Russia

Russia is not yet a place James Bond reaches in this passage; it is the name that turns his uncertain memories into a destination. When he finds the word Vladivostok on a scrap of newspaper, he connects it with a large country and asks Kissy Suzuki to confirm that he means Russia. Her confirmation gives his sense of a Russian past a geographical focus and sets his departure in motion.

A Name on a Scrap

On the way to the cove, Bond asks Kissy to wait because he has something serious to discuss. He produces a crumpled square torn from the newspaper scraps in the little lavatory. Kissy usually tears these squares herself and discards any containing English words, a precaution that makes this surviving clue especially charged. Bond has found the word Vladivostok and suspects it carries a message for him; he asks whether the country he associates with it is Russia. Kissy remembers her promise to the priest, then confirms that he is right.

The recognition does not restore Bond’s memories, but it gives shape to his intuition. He tells Kissy that he feels he had much to do with Russia and that much of his former life may have concerned it. His longing is not simply to know where Vladivostok lies: he wants to discover where he came from before arriving on Kuro Island. Russia therefore becomes both a place on the map and a possible route into an identity he cannot otherwise recover.

The Proposed Route

Bond concludes that he must go to Vladivostok, hoping that the journey will awaken further memories and allow him to work backward from there. Kissy accepts his decision and offers practical help. The mailboat will go to Fukuoka the next day; she will put him on a train there, provide money and directions, and explain that a traveler can go from Hokkaido to Sakhalin before making his way to Vladivostok, which she describes as a great port south of Sakhalin.

Her instructions make the distant destination seem reachable by a sequence of ordinary connections, but her warning restores the danger behind the route: she says the Russians are not friendly. Bond answers that he is only a fisherman from Kuro Island and asks whether they would surely do him no harm. His assumption of safety contrasts with Kissy’s caution; the passage offers no confirmation that his disguise or occupation would protect him.

Departure Still Deferred

Kissy’s response to Bond’s plan is physical as well as practical. Her heart chokes her; she rises and walks slowly to the boat, pushes it over the pebbles into the water, and waits in her usual place in the stern. Bond takes his familiar place and rows, while the cormorant climbs aboard and perches in the bows. The scene returns to the routine of their life on Kuro Island just as that life is about to be broken by the proposed journey.

The passage ends with Bond still rowing rather than traveling toward Russia. Vladivostok is his chosen point of departure into the past, but the immediate consequence of recognizing the name is only a plan: Kissy will arrange the journey, and the two continue their ordinary passage out to sea.