But I don’t say that. I don’t want Carolina to be disappointed if we don’t see one. Today is happy. Even with the emergency plan, nothing feels dangerous here. It feels like heaven. As if there’s no war anywhere, now or ever.
“Do you know how to forage?” asks Fujiko. “To feed yourself from the forest?”
“A man once taught us about giant mushrooms,” I say.
“Mushrooms are dangerous unless you can identify them precisely. But plenty of other plants are edible and easy to recognize.”
We spend the morning learning to find bracken, angelica, and royal ferns. Butterbur, wild licorice, and wild sesame. Today, fiddlehead ferns make me laugh.
1 APRIL 1944, MOUNT FUJI, JAPAN
It’s April first, and like Fujiko warned us last week, the women have grown suddenly very busy. Kotsuru and Fujiko left in the truck early this morning. Probably to the local black market. Carolina is doing a history lesson with Sanae.
“I’m going for a walk,” I say.
Sanae looks up at me and gives a brief nod. “I have a chore this afternoon, so come back by lunch.” She bends over Carolina again.
I pull on my heavy kimono and walk up the hill, alone for a moment. I don’t really remember the last time I was alone. Certainly not since the police came to the embassy and took us all away. It’s a delight to walk with no one watching.
I go quickly, and finally come out on a clearing where I can see the top of Mount Fuji. Steam rises out of fissures in the volcano’s sides, and the bushes and trees around those fissures are stained yellow. The steamy mountain makes me think of Mount Nantai, near the ambassador’s summer villa. I hope the ambassador and Pessa are all right, even though they were awful not to adopt Carolina and me into their group at the internment camp. But it’s hard not to act awful in an internment camp.
Most of all, I hope Papà is all right. I breathe deep and close my eyes and say a prayer.
The stories of Kotsuru and Fujiko and Sanae are dreadful, but they comfort me. These women have made it through terrible things, against terrible odds. When we find Papà, maybe he’ll tell us his stories. But I won’t press him. And I might not tell him all of our stories, either. It wouldn’t help him to learn Carolina almost froze to death.
I know now how these women met. They were in line waiting for rations. No one in line talks to anyone anymore. No one knows who to trust. But Kotsuru broke the silence. She looked at the ink stains on Fujiko’s fingers and told her that her son, Toshio, used to love drawing. He wanted to be a mangaka cartoonist when he grew up. But he died. Kotsuru swayed on her feet, and the two other women quickly took her arms. They whispered. Little words of sympathy. Then of anger. They took a streetcar to Fujiko’s home.
It didn’t take long to form a plan, because all of them were ready for a change.
Fujiko was afraid of staying at home because her neighborhood association watched her all the time after she’d refused to join the new association of mangaka cartoonists. She figured they’d report her to the police.
Sanae had been fired from her teaching job because she’d spoken out against the war. And she missed her brother, who’d been killed. Her family didn’t need her brother’s truck, so she took it before the military could confiscate it, and left without saying goodbye. It would only have endangered her family if she’d told them anything.
And Kotsuru had no one left to say goodbye to.
So here they are, working together. What crazy luck Carolina and I had to wind up here. I breathe deep. The air smells of rotten eggs. That’s how volcanos are.
I’m heading back when I hear something. So faint. It can’t be…Our warning bell! We’re supposed to scatter. But I’m here, and Carolina isn’t.
I race through the brush toward the cabin. It’s so far! I stumble, get up, race again. I stop short. Noises come from inside our cabin. Crashes. People inside are throwing things about. I squat, half behind a tree. Men shout. But no women.
No child.
The men come outside now. They’re young—like overgrown boys, in dirty shirts and ragged school pants. They must be the Economic Police. Buying on the black market has done us in! The men carry things from the cabin—cooking pots, bedding, paper and ink, food. Then they destroy the cabin with axes. At last, they get into two trucks and drive away.
I wait. The woods are quiet.
I get up and walk through the debris, looking every which way, staying alert. The men took everything that could be sold, except the books. All those wonderful books. Those they ripped and scattered. No one is here—no wounded person.
Where would Carolina go without me? Probably Sanae took her with her. Where? I make a pile of broken wood and sit on it so I don’t have to sit on the damp earth. I need to stop shaking and think. The closest town is Hakone. Fujiko talked about a Shinto shrine nearby, too. But Shinto priests are loyal to the Japanese government—I know that from Hitomi. They won’t help a foreigner, even a child.
The sun fades and the air chills and my heart shrinks with dread. I know I’m not supposed to, but I must. I stand and shout for my sister as loud as I can.
She comes clomping out of the woods. “Carolina!” We run to each other. My eyes blur and my nose runs.
Carolina hits me. “Where were you!” she says in Italian.
“I went on a walk. I told you. It was just bad luck.”
“You weren’t here and Sanae said I couldn’t go off alone and she dragged me with her and I had to punch her to make her let me go.”
I wipe my face. “You punched her?”
“You left me!”
“I didn’t leave you. I took a walk.”
“I punched Sanae.”
I nod. I remember when Carolina punched me in the line for “coffee” at the internment camp. It hurt. “Sometimes people have to punch.”
Carolina squeezes my hand. “I have our clothes.”
“You grabbed our clothes? How could you manage that?”
“It was hard. You weren’t here!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
“I used my summer kimono. I dumped our stuff onto it and folded up the top and bottom and tied the arms and dragged it into the woods.”
“That was smart.”
“But then Sanae came and pulled me away, so I had to leave it. She said to run with her because I’d get caught on my own, but I wanted you. So after I punched her, I ran as far away as I could and stayed there till I got cold and came back and heard you calling me.”
“You did good.”
“It was hard.”
“I know. You did really good. Do you know where you left it all?”
“Of course. Lella’s there.”
“Let’s go rescue her.”
We walk into the woods and find our things exactly where Carolina left them. We strip and put on our two new pairs of school pants and our two new shirts. We put on our old school pants and old shirts on top, so we look tattered, like everyone else. We put on our summer kimonos, then our heavy kimonos on the very top. We walk downhill through the woods. I won’t let myself think about how alone we are. We have each other; that has to be enough. I won’t let myself think about how we don’t have a plan. We’re observant. Strategic. Stubborn. That has to be enough.
We walk till we see a town. It’s evening, so we make a little nest in the brush under a tree and lie down to sleep.
“We’ll travel tomorrow,” I say.
“Where?”
I put my arms tighter around Carolina and try not to think about how black the night is. “Tokyo.”
“Are the others in Tokyo?”
“Who knows? We’re not supposed to look for each other. That just puts us all in danger, if anyone is following us.”
“Then why Tokyo?”
“We know Tokyo.
Or some of it, at least.”
“Is Papà in Tokyo?”
“You know he’s not, Carolina. He’s in the prisoner-of-war camp at Ofuna.”
“He might have gotten free. We got free.”
I don’t answer.
“We should go to Ofuna,” says Carolina.
“Remember what Fujiko said.”
“Fujiko doesn’t know everything,” says Carolina.
“For now, Carolina, we go to Tokyo,” I say firmly.
Carolina squirms. “Don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
“I was more scared than you.”
“I’m sorry, Carolina.”
“Do we have to leave?”
“You know the rule. Besides, you saw what the men did to the cabin.”
“Will those men come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me the men won’t come back, Simona.”
“They won’t come back, Carolina.”
Carolina relaxes against me. She actually believes, even though she told me what to say. I wish I had an older sister to trust like that.
“It’s warmer this time,” she says. “If we get into a truck, we won’t freeze. We won’t die.”
I feel for her hand. “We’ll take a train. Fujiko gave us money.”
Carolina makes a little slurpy sound, and I figure she’s sucking on Lella’s braids. “Tell me this train will be better than the last one.”
“It will be better than the last one.”
“Good.” Carolina is quiet a moment. “Simona?”
“What?”
“Don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t. I’ll never leave you.” I gulp. I’m all she has. It’s my job to save Carolina.
“Say it again.”
“I’ll never leave you.”
“Pray now.”
We pray for Papà to be safe. We pray for Zio Piero to keep Nonna safe. That’s how we end every day.
2 APRIL 1944, HAKONE, JAPAN
I cut my hair off. It’s nearly black, so I don’t think people will look twice at the ragged edges left behind. The telltale curls are gone. That’s what matters. “Should I cut yours?” I ask in Italian.
“My hair is straight,” Carolina says. “Like Japanese girls’. Like Mamma’s.”
“We can leave it be.” I stretch both arms, still working the kinks out from sleeping under this tree. Then I smooth a strip of white cloth across my thighs. “Lean your head this way.”
“Put the scissors away first.”
I put the scissors in the small money purse. “Come on.” Carolina leans toward me, and I tie the cloth around her forehead and knot it at the rear. “When I tell you, you pull that down and cover your eyes. I’ll only do that if I’m afraid someone suspects we’re foreign. That way they’ll think we’re blind instead. Understand?”
“Of course.”
I switch to Japanese. “From this moment on, nothing but Japanese, understand?”
“Of course I understand,” she answers in Japanese.
“You are now Karo-chan all the time, understand?”
“I’m not dumb,” says Karo-chan. “But…will I ever be able to be Carolina again?”
“Yes.” And before she can ask, I add, “I promise.”
I smooth the other strip of cloth and tie it around my own head. We can’t both have our eyes covered at the same time. One of us needs to lead the other, even if only through partly closed eyes, but I think we should look alike. Farmers have cloths like that, to catch sweat. I had planned for us to use the strips in summertime as we worked the garden at the cabin. It isn’t nearly hot enough yet to sweat, but the cloth is practically like a uniform. We look like good farm children. I hope.
Karo-chan gasps. “I didn’t take our letters to Papà and our new one to Nonna. I wasn’t thinking fast enough.”
“You thought plenty fast enough, Karo-chan. And having those letters on us could have been dangerous. From now on you can recite letters to me. And I can pretend to be Papà and Nonna, and recite letters back to you. We won’t write them on paper.”
“But they’ll never get them.”
“That’s all right, Karo-chan. You know they’re thinking about us, right? So they know we’re thinking about them. We have to get moving now.”
Karo-chan points. A small cluster of fiddlehead ferns. We pick them and chew the welcome bitterness. We missed both lunch and supper yesterday, and our stomachs have become accustomed to regular meals, so this won’t satisfy us for long, but it works for the moment. Moment by moment. That’s all we need.
Karo-chan tucks Lella inside her innermost shirt and ties her empty cloth bag to her kimono sash. I tuck my money purse with the scissors inside my shirt. We hold hands and walk along the outskirts of the town till we find railroad tracks. “Ganbatte,” I say, as though we’re about to take a test.
“Ganbatte,” says Karo-chan.
I do an assessment. Our winter kimonos are too obviously new. I take mine off. Without a word, Karo-chan takes hers off. We still have our summer kimonos on, so our arms aren’t chilled. Karo-chan’s summer kimono is dirty up the back from being dragged when she used it as a furoshiki. I lie on the ground and squiggle around. Karo-chan watches me and nods. She’s so smart. I tuck our winter kimonos inside my summer kimono. My front is puffed up now, but plenty of children carry stuff inside their shirts or kimonos this way. Now it isn’t so obvious that we aren’t starving like other people.
We follow the train tracks into town. “Chin to chest,” I say to Karo-chan. We both look down as hard as we can. Town is busy even though it’s Sunday. Last week the government announced that all loyal Japanese would take no break in the workweek anymore. There aren’t enough workers left, so everyone is needed in fields or ammunition factories.
Close to the station a boy sits on a step in a doorway, selling flowers. He’s barefoot, and the flowers are nothing but the earliest weeds of spring. A bowl of boiled bamboo shoots balances on his lap.
“I’ll buy your bamboo shoots,” I say.
“You look funny.”
“I’m from Tokyo.” I hold up my smallest coin in his face. “Do you have rice?”
“I already ate my rice bran pudding.” The boy’s eyes stay on the coin. “I have old peanuts, for planting. They’re raw, but if you chew on them a long time, they get better.”
I nod.
The boy goes inside the house and comes out a moment later with his hands brimming. “Karo-chan,” I say, “hold your bag out.” Karo-chan extends her bag.
The boy dumps in peanuts. Then the bamboo shoots.
I give the boy the coin and take a bamboo shoot in each hand. So does Karo-chan. Karo-chan and I search desperately for a place to eat. It’s rude to eat while we walk, and we can’t run the risk of someone scolding us and taking a good look at us.
“Let’s go behind a building,” says Karo-chan.
We scramble behind the closest building and eat. The bamboo shoots are tender, fresh out of the ground. The nuts are dry and almost woody. But the boy didn’t lie; chewing helps. A train whistle cuts the air. Clouds billow from the engine. We run across the street to the station and stand in the ticket line. Prices are posted. Good. I won’t have to lift my face to the man. I take out the right amount and tuck my purse away.
The woman in front of us exchanges greetings with the ticket salesman. “Takayama,” she says. That city is way to the northwest. The boy beside her moves closer.
“Documents,” says the ticket seller. “Name card.”
The woman digs around in her bag.
Documents? Is this a new rule? I clutch the money in my hand. We have to get on this train; trains are t
he safest way. I step up to the window and hold my handful of money on the ledge. “Good day, kind sir. I seem to have misplaced our documents.” I keep my eyes practically shut, but I can see his neck through my lashes.
“Where are you going?”
“Tokyo. Two for Tokyo, please. Third class.”
“That’s ninety kilometers. You only need documents for trips over a hundred kilometers.”
I open my hand and let the money fall onto the counter.
“Not so fast.” He hesitates.
I lean against the counter to keep myself from falling.
“Where are your calluses?”
“What?”
He gives a small laugh. “Just teasing. You’re a good girl to quit school and help in the fields. Keep your arms tight over whatever you’ve got inside your kimono. There are thieves everywhere now. Make sure you change trains at Odawara.” He lays down two tickets.
My hand shakes as I take them. Amazing. No one expects to see Western children here—so no one does. As long as we talk right and behave right, people think we are who we pretend to be. Language matters more than the shape of eyes. But if anyone looks too hard, we’ll get caught.
On the train, Karo-chan sits near the window, me on the aisle. We slump against each other and pretend to sleep. It turns out to be easy to know when to get off at Odawara, because nearly everyone gets off there. And they all head to another train, so I know that’s the one going to Tokyo.
The next train is filthy and crowded. The seats are threadbare. Karo-chan and I sit together in one window seat with a woman squashed against us in the aisle seat. We look out on flat rice paddies and streams and thatched houses. We pass a Shinto shrine with white ribbons tied to a tree out front. Each ribbon wishes luck to a soldier. There are so many, the tree looks snow-covered. All the other trees along the railroad tracks have been cut down. The stumps stand like ugly scars.
The train stops frequently, and at one stop I see the sign: OFUNA. Papà. I can smell his coffee breath, his garlic hands. Karo-chan looks at me. Her face begs. I close my eyes. Maybe she’s right? By the time I get to my feet, the train’s going again. It’s better this way. It is.
In a Flash Page 17
