Daughter of Bad Times

by Rohan Wilson

They will not.

  When I go, my company stock will be liquidated and the money put in trust for you. It’s not much—probably a few tens of millions. There’s barely anything left of Cabey-Yasuda these days, after the debt restructure. Anyway, take the money and be happy and be free. You don’t need me to guide you anymore. You don’t need me to scold you. You’re a grown woman. Now, I’m giving you a grown woman’s responsibilities.

  Rin, listen to me.

  I’m sorry that I was selfish. In the end the things we need to live painlessly are so small. I was your mother. What else could I ask for? All the bright things in my life came from you. As the end comes, it gives me peace to realise this. It sets me free from the long grief of losing you.

  But I’m still selfish. I want you to need me. I want you to remember me because I remember you. I remember the weight of you in my arms. You were so frightened in the beginning that I held you every night like a baby. You’re my baby. I can’t think of you any other way. I was never happier than when I could brush your hair, dress you up nicely, hold you, kiss you, and love you. My whole life I wished for a baby to love and hold and kiss. Is that selfish? I don’t care. My life was empty before you came along. You filled it with tenderness.

  Please talk to me. It’s my last wish. Will you call me? Will you talk to me?

  I find myself thinking of my mother a lot. She had dark eyes, like you, and dark hair. I would climb onto her back and bury my face in that hair. I dream about seeing her again and in these dreams she holds me the way I used to hold you, tightly against her cheek. These are vivid dreams, almost like real life. The doctors say it’s the drugs but it feels like something else. It feels like my mind is regressing, travelling backwards through time, back through every pure and joyful moment I ever had before those moments drop out of existence forever. Sometimes I don’t want to wake. Being there with her again is pure love. I’ll see her soon. I can’t wait to tell her all about her granddaughter.

  Rin, my darling little girl.

  I love you I love you I love you I love you.

  Forever,

  Alessandra

  October 2075

  Rin

  There was some talk—bullshit talk, plainly—that the CIA might try to bag me and tag me at the airport and render me off to a black site or whatever, so Hoshino assigned half-a-dozen Public Security Intelligence meatheads to watch over us. It’s comical, really. I mean, the CIA? Can you imagine the CIA hitting me with a tranquilliser dart in the middle of Narita airport? Apparently Hoshino could. He’s over-protective but I guess that’s better than being under-protective. So here we are, me and Misaki-san, waiting in Terminal 2 for the plane to land while surrounded by a squad of men in dark glasses, and all of us watching out for the CI-fucking-A like paranoid weed smokers.

  Misaki-san begged me to bring her along. Like, down on both knees and begged me. Since she found out about the Eaglehawk stuff, she’s been absorbed in learning every pissy little detail about what happened and why it happened. She followed the Royal Commission and kept track of who was who—the lawyers, the witnesses, the politicians. On the days I had to testify in Osaka, she came and sat with a handful of tissues in her lap and fought as hard as she could to hold her composure. As much as I want to stay angry at her, she makes it tough. She’s so transparently proud of me.

  Still, I’m starting to regret bringing her along.

  ‘She’s your mother,’ Misaki-san says.

  ‘Would you be quiet. She’s not my mother.’

  I made the mistake yesterday of telling her about Alessandra’s illness.

  ‘Have some compassion. She only wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘Think about how she’s feeling. She’ll never see you again. Her daughter, her baby girl. How can you be so cold?’

  Damn right I’m cold and Misaki-san knows why. She watched the Royal Commission.

  ‘One call,’ she says. ‘That’s not so difficult, is it?’

  I fix her with the coldest look I can summon. ‘Do you see these men here protecting me? Do you see that?’

  Her eyes have the same shape as mine, but wetter, livelier.

  ‘I’m in this position because of Alessandra. She made this happen. Every last part of it.’ I turn away. ‘Compassion. Where was her compassion for me when it mattered? Where was her compassion for Yamaan?’

  ‘Lin-chan. You can’t stay angry forever.’

  The plane is nosing into the gate. I check my reflection in the window glass for about the hundredth time to see how this silk dress looks. I still think it’s too tight around my waist but the hem is short enough to show my legs in a racy way and that kind of makes up for it. As the air bridge extends, my heart is really starting to bash about in my chest. Misaki-san knows I’m nervous. That’s why she wanted to be here. She’s holding my hand and rubbing it softly and, even though I don’t want her to do it, I find it calming so I let her do it anyway. Nervous? It’s more like I’m beside myself. Floating. Projected. This is a golden day for me.

  When passengers start to spill out of the gate I pull my hand away and stand as elegantly as I can. Hoshino’s meatheads bring their perimeter in tightly around us. There’s a lot of people coming by. The security guys are directing people left and right like we’re a fucking traffic accident and one of them says to me, ‘Daijoubu desu ka?’ but I ignore him. What a pain in the ass this is.

  I stand in stiff elegance as people hug and kiss and I’m trying not to react but it’s hard. That should be me, I should be doing the kissing and hugging. Then Misaki-san pats my arm and points to a sick-looking man with dark skin who’s looking around drunkenly at the crowd. He’s holding a plastic bag full of clothes, and his pants are far too big—so big they look clownish. His shirt doesn’t fit much better. For a second I think he’s one of the homeless dudes you see outside Akashi station.

  Then I look again.

  What I’d planned, what I’d dreamed for months, was a misty scenario where I run across the gate lounge and fall into his arms. Instead, I find myself confused. Is that even him? He doesn’t resemble the Yamaan I remember. He’s too thin, for a start. Way too thin. And his beard is so full I can hardly see his face. I take a few cautious steps and Hoshino’s men move with me.

  ‘Hey,’ I call. ‘Hey.’

  The man looks up and there’s a painful moment where I see the embarrassment in his face. He gives a brief smile that shows he’s missing a front tooth. He bows slightly like he used to on Feydhoo Finolhu.

  Twenty months—that’s how long it’s been. Twenty months since I made it out of Tasmania. In revenge, the Australians deported a few plane loads of Maldivians back to the camp at Menik Farm, and Yammy was one of them. The Sri Lankans really weren’t happy to have hundreds of Maldivians coming back, after all, the tsunami had killed plenty of people in Sri Lanka too, meaning they had their own problems. UNHCR had moved on to areas of greater need—Nigeria, Bangladesh, Florida. That meant the Maldivians at Menik Farm had to fend for themselves. No food, no medical supplies, no help.

  So when I put my arms around him, what I feel is weirdly skeletal.

  ‘Okaerinasai,’ I say.

  Welcome home.

  ‘I made it,’ he says.

  ‘It’s finished,’ I say. ‘You made it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘What? Don’t say that. You don’t have to be sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He grows heavy. I’m holding him up.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I feel his knees give out.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘You made it. You’re out. Relax.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says but he’s crumpling to the floor. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tasukete kudasai,’ I say to the security guys.

  Help me.

  They bustle in to lend a hand, catching Yammy by the arms and lowering him to the carpet. I’m still cradling his head—I’m not going to let go, not anymore. I’ve had enough
of letting go. One of the meatheads yells to airline staff in that authoritarian way Japanese men have.

  ‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ Yamaan says but he’s pale and sweating.

  ‘You want to borrow it?’ I say. ‘You can borrow it.’

  ‘I want to slip it off your shoulders.’

  His forehead is so hot it scares me. I wipe away the perspiration.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I don’t feel so well,’ he says and closes his eyes.

  I tell the security guys to call an ambulance. One of them taps the stem of his glasses and turns away. At least they’re good for something, I guess.

  Yamaan tilts back his head. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is my mother. This is Misaki.’

  In a halting sort of fashion, with her eyes full of tears, she says, ‘Please to meet you.’

  ‘No,’ he whispers. ‘No. The pleasure is mine.’

  ‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ I say. ‘We’ll get you looked after.’

  The security guys find a pillow from somewhere and stuff it under his neck. They find water. They fuss around and check his pulse and feel his forehead—acting like they have medical training. Do they have medical training? I wave them away. Medical training or not, they’re a pain in the ass.

  ‘Are all these men here for you?’ Yammy says, watching them come and go. ‘You must be important.’

  ‘Kiss me and you’ll see how important I am.’

  Through his smile I see how that tooth is broken jaggedly at the root. Round scars, perhaps from boils, dot the side of his neck. I stroke his hair and my heart aches for the miserable, pointless things they’ve done to him.

  When, finally, the EMTs arrive pushing a power stretcher, they load Yammy on the bed, hook up a saline drip, scan him with handheld diagnostic tools, and declare him dangerously malnourished, dehydrated, and possibly ill with a parasitic infection. They have on latex gloves and surgical masks which Yammy finds pretty funny. His laugh isn’t much of a laugh anymore, it’s a wheeze. As they wheel him away, I follow beside the stretcher and grip his hand. It took twenty months, and a lot of work with Hoshino, I mean, a lot of nightclub work, a lot of drinking, to hustle up a Japanese visa for him. This should be a golden day for us but somehow it doesn’t feel that way. It feels—I don’t know—it feels like we’re different people. Changed. I mean, of course we’ve changed … just, changed into what?

  Yammy is speaking through the oxygen mask on his face.

  ‘Did you say something?’

  He tugs it aside. ‘Give me your hand.’

  ‘You’re holding it.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  He clasps both hands around mine. They’re hot and dry and bony.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry.’

  ‘No, listen.’ He wrangles off the mask completely. ‘Rin. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Come on. Not now.’

  ‘You kept fighting,’ he says. ‘You never stopped. You fought for me.’

  ‘What did you think? That I was kidding? You know me better than that.’

  He kisses my fingers. He kisses my palms.

  ‘You’re making me blush.’

  ‘I know you,’ he says. ‘At last, I know you. You’re Rin Sakurai. You’re my shining bay. You’re my sun and my heat.’

  The security guys are smirking at us. The EMTs are smirking at us. Misaki-san is right at my elbow and I can sense the glow, the emotion, coming off her.

  ‘This isn’t the time to talk about it. You’re sick. You need to get better.’

  But I grip his hand and follow the stretcher and my heart skips like a pop song.

  ‘… no, no, no, let me finish. That’s not a failure. No one should call that a failure. Yes, your question?’

  ‘If it’s not a failure, then tell us how many detainees remain at large in the community?’

  ‘As I said, that’s commercial in confidence. We can’t talk numbers or figures. Cabey-Yasuda will give you that information when they’re ready. What I will say is that we’re working hard to find every last detainee.’

  ‘Is it too early to call the search for Daniel Howland a failure?’

  ‘We’ll find Daniel Howland. I promise you. Now we need cooperation—no one doubts that. It’s been seven days since our last reliable sighting of him but that’s not the end of it. We have leads and we’re following each one. We need cooperation. We know Daniel Howland had sympathisers in the community. He’s being protected, he’s being sheltered. Anyone we find—no, no, I’m speaking, let me speak—anyone we find giving shelter to this man will face charges.’

  —Shane Freeman, Assistant Commissioner of Operations, Tasmania Police, responds to questions from the media, 25 February 2074