“It’s only for a moment or two, husband. What does he do now?”
“Still stands there unmoving, showing only his tall back and shining head to us. Princess, do you really believe we can trust this man?”
“I do, Axl.”
“Your talk with him just now. Did it go happily?”
“It went happily, husband. Wasn’t it the same for you?”
“I suppose it was, princess.”
The sunset on the cove. Silence at my back. Dare I turn to them yet?
“Tell me, princess,” I hear him say. “Are you glad of the mist’s fading?”
“It may bring horrors to this land. Yet for us it fades just in time.”
“I was wondering, princess. Could it be our love would never have grown so strong down the years had the mist not robbed us the way it did? Perhaps it allowed old wounds to heal.”
“What does it matter now, Axl? Mend your friendship with the boatman, and let him ferry us over. If it’s one of us he’ll row, then the other, why quarrel with him? Axl, what do you say?”
“Very well, princess. I’ll do as you say.”
“So leave me now and return to the shore.”
“I’ll do so, princess.”
“Then why do you still linger, husband? Do you think boatmen never grow impatient?”
“Very well, princess. But let me just hold you once more.”
Do they embrace now, even though I left her swaddled like a babe? Even though he must kneel and make a strange shape on the boat’s hard floor? I suppose they do, and for as long as the silence remains, I dare not turn. The oar in my arms, does it cast a shadow in this swaying water? How much longer? At last their voices return.
“We’ll talk more on the island, princess,” he says.
“We’ll do that, Axl. And with the mist gone, we’ll have plenty to talk of. Does the boatman still stand in the water?”
“He does, princess. I’ll go now and make my peace with him.”
“Farewell then, Axl.”
“Farewell, my one true love.”
I hear him coming through the water. Does he intend a word for me? He spoke of mending our friendship. Yet when I turn he does not look my way, only to the land and the low sun on the cove. And neither do I search for his eye. He wades on past me, not glancing back. Wait for me on the shore, friend, I say quietly, but he does not hear and he wades on.
A Note About the Author
Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of six previous novels, including Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, which won the Booker Prize and was adapted into an award-winning movie. Ishiguro’s work has been translated into forty languages. In 1995, he received an Order of the British Empire for service to literature, and in 1998 was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.