The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  “Hana-san?”

  He’s there in the doorway of his barracks, watching the rain. Or perhaps he is watching for me?

  “Inoguchi-san, are you well?” I bow and stand there, foolish as an ox in the rain.

  When he smiles, a dimple appears on his right cheek. I want to touch that dimple. “I am now. And you?”

  I take a step forward, shaky on the rocky ground. It’s the rain, the gravel, I tell myself, that makes me unsteady as a lamb. I should be blushing, but I feel an answering smile.

  “I am now, too.”

  The others are watching us. His unit mate Tomomichi, my Nadeshiko friends. Sensei has gone on to the command center, which is fortunate. I feel as though we are onstage, he and I, two players in a Kabuki sewamono. I am frozen in this tableau.

  “Well, there is work for you today, I am sure,” he says at last. “Perhaps when you are done, I might play for you again?”

  “I would like that very much,” I say.

  He nods and seems to notice for the first time that we are being observed. “I would enjoy playing for all of you, if you care to listen. I’m still learning, but I will do my best.”

  The other girls nod or murmur assurances. They have heard from the kitchen staff, no doubt. Inoguchi Taro is a maestro.

  We break our positions and scurry to our chores. It is only as Mariko and I finish making Tomomichi’s bed that I realize we are soaked to the bone, all of us, from standing like fools in the rain.

  * * *

  —

  It’s a lonely meal we serve our two tokkō at lunchtime. Taro and his unit mate will not join the other unit. Instead, Mariko and I serve the two of them alone in their dim barracks. We stand awkwardly by the doorway as they sip their soup and eat their portions of rice and a stew of fish and sweet potatoes. Mariko closes her eyes, resting against the door frame. I gaze outside, trying not to look back to see if he feels what I feel. An energy presses inside me, against my skin, my chest, demanding I act or explode.

  I cannot act. I take a deep breath and focus on the gray curtain of rain, the deep verdant green of the black-trunked pines. It smells like winter, even though it’s spring.

  At last, the scraping of chopsticks ends, and we pad down the length of the barracks to gather their trays. Tomomichi wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and nods a thank-you to Mariko. When I dare to look, Taro is opening his violin case.

  For a moment, there are only the two of us.

  I can smell the faint scent of rosin from the strings, the dry smell of paper, and a warmer scent—the burnished wood. And there is Taro’s strangely familiar smell, of leather and sweet grass, of something warm and deep like honey and the salty sea.

  Perhaps it’s my imagination. Or the images the music conjures as he begins to play. I am a ningyo, a mermaid floating deep beneath the waves.

  Laughter breaks the spell. The sound of a dozen geta clattering on the gravel outside. Sachiko is here, and Kazuko, Reiko. Even sad Hisako drifts down into the barracks to hear Taro play. His eyes flick toward me, as if in apology, and I know. He understands me. And I him. I nod to say it’s all right. There will be another time.

  And then I remember that may not be true.

  His posture shifts, and he is taller, broadening himself to play for a crowd. The kitchen staff follows, and I am no longer a mermaid, but a fish tossed on dry land, gasping and lonely for where I belong.

  The music changes. Taro plays folk tunes that have the girls clapping and the kitchen workers singing along.

  The room is suddenly too full.

  I rise and push my way through the laughter to reach the door, where I can breathe.

  The rain is still coming down, heavier than ever. I look back into the barracks from my perch on the steps, over the heads of the others.

  This is what I see when I look at Taro: a young man, standing tall, a shining instrument of wood held confidently in his arm, like a dance partner, his chin resting on her shoulder. I see bright faces looking up at him as he does what no one else has been able to do—make them forget. The girls are no longer Nadeshiko Tai, but schoolgirls, happy to clap and sing. The kitchen workers are no longer scullery maids and pot scrubbers, but men and women who have families, stories, songs of their own.

  I see tired people turned into human beings. I see a gray rainy day turned into sunshine.

  It surprises me, as if there is color in the world I have been blind to until now.

  I used to look at a tokkō and see the state of his uniform, the trim of his hair. I saw how they came prepared or unprepared to face their deaths. When they arrived, all I saw were fireflies. Watching Taro, I now see the fire.

  And I see something else. My father at his koto. My mother dancing beside him, turning like a blossom to the sun. I see myself as I was then, so young and plump and joyful, mimicking my mother’s dance. Taro is playing “Haru no Umi”—my father’s favorite song.

  The tears come unexpectedly. I let them come. No one is watching.

  Almost no one.

  Above the bobbing heads, Taro’s eyes find mine. There is a small questioning smile on his face, as if to ask, “Is everything okay?”

  Those eyes guide me back into the barracks and across the floor.

  I climb up onto the sleeping platform when the music ends and tell him, “My father used to play that song.”

  He starts it up again, and I remember my mother’s movements. The two of us at a cherry blossom viewing party many years ago. Otō-san sitting beneath the flowering trees. Our neighbors swaying to the music as Okā-san and I, in our best kimono, mimic the swell of the ocean, the spread of the sky. My own gestures were far more clumsy—then and now—with the balance of a seven-year-old girl. But as Taro plays, I spin and dip a moment, my knee no longer stiff. Everyone claps. It is spring again, 1937, months before the start of war. Everything is full of promise. I will be a great musician one day, like my father, a graceful dancer, like my mother. I am a bud that has yet to blossom. Everything is full of life.

  And then I come back to myself. In a barracks on a tokkō base, beneath a peaked roof instead of blooming trees. I am a girl of fifteen, not seven. A Nadeshiko Tai. In the front row, Mariko is gaping at me in such astonishment I grow shy and climb back down to earth, where I belong.

  * * *

  —

  We walk home from the base feeling light as the kamifusen we once played with as children—colorful paper balls that swelled with each bounce in an open palm. I feel full to bursting, even in my drab monpé. With every step of my geta toward home, I hear Taro, Taro. Every syllable a bounce. Mariko laughs at me, but she is bouncing, too. It’s been so long since we’ve been happy. She sings snatches of the folk songs Taro played, and I join in. We wander home along the river, weaving, drunk on laughter, as if we’ve swallowed all the shōchū, the sweet potato liquor the women of the mura make for festival days.

  “What has gotten into us?” Mariko asks me as we round the corner toward home. So kind is Mariko, to pretend she does not know.

  “Nothing,” I say, even as a blush warms my cheeks.

  Mariko’s laughter falls away with a sigh. Hisako is ahead of us, watching the carp in the stream. Hisako, who loved a boy and, in losing him, lost herself.

  “Oh, Hana, there is a light in your eye,” Mariko says seriously.

  “Yours, too,” I reply, an accusation, a question. We are simply happy, nothing more. But she gives me a look and my laughter fades.

  “Good night, Hana,” she says.

  “Good night, Mariko. Get some rest.”

  When I reach home, I keep my head lowered so my mother will not see whatever it was that brought such sorrow to Mariko’s face. I have a favor to ask of her.

  Okā-san is hunched over Tomihara-san’s kimono, the one brought by the farmer for alterations. She is carefully rip
ping apart each seam. When she is done, she will cut the pattern and dye the cloth Civil Defense khaki, so his family can continue to work in the fields. The military has been very demanding of farmers since the start of the war. I know this from my own time harvesting sweet potatoes. And yet, the cloth is so very beautiful . . . Is that not like everything else in Japan these days? The prettiest things, worn thin, splashed in mud.

  I say as much to my mother, kneeling before her on the floor, my hands pressed to my thighs to keep me from gripping my clothes, from twisting them as if I could wring an answer from the cloth. “Okā-san, you must miss making beautiful things,” I say.

  “Don’t be silly, Hana. This is war. We make necessary things. Beauty is a pastime for peace.”

  I work to keep my brow from crinkling. Only a day or two ago, I would have agreed with her. Even yesterday, I would have been convinced.

  But she has not heard the violin. She has not seen Taro play.

  “Perhaps it is so,” I tell her. “But at the air base, this rain is a cease-fire. There are two pilots—both fine young men—who were unable to crash with their brothers. They are ashamed, Okā-san, and lonely. Couldn’t we make a moment of beauty for them?”

  Okā-san looks up from her seam ripping to scan my face. “What are you going on about, Hana? We have work to do. Come, change out of those clothes and help me.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday,” I tell her. “If it is raining, might we invite them for dinner? It would be a kindness. Your dinner parties were always so wonderful. I should like to show them.”

  “Dinner party! You mean like those carousers over at Tomiya Shokudo? Hardly, Hana! It’s one thing to serve them at the base, but quite another to invite such men into our home. We are two women alone. What would the town say?”

  She is right, and I am ashamed. They will think the worst of us. We are not an inn, a public place. This is a private home. And while I see boys, the world sees military men.

  I bow in front of my mother, my forehead to the tatami mat. “I am sorry,” I whisper. But something in me, perhaps the light Mariko feared, shines forth, moving me to speak yet again. “But perhaps . . . they would say it is a kindness. A duty, like the home visits the cadets once made when the air base was just a base, before the war.”

  She stays silent for so long, I do not know what to do. I stare at the floor, waiting. The woven rows of the tatami mat blur in my vision. Cadet home visits were restricted to families without daughters my age for a reason. Is that what she’s thinking now?

  “Okā-san?” I ask, hoping for a yes.

  “Hana,” she says. “We have so little to share, I should be ashamed. We cannot feed them well.”

  “Oh, but Okā-san!” I sit up, leaning toward her. “You are such a wonderful cook. We should be ashamed not to try. I will cook, too. We’ll be clever with what we have,” I promise.

  Something shifts in her face, a cat raising its head to the sun. Once upon a time, my mother loved parties. She was known throughout the mura as the best cook, the most elegant hostess outside of an inn. But that was before the rationing. Before clothing was restricted by points and kimono exchanged hands like money. Before Otō-san went away and my charming hostess mother became a tailor who made pants for the fields.

  She sighs, and I know I have won.

  “How many of these pilots must we feed? Perhaps we can ask Mrs. Higashi and the women of the tonari-gumi to—”

  “Only two!” I say quickly. I’m unwilling to share our guests with anyone else. “Two boy pilots—Corporal Inoguchi and Corporal . . . I don’t recall his name, only that he had engine trouble. They both did. They had to turn back and are too ashamed to join the others at the inn. But in this rain, all they can do is . . . Okā-san . . .”

  My mother is looking at me. Or perhaps she is looking through me, for she murmurs to herself, “So willing to die.”

  She clears her throat and folds away the kimono cloth, making sure to mark her place with the needle.

  “Very well. Invite them for an afternoon meal.” She rises and smooths her yukata. There is a brightness in her face that must mirror my own. It has been too long since we worked for pleasure rather than duty. “There is so much to do. We have millet for dumplings, and I’m sure there are some red beans in the pantry. I was saving them as a treat.”

  For a moment, I am so grateful I am shaking. “Thank you, Okā-san. Oh! This place is a wreck!” I scoop up the fabric lying on the floor and bundle it into a chest. “I’ll sweep the mats and find some flowers for the table and—”

  “Hana.” My mother’s voice stops me just as surely as her hand on my arm calms me down. “It can wait until tomorrow. Let us have our own supper now and set the beans to soaking. Then worry over tomorrow when it arrives.”

  Over our own scant dinner, we plan the meal. My mother goes to the evening distribution of rations at Mrs. Higashi’s house and returns with a lotus root and a small portion of rice. I sit in the kitchen rinsing beans, sifting them through my fingers to search for any stones. I am smiling, even though the work is simple, repetitive. Taro is coming here.

  I make a small pile from the stones I find in the beans. We put the dried red beans and soybeans in two bowls of cool water to soften and go to bed.

  To bed, but not to sleep. I lie awake on my futon, staring into the blue darkness, a tangle in my stomach like a rope, pulling me toward the air base, the pine-covered hillside, the triangle barracks sunk into the earth . . . Is he staring into the night, too?

  It is a mistake to want this. So many boy pilots have passed through Chiran.

  But none like Taro.

  Sorrow stretches around me, a cocoon that has smothered me for too long. The strands of silk are tearing open.

  There is a crinkle beneath his left eye when he smiles. A dimple on his right cheek.

  There is a look, like a lighthouse on a distant shore, when he plays, his violin tucked tenderly in his arms.

  And when that searchlight finds me, it carries me to shore.

  I sigh and throw off my covers. I cannot sleep. I would pace the floor mats, but it would disturb Okā-san. Instead, I close my eyes and pretend I am hearing “Haru no Umi.” I see the koto in my mind’s eye and recall the notes. I fall asleep listening to the rain, playing the koto in my dreams.

  CHAPTER 39

  HANA

  I wake to a joyfully thunderous sky. Taro is coming today. I rise early, heat the water for our washing bowls, and dress quickly so I may get to work. Sunday is our day at home. We are schoolgirls, after all. If there had been a flight today, Tomihara-san would be the one to wave goodbye in our stead. But the downpour outside means no one will fly.

  After a quick breakfast, Okā-san sets the red beans to simmer on our old stove while I grind the soybeans to make tofu. The suribachi mortar sits on the table, a heavy ceramic bowl with a rough pattern like swirling grass on the inside. I scoop a cupful of soybeans and soaking water into the suribachi and pound them with the wooden surikogi, using the pestle to smooth the beans into a thick, foaming paste. Each bowlful of paste is poured into a large pot, until all of it is ready to cook.

  Okā-san helps me put the pot on the fire. We take turns stirring the bean paste and adding cups of water to keep it from foaming over. After half an hour, the mixture has turned grainy, like lumps of meal in soy milk. This is okara, the pulp of the cooked beans.

  I ladle the milk onto a fine muslin cloth tied across the top of a large bowl. Pressing the ladle down, I squeeze the freshly made soy milk through the cloth.

  We take a break from our labors while the milk continues to drain, sharing a cup of the first batch in the doorway. It tastes of summer grass.

  Outside, the rain splashes down in large fat drops, loud enough to blur the sounds of people inside the restaurant next door. It’s almost as if the war has gone silent. A cricket chirrups in the garden. A
cat rushes past on some fur-soaked errand. Okā-san claps her hands on her thighs, and we rise to finish our tasks.

  Okā-san takes the cloth, now full of soybean pulp, and scrapes it into the suribachi. She will fry some of the okara with diced vegetables and a bit of soy sauce, doing what she can to make it savory. Okara is high in protein, but low in flavor otherwise. The rest will go to thicken the soup.

  I find I am humming as we work. Okā-san glances at me, and I fall silent, embarrassed by this bubbling inside me. But then she begins humming, too.

  I remember this, from when I was young. Before America entered the war. Otō-san would play the koto, or he would sing as he worked, cutting kimono and Western suits from fine cloth. And Okā-san would cook wonder after wonder, and we were always full and never went to bed hungry.

  We are luckier than most. In the cities, they have no river of fish, no fields of their own to grow tea and sweet potatoes. And yet I had forgotten what it is like to have so much food in one place at one time.

  Perhaps I am being greedy. Okā-san and I could live off these rations for a week.

  But not everyone has a week to live, I remind myself, and return to my task.

  I carefully measure a few grains of calcium salts into the milk to curdle it into tofu. Before this new war, we made tofu with nigari, and it was rich and grassy and sweet. Okā-san doesn’t care for the new way of making it, but nigari is high in magnesium—a vital component for the aeroplanes Taro and his friends fly. I wonder if he knows this. Perhaps I will tell him at lunch today. Our worlds are more entwined than I would have guessed.

  The soy milk clumps and foams. Once it’s curdled, I scoop the curds into our tofu press—a simple box of blond wood, now stained with use and age, with a lining of fine cloth and holes along the sides for drainage. I weight the lid down with a brick. White milk squeezes out onto the plate below. While the tofu drains, Okā-san combs the cabinets for seasonings for the okara.