The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories by Kyotaro Nishimura

the mask had released them from any sense of responsibility. Perhaps their usual character had been transformed when they donned the masks. I did not know.
    I did not understand the womenfolk any better. The next day they had continued as if nothing had happened, singing the maguhai song as they worked, and laughing that light yet somehow cruel laugh of theirs.
    The woman called Otaki was, of course, among them. She continued to bring me food as before, and even if our eyes met, no trace of anxiety or censure clouded her sunburned face. I could only think that she had not seen anything, and knew nothing of the fact that I had been ill.
    Other than my own anxiety and guilty conscience, order had been utterly restored on the island, and so it remained for the entire two years I was there.
    I hardly spoke to the islanders, and made no effort to get close to them. Neither did I go to the shrine.
    Only once did I catch sight from afar of the person they called the Chief, the messenger that conveyed the god’s words to the people. He was an ordinary old man, small and somewhat hunchbacked. He was wearing a white kimono of a light fabric that resembled an ancient shroud, and white flowers adorned his head. I had no idea what this getup meant, neither did I wish to know. I wanted to forget everything that had anything to do with what had happened.
    I kept my mouth shut and did my job as a doctor. In two years, my sole pastime as such was dangling a fishing line in the sea by the coral reef. I had no idea what the islanders thought of me. All I knew is that for them I was just an outsider. And that relationship would not have changed even if I stayed there for ten or twenty years.
    Two years passed, and the day came for me to leave the island.
    It was sunny, but just like the day I arrived, the wind was strong and white surf foamed over the coral reef.
    All of the island dignitaries, from the new mayor down, came to the wharf to see me off, and just as when I arrived they held a long drawn-out farewell ceremony.
    â€œYou really did well to endure such a far-flung island for two years,” they kept repeating to me. I bowed my head without a word, and climbed aboard the fishing boat that would take me out to the K Maru . They knew nothing. They all thought I had stayed here for two years out of my sense of vocation as a doctor.
    After the fishing boat had set off toward the K Maru , I noticed that the young man rowing was one of the youths who had been wearing a devil’s mask. His body was muscular, but his round face was that of an ordinary young man.
    As the island gradually receded into the distance, I felt an irresistible urge to talk to him about the incident two years earlier. Perhaps it was a reaction to the two long years of silence, or perhaps I just wanted to confess the truth.
    â€œThat time two years ago,” I said, deliberately avoiding looking at his face, “you guys sunk the canoe with the salesman in it. Did your god really tell you to kill the salesman? Did you really believe it was the salesman who had brought the disease to the island?”
    â€œIt was all the god’s will,” the young man said in an unperturbed voice. I felt irritated by his unruffled demeanor.
    â€œDoes it never occur to you that the god might get things wrong? Have you never thought that you might have killed the wrong man?”
    â€œThe god considers the interests of the island. The oracle is never wrong.”
    He smiled. That beatific expression grated on my nerves. I was seized by a sudden hatred for this man sitting here before me. I found it intolerable that while I had suffered for the past two years, this youth—just like everyone else on the island—had remained entirely unaffected thanks to his unshakeable faith in the god.
    â€œThat salesman was innocent.” Suddenly I said what had, up till now, been unspeakable. “I know that for sure. Let me tell you why. It’s because I myself