The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo

0230
Copy of the Order of Culture certificate
received by Dr. Kensuke Mitsuda—the first
director of Nagashima Leprosarium—for
his significant contribution to the arts and
sciences, November 3, 1951
    He wears a black tuxedo, sits in the front row of the state room, along with the four other recipients.
When his name is called—Dr. Kensuke Mitsuda—he rises slowly, every movement sharp, as if he has rehearsed them many times. Barely able to bend his feet in the shiny black shoes, he slides more than steps. When he arrives in front of Emperor Hirohito, he puts his arms straight out, perfect parallels, and is handed the medal in a purple velvet–lined box, the linen-lined lid open. He bows his seventy-fiveyear-old body deeply, holds it there, arms still out, the medal in his hands. Dr. Mitsuda comes out of his bow and retraces his steps, sliding backward one, two, three steps, never turning his back on the Emperor.
    ARTIFACT Number 0229
A bottle of Chaulmoogra oil
    She wouldn’t remember this; it was before her time. The thick Chaulmoogra oil, extracted from the nut of the Hydnocarpus tree, would course through the patients’ veins. So thick, they could feel it. Looking at some of the veins, especially those in the forearm, one could see it crawling through like an earthworm. They dealt with the pain, knowing that maybe, maybe. Sometimes they rubbed their skin with it. Some hoped in those days, hoped that with each worm that crawled through them that piece by piece it would carry the disease away with it. But there were relapses, and the worm no longer provided hope, only pain. Then, six months after Miss Fuji arrived, a new hope arrived as well.
    ARTIFACT Number 0231
A whetstone
    Every day, observing their bodies, she sees, smells, touches her future. She isn’t certain when this future will come, only that, each night, it is a day closer. And it is by the maps of their bodies that she can tell how long they’ve been here, how much longer until she arrives there. She can do it sometimes with her eyes closed, but at other times she must open them.
    The skin:
    Seeing the patients laboring with shovels, picks, wheelbarrows, their shirtless torsos bone-dry in the scorching July heat. Several women in their gray-and-white-striped cotton robes working alongside, not a bead dribbling from under their cropped black hair. The Nagashima baseball team, midway through the game, skin dry as charcoal. Massaging a patient, pressing a little too hard, his skin tearing like an onion’s, large faults left behind. She remembers the dry, rough skin during the diving season, how her fingertips would split from the cold water and warm air, the stabs of pain when washing the rice before cooking it. Many patients don’t budge as she applies the bandages, don’t even turn around. Skin hairless, shiny as a polished stone.
    The hands:
    Fingers like toes, stubs, much of it self-inflicted damage: the man who had a finger ripped off when it was caught in a fishing net being thrown out to sea, how he stared at the air, where seconds before a finger had been; the woman, while making new clothes for the patients, cutting off the tops of two fingers with the scissors; the woman who developed gangrene, her left hand ballooning to twice its size before she went to the clinic and it had to be amputated.
    Nearly every time she touches these hands, she is angered, angered at the carelessness; she hates the carelessness—how if they had paid more attention, probably none of it would have happened. And she knows that all she has to do is think back to that time when she cut her arm while diving, how there was no pain; if it hadn’t been for the blood, she wouldn’t have known about it. Still, there are times when she is massaging a pair of hands—although they have become fewer recently—that she feels irritated. She can tell which of the patients have self-inflicted damage to their hands, which have been destroyed by nerve damage from the disease.