we would sometimes make troubled expressions at one
another and sigh. Perhaps it was because we were alone on this island and there was no proper way to
put anything into words. The anxiety, the happiness, the loneliness . . . it wasn’t just that. What we saw
in each other’s faces was the shadow of something darker. Unsure whether it was a revelation from God
or the seeds of the Devil’s manipulations beginning to bud, my heart would roar so loudly that some
days I worried I would not be able to return to myself.

Though I knew our hearts were growing closer, I feared violating one of God’s teachings, and never let
the words escape my mouth. What if something happened, and then soon after a boat finally arrived?
Thoughts like that would flicker through my head before I could put anything into words.

But then one afternoon, after roasting and eating sea-turtle eggs, we took a walk on the beach to
stretch our legs. As I was watching distant clouds glide above the ocean, Ayako asked me an important
question.

“Brother, if one of us gets sick and dies, what do you think the other should do after?”

As she spoke, her face was flushed, and tears ran down her cheeks before dropping into the sand. I
didn’t know what to say. I made a face that was sorrowful or laughing or both.

I don’t know what sort of face it was that I made that day, but the thought of death was suffocating. I
stood on the sand unable to say a thing, and eventually Ayako gave up and walked away.

I climbed God’s Footrest alone and began to pray.

“Oh, God in heaven. Ayako doesn’t know a thing. That is the only reason she said such a thing to me.
Please forgive her your punishment. In return I will always work to make certain we remain pure. And I,
too, will . . . oh . . .

“I will dirty my hair with sand. I will press my stomach into the rocks. If it is your will that we be punished
for this, please let a bolt of lightning extinguish me now.

“Oh, inscrutable God. Please grant me some sort of sign.”

A sign never came. The sky was a deep blue, white clouds unspooling across it like thread. In the azure
sea below, a whorl of waves rushed white into the bottom of the cliffs, the fins of sharks occasionally
poking above the water’s surface. As I stared over the cliff’s edge into the depths of that blue abyss, my
eyes began to spin. I grew dizzy and stumbled, and for the instant before I caught my balance, I was
certain I would fall and crash into the foam of the waves. Without giving myself another second to think,
I turned back and climbed again to the highest point of the cliffs. I grabbed the pole I had adorned with
leaves and hurled it, with all of my strength, into the water below.

It’s fine now. Even if a ship finally comes, they will simply pass us by without stopping. Thinking this I
laughed scornfully, and like a lone wolf, I ran down the cliffs and to our shelter. I opened the Bible to the
Book of Psalms and placed it in the smoldering coals of the fire we had cooked our lunch in. I covered it
with dried grasses and flames burst upwards and then, until my voice gave out, I ran throughout the
island calling Ayako’s name.

When at last I found her, she was kneeling on a great rock jutting out of the sea, her head craned
skyward in prayer.

I staggered backward.

As the waves shrouded the rock in purple, the setting sun glimmered like blood above Ayako’s solemn
back. The tide slowly rose, and soon the seaweed beneath her knees was washed away by the current’s
water, and as it flowed, like a waterfall, back into the ocean, the sunlight gave it a golden sheen. The
sight of the water rushing over my sister as she prayed with all of her heart, its nobility, its brightness. . .
My entire body turned to stone, and for a long while I simply stood and stared.

As if moving in a dream, I found myself rushing, running, gliding across the water to the rock. Its sides
were nothing but seashells, and as I crawled up it my body became covered in cuts. With the force of a
madman, I embraced the crying and grieving Ayako with both arms, covering us both in the blood from
my wounds. After that, my memory fades. I can only recall our return to our shelter.

For us, there was no more shelter there. Along with the Bible and withered grasses it, too, had turned
into white smoke and vanished somewhere in the distant sky.

After that, we did everything we could to drive away the darkness. At night and at noon, we despaired
and repented. Whether we embraced, encouraged one another, prayed or mourned, it was all in vain,
and I no longer felt we could so much as sleep in the same place.

Perhaps all of it was a punishment for having burned our Bible.

At night, the light of the stars, the sound of the waves, the singing of insects, the rustling of leaves, it
seemed that all of these were the murmurs of prayers from the Bible’s pages, that they had surrounded
us and were drawing ever closer, one step at a time. Unable to move or sleep, the terrifying thought
that we might lose each other crept in through a hole in our hearts.

And when the long night finally ended, a long day would begin. The bright sun of this island, the singing
parrots, the dancing birds of paradise, the iridescent insects, the moths, the palm trees, the pineapples,
the colors of the flowers, the scent of the grass, the sea, the clouds, the wind, the rainbows, all of it had
blended together with my memory of Ayako’s blinding profile, of the scent of her body, to form a
brilliant whirlpool spiraling out in all directions, and whenever I thought I had finally done away with it,
she would find a way back into my thoughts.

Ayako, who I knew was caged by the same suffering, was always watching me, and though her eyes
were as enchanting as always, I could no longer tell whether they held God’s sadness or the Devil’s grin.

The pencil has almost run out. I cannot write much longer.

I am thinking that I will place all of this, our suffering and worries, our sincere devotion and fear of God’s
Commandments, into a bottle, seal it, and throw it into the sea.

So that we will not succumb to the Devil’s seductions tomorrow. . .

So that at least our bodies will still be pure . . .

Oh, God . . . Even as we suffer like this, our bodies are fit and healthy. We are protected by this island’s
pure wind, its clean water, its abundant harvest, its beautiful and fun flowers and birds.

What terrible torture this is. This fun and beautiful island is truly no better than Hell.

God, God. Why will you not spare a moment’s thought and kill us?

–Tarou’s Journal

Contents of Bottle-3

Mom, Dad,

We are well. We are getting along and living together on this island. Please hurry and come save us.

Tarou Ichikawa

AYAKO ICHIKAWA