The Plum Blooms in Winter

by Linda Thompson

  He gave her a wan smile. “That’s good to hear.” He folded her into a passionless hug, then released her. “Thursday, then.”

  She did her best to smile. “Hai. I see you Thursday.” Her voice seemed to come from somewhere outside her.

  He turned and walked away. She stood, watching his departing shoulders for what was probably the last time. Feeling herself make a slow slide into a jet-black abyss.

  A pair of boys in rumpled trousers scuffled toward her, jostling each other and laughing. One of them aimed a kick at the apple core George had discarded. It did an uneven roll along the sidewalk, landing among the muck and dead leaves in the gutter. A layer of filth crusted its pale flesh.

  Wrapped in shame. Like her.

  She stared into the gutter while the abyss engulfed everything around her—the smell of barbecue, the sound of passing traffic, the boys’ voices. Nothing left but the winter sun on the apple core, the weight of her handbag, and the wretched ache in her chest.

  Her handbag. The knives.

  The meeting with Tsunada-san’s man.

  It took a supreme act of will, but somehow she took a step and then another. Somehow, she walked four long blocks to Namba Station. A quiet determination swelled inside her.

  She was not going to stay in the gutter.

  A weight that had been pressing on her chest lifted. There was a certain freedom in shedding her last real attachment. Kataki-uchi for Hiro-chan was her burden and hers alone. She’d use all the strength and courage her lineage had endowed her with to see it to its conclusion. If her miserable life had to shatter like a piece of worthless glass to accomplish that, so be it.

  And if she loved George-san, perhaps the farther away he was when it all exploded, the better.

  Tsunada-san’s man waited in front of the station, cloaked in growing dusk. Miyako took a deep breath, made a low bow, and explained she hadn’t come up with the money.

  A scowl creased his face. “We went to a lot of effort for you. Tsunada-san won’t be happy.”

  She cringed inside. She’d disappointed yet another man—this time a very powerful one. “Forgive me, sir. Please forgive me.”

  He brushed past her and stalked away.

  Her feet, still heavy as mountain boulders, carried her up the broad cement stairs and into the station.

  Five minutes to wait for the train. She reached into her purse for a cigarette and her fingertips grazed the knife’s handle. She let them linger.

  So, there’d be no poison now. But she still had her little armory.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sunday, January 2, 1949

  Osaka, Japan

  The Midosuji line brought Miyako to Namba Station. It was too early to move on to the church—it might make her conspicuous. So she took twice as long as needed to pick out a small bento box. She sat on a bench, pulled out the chopsticks—and couldn’t eat. The chopsticks trembled too much between her fingers. She set the box aside.

  She let a few minutes pass, then started along the broad street. After a half-dozen blocks, the First Evangelical Lutheran Church loomed in front of her—at least that’s what the sign declared. But there was no torii gate to mark the church as sacred. No garden. No gong. Just a standard door decorated with a pine wreath. Dozens of people streamed through it. She’d never imagined that so many of her own people would contaminate themselves with a foreign religion. Half the faces were Japanese.

  No incense greeted her at the door. Instead, a Japanese woman wearing cloying perfume gave Miyako a bow and a handshake. The woman thrust something that looked like a playbill at her.

  The bile mounting her throat threatened to choke her.

  The buzz of small talk filled the building’s airy interior. A row of stained-glass windows cast filtered light on a platform at the front, which displayed an unadorned podium and a piano. A banister separated the platform from the rest of the room. A pair of Marines stood at either end, candlelight glinting off their holstered pistols.

  A shiver ran through her. Their guns, her knives. Hardly an even match.

  She picked a seat at the aisle, about a third of the way back. She had no idea what Christians did in their churches, so there wasn’t much she could do to plan. It all came down to one simple problem. Get close enough to drive one of those knives into Delham’s soft flesh. The less she thought about what would happen after she did it, the better.

  She bit at her lip so hard she tasted blood.

  A door at the platform’s side opened. She craned for a second, then deflated. A Japanese man in a business suit crossed to the podium, not Delham. A procession of men and women in long robes followed him—also Japanese.

  The man behind the podium beamed his welcome. “We have a special treat for you tonight, as you know. But we’ll start with prayer and worship, ah?”

  Miyako took her cues from a pair of girls next to her. Bowed her head and clasped her hands. Stood and picked up a songbook from a rack in front of her. Sang along with the others, an anthem about shepherds in a field who apparently expressed themselves in Latin arias.

  The choir filed off the platform and the reverend—his name was Kagawa—returned. “Thank you, choir. And now let’s welcome our special guests, Reverend and Mrs. Delham. A story that’s inspired us all, yes?”

  An expectant murmur swelled through the hall. The door behind the platform opened, and Delham walked in. Sound died in her ears. Time screeched to a halt like a braking train.

  She absorbed every detail of his appearance. His jaunty grin and smart tweed jacket. The self-assurance all Americans seemed to adopt as their unquestioned birthright. Rich waves of chestnut-brown hair receded slightly from a tall, frank forehead above arresting hazel eyes—the same eyes she’d seen in his photo. He held the door open for his wife, a striking woman with brilliant copper-colored hair. A young Japanese in a well-tailored suit drifted through the door in their wake.

  “Please welcome another special guest,” Kagawa said. “Matsuura-san has recently, ah, repatriated. He will translate for Reverend Delham tonight.”

  Matsuura-san? Her own name.

  She took a hard look at the newcomer. What she saw sucked the air from her lungs.

  Tall. Slender. Square jawline. Chiseled cheekbones. A younger version of Papa-san, except for a patch of scarred skin stretching from one side of his collar to his hairline.

  “Akira-san?” she whispered.

  But how?

  Delham stepped to the microphone. “Konnichiwa.” He gave the crowd a crocodile grin, followed by a couple sentences of sloppy Japanese.

  “Matsuura-san, if you please.” Kagawa’s furrowed forehead conveyed a hint of urgency.

  The man who looked like her father’s younger copy took his place at Delham’s side and bowed. “I am honored to assist my great friend, Reverend Delham, with the translation.”

  Great friend. Each word reverberated through her chest like the knell of a huge temple gong. A voice whose every nuance she knew so well.

  It was all she could do to stay in her seat. Her brother could not be here. Miyako had carried it herself, that white box a Navy captain gave them. Smaller than a shoe box, it had contained her brother’s ashes—all of Akira-san the war returned to them.

  He anchored his eyes on the lectern’s slanted top, flushing. So uncertain. Not at all like the eldest son who’d cut a swath through all the best schools. Her esteemed brother would be twenty-six now. This man looked older than that. More weather beaten, even ignoring the scars. And certainly, he lacked Akira-san’s air of command.

  Still...

  She could not accept what her eyes and ears were telling her. Was he some kind of apparition? She shifted in her seat. Her rayon skirt slid across her knees—the second-hand skirt she’d bought to replace the clothes she’d left at a brothel.

  Haji consumed her. The man on the platform couldn’t be Akira-san, simply because she couldn’t face him. After Papa-san, Akira-san had been the idol of her girlhood. She c
ouldn’t bear knowing she would only disappoint him, the way she’d disappointed Papa-san.

  Recently, ah, repatriated. An explanation began to unwind, ever so slowly, in the matted cocoon that had taken the place of her mind. She’d heard a few improbable stories of “two-legged ghosts.” Men who’d been declared dead in battle, but through some act of cowardice had actually survived the war.

  Perhaps she and Papa-san were no longer alone.

  Delham went on. Something about the anger the gaijin felt when Nippon attacked Pearl Harbor. Miyako had no use for anything he had to say. Her thoughts turned to a single problem—how to bury one of those knives in his belly.

  Whatever happened, she would do her duty for Hiro-chan.

  After what felt like an age, Reverend Kagawa returned to the platform and clapped Delham on the shoulder. It seemed the American was wrapping up.

  She shifted her handbag from the floor to her lap. Her palms left a faint moist imprint on its sides.

  “Do you know what I said then?” Delham looked around the room. “I said, ‘No man set me free. Jesus Christ did that, over a year ago.’”

  Someone clapped up front, and then the room erupted with applause.

  Reverend Kagawa bowed repeatedly to Delham as the American found a seat. The Japanese pastor had to wait before he could make himself heard over the din. “Thank you, Reverend Delham. What an inspiring testimony.” He paused a moment longer for the crowd to calm. “Before we close, Reverend Delham has asked our friend Matsuura-san to share a bit of his story and his very important prayer request. Matsuura-san?”

  Matsuura-san stepped to the microphone.

  “My name is Matsuura Akira. When we embarked on the war in the Pacific, I had recently graduated from Eta Jima. I was assigned to the Nitto Maru, one of a line of vessels charged with guarding our Pacific coast.”

  The Nitto Maru. Akira-san’s ship.

  So it was true.

  He gazed at the lectern for a few seconds before he went on. “We discharged our duties. In April 1942, the Nitto Maru was destroyed by the enemy. I woke up in traction in their ship’s infirmary. The sole survivor. Horyo.” He looked around the room. “A prisoner of war. The last thing I ever imagined for myself.”

  Her brother. Wounded and captured, not dead. And standing in front of her.

  But...horyo. Barely human. How could he ever look her in the eye? How could he look Papa-san in the eye? After he’d fallen so far short of the ideal of Japanese manhood Papa-san had laid before them.

  The acrid taste in her mouth crept down her throat and became a sour churning in her belly. She should leave. Before they had to confront each other—the captive and the whore. It was the kindest thing she could do for them both.

  The two-legged ghost went on with feeling. “When the war was over, I could not bear to face my countrymen, especially my family. An American officer I met in the camp arranged a position for me with American President Lines. I spent a year and a half sailing their cruise ships to South America. But my heart called me to Nippon. At last, I signed on for the voyage home.”

  He paused and cast a solemn look around the room. “It will be very difficult to see my family again. But I wish it now with all my heart. I once believed a defeated life had no value. But I look now at Iesu and I see that a defeated life can have value.”

  He stood, talking that way, with the stained-glass image of the Christians’ Iesu behind his shoulder. The deity they worshiped, his bloody head bowed in defeat. His downcast face was etched with pain, not the fierce triumph of a victor. The look of a man who’d lost everything.

  She snorted. A weak god, for weaklings. Had her brother somehow become one of them?

  Akira-san laid a fist on the lectern. “I’ve searched everywhere, but so far, no news of my family. Our old neighborhood in Tokyo is nothing but ash. Please pray I’ll be able to get in touch with my father, Matsuura Saburo, who was captain of the Aoba. My mother, Matsuura Ayako. My brother and sister, Hiroshi and Miyako.” He cast his eyes down and bit his lip. “And please, pray they’ll accept me when I do.”

  She felt the heat on her face so distinctly she was sure it was visible.

  For a moment, he seemed to stare straight into her face. “No matter how deep your haji, how complete your failure, I believe God still has a use for you.”

  She froze.

  He stepped back and dropped his eyes. It seemed he could say no more.

  The silence thundered.

  Akira-san made his way off the platform. She sat very still, locked in place by an irrational fear that any tiny movement would turn every eye her way. That she’d become the target of the scorn every heart in the room had to be feeling for her brother—at least, every heart that was true to the Yamato ways.

  After a moment she ventured a furtive glance past the girls beside her at their mother. The woman’s lips wore a soft smile. She pulled a delicate embroidered handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at one glistening eye.

  Miyako looked at girls’ father. Then a Japanese man across the aisle. Stared at more faces, stunned. Broad grins and approving expressions wherever she looked.

  Akira-san had spoken of the gravest possible dishonor. And they approved?

  Reverend Kagawa directed them to bow their heads in prayer. After the prayer, she shifted in her chair, replaying her brother’s words. Defeat. Failure. Shame. Such things—unendurable things—had happened to them all. The emperor had used that word himself the day he announced Nippon’s surrender. She could still hear him saying, “...endure the unendurable,” his strange brittle voice cutting through the radio static.

  She’d learned in the years since that nothing was unendurable except haji. Capitulation. Prostitution. A death unavenged. Akira-san could wallow in his haji if he wished, but she would accept hers no more.

  The prayers finished, and voices rose again in song.

  “Sleep in exceeding peace. Sleep in exceeding peace.” Soft strains, mellow harmonies, soothing lyrics. At least everyone else was probably experiencing them that way. All in complete opposition to the bedlam in her soul.

  The chords faded. “Reverend Delham and his wife will be here for a few minutes after service. Come up if you’d like to greet them, ah?” Kagawa gazed around with a beatific expression. “Otherwise, may you go in peace.”

  She rose and pushed forward. Her pulse throbbed in her ears like a great taiko drum. There was an air of inevitability about the way her feet conveyed her toward the platform. As if she had no more will in the matter than an iron shaving at the mercy of a magnet. Or Kamura-san’s plum blossom drifting on the surface of an icy brook.

  Clusters of chatting parishioners blocked her path. She threaded her way around them. Churchgoers had formed a queue, all eager to speak with the Americans. The icy brook deposited her at the end of it. Akira-san stood in front of the platform, lost in conversation. He had his back toward her, at least for the moment.

  Delham and his wife leaned over the banister, exchanging comments with well-wishers.

  Miyako rested her fingertips on her purse’s clasp. She mentally rehearsed wrapping her right hand around the large knife’s hilt and concealing it in her purse until the precise moment came to raise it for her thrust.

  Only three people stood in line before her now. Almost there. Almost—

  Delham looked up from the man he was greeting. His hazel eyes met hers. Sheer malevolence coursed through her body like an electric shock. Before she could move, a weight dropped on her shoulder from behind—a gnarled hand. It gave her a forceful jerk around. She ran her eyes up a row of silver buttons to a pair of braided epaulets and a knowing smirk. She muffled a cry.

  Captain Oda.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sunday, January 2, 1949

  Osaka, Japan

  Oda had a death grip on her shoulder. “So, Matsuura Miyako. You have a habit of turning up in surprising places, ah?”

  She hugged her handbag to her, wishing with her entire be
ing that she could drive one of those knives into his barrel chest. But then she’d get no chance at Delham.

  His lips twisted with growing amusement. “Normally I wouldn’t soil my hands with such a matter. But there’s someone here you should meet, yes?” He closed his other hand on her upper arm and squeezed so hard she winced. “You’d have been better served to stay in the red-line district, where you belong. But I’m glad you came.” He cocked his head toward Akira-san. “Because in a profound way, the two of you deserve each other.”

  A grey-haired Japanese gentleman stood watching them. “What’s this?” He shifted a large leather-bound book from his right hand to his left and took a step toward them.

  Oda made a low bow toward him and the missionary. “I have found the sister of Matsuura-san,” he said in English, in a voice designed to carry.

  “Really?” Delham’s wife trilled. “Right here? How wonderful!”

  Delham looked over at Miyako, a grin spreading across his features. Akira-san spun to face her. A moment of uncertainty passed before her brother’s eyes widened. In three decisive strides, he stood before her, eyes locked on her face. “Mi-chan?”

  “There is a slight complication Matsuura-san will want to hear about.” Oda reverted to Japanese. “I assure you this is your sister.” He sniffed. “But there is a small matter of her profession, ah? She’s a prostitute.” He dropped her arm with a wrench that nearly made her cry out.

  She opened her mouth to deny his accusation. Or at least explain it. But in the face of Oda’s scorn, she couldn’t. A hundred ears listened to their words. A hundred eyes focused on them, all seeing how filthy she was. She withered inside.

  Akira-san froze. “Is this true?”

  It was like she was a girl again—one who’d earned a scolding. “Onii-san,” she whispered, the old honorific title for an older brother springing to her lips.

  He clasped his hands on her shoulders, and she noticed with a start that the rough brown scarring on his neck extended to his left hand. “My baby sister, here. I don’t believe it.” Then, nose crinkling slightly, “But you’re so different.”