“Oh, that sounds lovely.” And in moments Carolina’s asleep.
I’m grateful. I can barely think well enough to talk. Martial law in Italy. What does that mean for Nonna? Is she afraid of men walking around with guns? Can Zio Piero take care of her? Will he be called to service in the army?
When we get back to the embassy, I go straight to my corner in the ambassador’s office, and we’re bombarded with details from the interpreter and the newspapers. Mussolini was voted out of power and thrown in prison.
Over the next few days, the ambassador keeps me at his heels. He growls constantly. He even yells at Pessa.
Papà gets up earlier than ever and turns on the radio first thing. The Japanese servants are jittery and never smile. Papà says none of them trust each other, and we mustn’t trust them, either. At the end of the day, they disappear without a word. Some servants don’t even come to work.
Hatsu doesn’t bring Botan to play with Carolina, even though the girls miss each other.
And I never get to see Aiko. Which means I don’t get the new issue of Chikakiyori. I’d have to find out where Aiko lives, meet up with her, and go through passing the magazine along under the postbox. And Aiko might have to do something unusual to get the issue. With school out, our regular patterns are broken. And doing something unusual can be dangerous.
I could tell the ambassador all this, but I’m afraid he might guess I’m talking about Aiko. She’s gone to the country villa twice, and he knows her.
So the only news we have is what the interpreter brings.
13 AUGUST 1943, TOKYO, JAPAN
The interpreter stands in front of the ambassador’s desk with his stack of newspapers. He’s about to go through them, when the ambassador says, “Tell me about revolution.”
I’m shocked—so abrupt. The poor interpreter must find the ambassador rude beyond comprehension.
But the interpreter doesn’t hesitate. “I beg your pardon, Ambassador. Has someone been reading Chikakiyori to you?” He doesn’t look at me, but I feel like he knows. I clasp my hands. “I bring you the right magazines and newspapers. I don’t bring you that particular magazine because it is a dirty rag. Japan will never have revolution.”
The ambassador looks surprised, and I know why: the interpreter misunderstood. The ambassador was asking about revolution in Italy, not in Japan.
So both countries are on the verge of revolution. Sitting in my corner, I press my arms hard against my sides and tuck my hands in the crease of my knees to hold myself steady.
The ambassador comes around from behind his desk. He folds his hands together, trying to act composed. “But this…dirty rag…says the Japanese people will revolt?”
“Lawyers and professors say that. They’re talking about the Katakura silk workers in Tokyo and the…No! I should not give dignity to their rubbish by repeating it. Premier Tōjō scorns them. The scholars say the Americans have a million bombs! They say the American military budget is more than double Japan’s entire national budget.” The interpreter laughs. “Impossible. The scholars know nothing.”
“What if they are right?”
“Their claims are worthless. But, even if they were true, think of Kurifugi,” says the interpreter. “You know who she is?”
His question is almost an insult. Kurifugi is the most famous name in Tokyo, after the emperor. She’s the mare that wins every race.
The ambassador knits his brows and hesitates.
I hold my breath. Has he really never heard of Kurifugi?
“The racehorse?” he asks.
I breathe deep, in relief.
“Japan is like Kurifugi. Defeat is inconceivable.”
The ambassador sighs. “Read me the newspapers you brought.”
And so the interpreter spreads out a paper.
The ambassador looks at me. “Look over his shoulder, girl,” he says gruffly in Italian. “How many times do I have to tell you to improve your Japanese?”
Does the interpreter realize I’m spying? But I walk to stand behind his chair as he reads that America will surrender soon.
The ambassador says, “Who knows if that’s true?”
The ambassador’s words are like a punch. Yet the interpreter just reads on: crime is on the increase.
The ambassador says, “Crime in Japan must be out of control for the newspapers to mention it.”
The interpreter doesn’t seem offended. He reads, “Burma has been granted independence from Japan in exchange for declaring war on England and America. Hotels in Osaka have no sugar or salt or butter to serve their guests.”
“Ha!” says the ambassador. “Something true.”
The interpreter reads, “The German and Japanese armies are undefeated. It is only the lack of steel that prolongs the war. Postwar meetings have begun.”
Now the ambassador’s eyes question mine. The interpreter read correctly. I give a quick nod.
“Postwar?” says the ambassador. “How could there be postwar meetings if Japan just got Burma to enter the war on our side?”
“You understand the complexities better than I do,” says the interpreter.
The ambassador sets his hand down in the middle of the newspaper and puts his face close to the interpreter’s. “Are you afraid?”
They are silent.
That night I tell Papà what I heard, but I still don’t tell him about Chikakiyori. So I can’t talk to him about the things that worry me most.
“You’re doing a good job, Simona. I’m sorry you have to do it, but I admire you for doing it so well.”
My papà admires me.
“Obedience,” says Papà. “You are practicing obedience. That’s the only choice. For the moment.”
“For the moment?” I ask. “What do you mean?” Has he found us a way to get home?
“Everything changes. Stay ready.” He kisses both my cheeks.
I crawl to my futon and lie awake with words repeating in my head. The ambassador’s question to the interpreter: “Are you afraid?” Papà: “Stay ready.”
After a long while, I crawl over to Carolina’s futon and snuggle in against her. She snuffles but doesn’t roll away. Lella is tucked inside her arm. When did she start sleeping with Lella again?
Shouts—outside in the street. Papà is up in an instant, and out the door. I run to the window. Carolina wakes and comes to my side.
I touch her shoulder. “I’ll go find out.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
But Carolina follows me to the front door, where Papà stands with the Japanese night guard and the ambassador, facing the police.
“No light can show from any house,” the lead policeman says harshly. “Not even cigarettes. Nothing should be visible from the air, in case of a raid.”
“It’s a blackout drill,” Papà explains to the ambassador in Italian.
“I understand that. But why are they bothering us? We have no lights on. We’ve even taped paper over keyholes, so that if someone has a candle burning, light can’t leak out. The Light Police never roused us before.” The ambassador turns to the policeman and tries to explain this in his halting and stupid Japanese.
The lead policeman barks, “No. You failed to cover your windows with black curtains.”
The ambassador grabs me by the shoulder. “Tell them we don’t use lights at night, so we don’t need curtains.”
I bow and explain.
The lead policeman shakes his head. “Moonlight reflects off glass, so you need curtains no matter what.”
I translate. The ambassador shakes his head right back. “Tell him we have no curtains.”
I tell the policeman.
The policeman says, “You have shutters. Close them!”
“We will take care of it,” the amb
assador says in Japanese.
The policeman looks at the shoes inside the entrance hall. “Leather is needed to make boots for soldiers. I will notify someone to pick up your shoes. Everyone must do their part.”
The ambassador hesitates, then nods. He turns to Papà and practically snarls in Italian, “Get these buffoons out of here.”
Papà clears his throat and bows to the policeman. “It is my fault the shutters were not closed. I will do it immediately.” He turns to the ambassador, bows, and says in Japanese, “I am sorry for this error.” He turns to the policeman and says the same, three times, bowing each time.
The policeman stands a bit taller. He looks from Papà to the ambassador, and seems satisfied.
The ambassador once said that I behaved strategically; I must have learned it from Papà.
I pull Carolina by the hand back to our room. We stand at the window and listen to Papà and the Japanese night guard closing shutters as the police leave. A policeman in the street shouts and waves his arms. A car screeches to a halt in front of him and turns off its lights. The idiot. You can’t drive with lights anymore.
When Papà finally comes into our room, he presses his lips against our cheeks.
We lie in the sweltering heat, all closed up, like clams steaming in sake.
26 AUGUST 1943, TOKYO, JAPAN
I’ve spent August in my corner in the ambassador’s office, listening carefully to the men who visit. I am nearly crazy with alternating fear and boredom. We never see Naoki or Aiko or Botan. I don’t know how Carolina spends her time. She hardly speaks, and I can’t remember when she last smiled.
But this morning we are outside, and it feels like the best treat ever. We stand in line with Papà at the food depot, waiting for rations. Most of the people in this line are women with their woven baskets and sacks; all are in Western clothes. “No one here has Japanese clothes on,” I say under my breath.
“That’s because of so many thieves these days,” whispers Papà. “You can’t run fast in a kimono.”
We pick up our rice. It’s even less than what Papà brought home last time, but at least it’s white. None of us liked the gummy brown rice the government tried to promote. The woman who loads our basket breaks a tomato with her thumb just by picking it up, the thing is so old. The wrinkled eggplants have brown spots. The chunks of pumpkin curl, dry at the edges. Cabbages and radishes make the pile seem substantial, but this is for the whole embassy; it’s pathetic. Papà carefully wraps our ration of matches in a small furoshiki—six per person per week.
We could be eating decently from our own vegetable garden, except this year the vegetables disappear as soon as they’re close to ripe. It’s impossible to climb over the embassy walls. So the servants are stealing. No one dares steal the sunflowers, though. The military police would get angry if they went missing.
I think of Naoki. Sometimes I see him with the boys’ martial arts groups. He’s thinner than ever. I hope Hitomi is giving him good things from our garden.
The only things we harvest these days are basil, oregano, parsley, fennel, garlic, and rosemary—flavors not used here. Japanese food is full of ginger and horseradish.
As we walk home, Carolina counts the lines of laundry we pass. It’s been a while since she counted things like that.
“The basket is light.” Papà swings it in complaint. “We’ll go down to two meals a day.”
Self-pity is as bad as being a coward, my teachers say. “We won’t starve, Papà. It’s fine to be poor.”
Papà stops and looks at me. “It’s not poverty I object to, Simona. It’s unfairness. You’re working for the ambassador now. You should understand these things.”
“I understand plenty.”
“Maybe not enough. Let’s get home, and then I’ll show you.”
We put the food in the kitchen, and Papà picks up another list and checks his money supply. “Carolina, I want you to stay here. You can play by yourself for a while.”
“I play with Lella. All the time. Every day.” She nods, almost as though numb, and walks toward the door to the side yard.
“Please let her come, Papà,” I say. “She’s alone too much.”
So we all go, back to the shopping area, down long, narrow alleyways, past the bread store, the tofu store, the soy sauce store. Half the shops are boarded up, because the workers have gone to war or been conscripted to work on the home front. All the barbershops are closed, all the little places to eat.
We turn a corner, and everything changes. It’s a marketplace, but the small tables are bare. All the goods are underneath the tables, in boxes. People talk quietly with merchants. Money and goods exchange hands, often under the cover of a furoshiki.
Of course—a black market. Now I see why Papà didn’t want Carolina to come. I want to hook my arm through hers to keep her safe. But that isn’t done here. So I move to the outside, squishing Carolina between me and Papà.
“Japan has become a country of two kinds of people,” Papà says in whispered Italian. “The military and big shots on one side. The others stand in lines, then receive too little. It’s wrong.”
“This market is illegal,” I whisper back. “We can get in trouble.”
“The military police could show up at any moment. But they won’t. They’ll pass on by at the end of the road. They take bribes. If your pockets are lined, your eyes can go blind.” Papà rubs his fingers together in the “money” gesture.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“The ambassador likes oranges,” says Papà.
“Oranges? What are you talking about?”
“Carolina, you just lost another tooth, right? It takes food to make your next, the permanent teeth. You’re both still growing.” Papà shakes his head. “We all need oranges. Pancia e coscienza.”
Pancia e coscienza—belly and conscience. Nonna used to say that all the time. It means that we should try to do the right thing, but we need to eat, too. Nonna said, “We have to hold body and soul together.”
Like Aiko said: What’s the point of winning the war if everyone will be ruined? Energy surges through me.
We go from table to table, and buy. It feels reckless. We’re about to leave when Carolina pokes me in the ribs. A woman is selling persimmons, Carolina’s favorite fruit.
“Persimmons, Papà,” I say.
The merchant looks at me. She holds two fruits low, by her waist so we can see but no one else can.
“We need them ripe,” says Papà. “We’ll buy next week.”
Next week we’ll be back in school and Papà will forget. “Hitomi showed me a way of ripening them,” I say.
Papà’s smiles. He loves to learn new food tricks. We buy a persimmon.
We wander down an alleyway of regular shops again, and enter the few that are open. Bells tinkle as we part the curtains. The shopkeepers look up, smiling, but distrust follows the instant they make out our faces. We pack into our basket dried cuttlefish, pink bean cakes, pickled vegetables. The ambassador and Pessa won’t eat these things, so Papà is getting them for the servants—for us. A feast. It’s reckless to spend money, but I’m giddy.
We turn down the cloth merchants’ alley. Several shops are open, but only one type of cloth is for sale: silk. The whole world, it seems, boycotts Japanese silk because of the war. So here in Tokyo silk is cheaper than anything else.
I remember the interpreter’s words to the ambassador: the silk workers want a revolution. Those words seemed odd then. Why would silk workers care one way or the other? Now I know why.
I stop in front of a shop. “Carolina, you’ve outgrown just about everything.”
Her eyes jump to attention. “You have, too.”
Papà nods.
I know I’m taking advantage of his strange mood that’s making him buy so much. He’ll regr
et it later. But we really do need new clothes. Carolina chooses a floral bolt for her dress, and I choose a pattern of flying cranes for mine.
I rest my hand on a bright yellow bolt. “Sashes?” I say to Carolina.
“I love sashes.”
The shopkeeper moves closer and bows. “That yellow would make perfect sashes to go with kimonos in both those patterns,” she says in Japanese. “Are they for you?”
“It’s for dresses, not kimonos.”
“I will measure you.”
“We only want the material,” I say. “I’ll sew them.”
“Dresses are hard to make,” says the shopkeeper.
“We want simple ones,” I say.
“No dress is simple to make. And you are a child.”
“Simona makes all our clothes,” says Carolina. “And they’re pretty.”
The woman flinches. She’s insulted.
I bow. “What my sister means is, I always choose the material and do a little part of the sewing.” I bow again. “You are kind. But we have someone to help, to do most of it.”
“I will give you a better price than this other person. And I am an expert. I am famous for my kimonos. I will do a better job at a better price.”
“Everyone needs to eat,” Papà says in Italian.
I remember the boy with the birds; everyone needs soup.
“Fix it, Simona,” Papà says. “Make her understand. As kindly as you can. You know how.”
I bow to the shopkeeper. “I’m sorry. We do not have someone to help us. We sew ourselves. We’re not as good as you, I’m sure. But this is part of our job.”
The woman looks incredulous. “You’re servants? Who would hire Western servants?”
“Western people. We work at the Italian embassy.”
“Italy is part of Japan’s ruination.” Her voice turns harsh. “You pay double.”
Papà’s face flashes anger. “Measure the material you need, Simona.”
In a Flash Page 10
