The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  On the back of the stove, the millet has simmered long enough. The grain is soft and ready to mash. I wash out the suribachi and bend my arms to the task. Once upon a time, this would have been tiresome. But laundry duty has changed me. My arms are wiry, the flesh hardened and thinned by work and hunger. And yet, today I feel soft and light.

  Once the millet cools enough, I pinch off bite-size pieces and roll them between my palms into balls. Okā-san has borrowed sugar from Tomihara-san. She will cook the red beans into a sweet anko paste to mix into a broth for the millet. I imagine Taro taking his first bite and picture a smile on his face. Will he feel my fingerprints on his lips? I blush.

  “Get dressed, Hana; stop daydreaming,” my mother says. “Go and fetch our guests!” She startles me out of my reverie.

  My hair is damp with steam and hanging in my face, my fingers red with work, my cheeks flushed. Where is the delicate flower I imagined, gracefully inviting Taro to dine? Hopefully hiding beneath the mess of rumpled clothes and sleep deprivation I see in the mirror. I brush my hair brutally, splash cool water on my face, and pull on a clean school uniform. It hangs off of me, no longer the daily wear of a plump child.

  “No,” Okā-san says to me, wagging a finger when she sees how I look. “The chest by the window. Take my lilac kimono. This is a special affair.”

  A kimono. How long since I’ve worn one that was not a simple cotton yukata, something for the home? My mother helps me don the nagajuban underrobe with its long collar and sleeves, the soft sash that ties it at my waist. I fold the kimono collar in half, and she helps me slip it on. It’s a luxury to pull the textured silk over my arms. She returns to cooking as I straighten my sleeves and tie the second sash after wrapping the kimono left over right and behind. My fingers fumble at the obi, but at last it is done. I wrap my hair into a bun at the back of my head.

  “That is correct,” Okā-san says upon inspection, but there is a smile in her eyes that more than approves. At this moment, if love were visible, the room would be full of pink light.

  I bow at the waist. “Arigatō, Okā-san.”

  “Aie, go! Don’t trip, and don’t ruin my kimono!” She waves me away with a wooden spoon. I pull on my longest coat, take our largest umbrella, slip on my geta, and hurry out into the afternoon rain.

  CHAPTER 40

  TARO

  Another day of rain. Taro sat in the barracks of a recently arrived unit, playing hands of menko and other childish games with the new boys. He didn’t feel like playing. He shuffled a spare deck of cards in his hands over and over again, enjoying the feel of the cardboard lightly scraping against his palms like the wings of a moth, like eyelashes on cheeks. He had no business with the other pilots today. They were frustrated, but he was happy.

  “I hear the Americans have come as far as Okinawa!” a young pilot named Ano was saying. “Okinawa! That’s practically next door!”

  “It is next door,” Tomomichi groaned. “If we wait much longer, we won’t need aeroplanes at all. We’ll be stuck fighting hand to hand on the ground.”

  Taro smiled at something Hana had said yesterday after he played Miyagi-sama’s masterpiece. My father used to play that song. And I would dance, just so. She had spun once on her geta, somehow keeping her balance on the tips of her shoes. He had played it again later, just to see if she would dance some more. But she was shy and did not.

  “How long will we be cooped up here?” another boy complained. “I don’t want to sit around. Let’s go into town and see what there is to see.”

  “Not much,” Tomomichi declared. Despite his frustrations, there was a certain cachet to being a senior pilot with this new group. “Still, you can try Tomiya Shokudo. She makes good egg custard. Anything you want.”

  The boys fell silent for a moment. “Do you think she knows how to make okonomiyaki?” Ano asked. “I haven’t had it since I joined the academy. Oh, one last taste before I body-crash, and I promise I will take out a battleship all by myself!”

  There was laughter then, and ribbing, and before Taro knew it, the boys were on their feet, grabbing hats against the rain and shuffling out the door. Even Tomomichi, who looked back at Taro and shrugged sheepishly. “I know I should stay,” he said. “Forgive me. I do not go to celebrate. Only . . . it is raining. What can I do? You should join us.”

  Taro shook his head. “I’ll stay and practice,” he said.

  “Right, ‘practice.’” Tomomichi smirked. Then his face shifted. “Oh, no! Today’s Sunday. No Nadeshiko to swoon over you. I guess you will just practice, after all.”

  “Like you said.” Taro shrugged. “It’s raining. What can I do?”

  Tomomichi laced up his boots in the doorway. “Remember the academy, Home Sundays when we would go visit the local families and eat real home-cooked food?”

  “I do,” Taro said wistfully. “The closest thing to home since we left it.”

  “Yeah . . . Well, look, those guys might leave me behind.”

  “Give Tomihara-san my best,” Taro said. He followed Tomomichi out the door, returning to their empty barracks.

  The rain drummed heavily on the roof. Taro pulled off his boots and paced the length of the beds, once, twice, swinging his arms. He rubbed a hand over his face, scrubbing away rain and the persistent smile.

  It was better this way, Tomomichi gone off with the others. Taro couldn’t explain it, but he was a pot about to boil over. Every time he opened his mouth, the same word kept trying to leap out. He would say it or explode.

  And if he said it, what kind of soldier was he? The sting of Commandant Asama’s slap was fresh. He already knew there were rumors, bolstered by dirty looks, about the true reason his final mission had failed: cowardice. They thought he lacked moral fortitude. Even the engineers who had seen the problem with the fuel line had begun to regard him grimly under Asama’s angry presence. Each time, it was as if he was back in flying school, another punch to the gut and smack to the head.

  Taro reached into his cubbyhole for his violin. He hoisted it to his chin, set the bow, and played, fast and wild. Angry, a stallion foaming at the mouth, nostrils flaring, rampaging against the storm. He filled the barracks and the woods outside with military marches and anthems, his violin screaming. Beethoven followed Mozart, keening into the sky.

  They doubted him. His moral fortitude. His devotion to his duty.

  And, worse, he doubted himself. Each time that damn smile betrayed him, each time he swallowed the sound of her name.

  The bow scraped across the strings and one snapped.

  Taro shivered and lowered his arms. He wiped the sweat from his face and gently set his violin on the futon. Had he damaged it? Foolish. From the moment he’d limped his plane back into Chiran, he had been a fool. He should have gone with Tomomichi. Saké would do less damage than this senseless anger.

  He drew a replacement string from the case. His palms were hot, his fingers burning as he restrung the violin. Strings were hard to come by; he should be more careful.

  But what need did tokkō have of new strings? Perhaps it was just his love of the violin that was compromising his fortitude after all.

  He set his instrument to his chin once more, vowing to play something gentle this time.

  He had only drawn the first note when he heard the sound of an umbrella closing in the doorway.

  Dressed in a long coat against the weather, Hana stood just outside the entrance, framed by leaves and raindrops.

  “Forgive the intrusion,” she said. “But it’s Sunday, and it’s raining. My mother would be honored to have you—and Tomomichi-san—to our house for lunch.”

  His bow hand twitched, sending a shiver of music up the strings. He blushed and lowered the violin. Had she heard him playing? The screeching snap of the string, the mark of an amateur?

  “Good afternoon,” he said belatedly. She dropped her eyes, no
t quite a bow. Taro tried to stand taller, as befitting an officer of the Imperial Army Air Force. “I’m afraid you’ve just missed Tomomichi.”

  “Ah,” she said, wavering as if to leave. “Then . . .” She turned back to him. “Will you, Inoguchi-sama . . . ? Please say yes.”

  A breeze blew into the barracks, carrying the scent of wet pine.

  “Yes.”

  Hana watched him carefully pack the instrument into its case. “I’ve been clumsy today, but I just put a new string on. Perhaps your mother would enjoy it,” he rambled. His hands were shaking. His pulse jolted in his ears.

  He patted his pockets as if he had forgotten something, then shook his head. “I am sorry, I have nothing to protect it from the rain.” It would not do to get the case wet and risk damaging the violin inside.

  “Don’t worry about that. Let it stay. We will have to entertain you instead.” She smiled. His heart tripped over itself.

  “But I’m afraid I don’t have any gifts for your mother. I . . . Perhaps I should stay, too.

  “Oh, wait!” He ran to his footlocker and pulled out a length of blue silk, woven in a delicate pattern. “This was my graduation sash at Shōnen Hikōhei. I no longer need it, but it is very fine material. Perhaps your mother—”

  “It is too much!” Hana exclaimed.

  “It’s just enough.”

  He held the umbrella over their heads as they made their way down the road into town. “That is the temple where Mariko and I played as children,” Hana said. Was she as nervous as he was?

  “And that is where I first learned to skip a rock.” She pointed at the stream that ran through the town. “And here I got sick on green peaches one day because they looked so pretty and I didn’t think a pretty thing could make me sick. My mother warned me, but I was a stubborn child.”

  Pretty things can make you sick, Taro told himself, glancing at the girl by his side. The day was cool, but he felt feverish.

  “I can hardly believe it,” he said. “You’re so quiet at the base.”

  Hana blushed and leaned closer to him, as if the warmth of his body was a magnet to hers. “Quiet children are often stubborn. Were you quiet, too?”

  “No. I’m afraid I was as loud as Nakamura, until I began playing the violin. Now it often speaks for me.”

  She smiled. “What a lovely voice.” Taro blushed to the tips of his ears.

  A gentle fog rolled in over the hilltops to the west, scattering more soft rain.

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “When it comes time to serve meals, you rarely enter the barracks. I have seen you inside only recently, and your face goes pale when you do. Nakamura says it’s because you are a flower that craves the sun—”

  Hana laughed. “Such a poet! Who knew?”

  “But there is more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  Hana’s footsteps faltered and grew still. She hesitated for a long time, her face in shadow. What cave had he made her enter just now?

  “Before my classmates and I came to the base,” she said, “we worked with the farmers outside of town. There was an air raid—the first ever in Chiran. We took cover in trench shelters we’d dug alongside the road. Mine collapsed. It was close to an hour before they found me and dug me out.”

  Suddenly, her gaze pulled away from the memory and flashed up at Taro’s face. She blushed and dropped her eyes to hide her embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t a nice story. Forgive me.”

  But Taro was pinned to the spot. “You thought you were dead.”

  She grimaced. “Hai.”

  A polite person would not ask any more questions. A polite person would nod and move on. He knew this, yet still he asked.

  “What was it like?”

  She looked up in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

  “The moment when you thought you were dead?”

  She glanced away, as if searching for an answer, a politeness.

  “Please. Tell the truth.”

  She searched his face with eyes as deep as wells. He could not be sure in the rain, but it seemed there were tears there.

  “How can I tell you? You are tokkō, and I am a fool.”

  “Hana . . .”

  She turned away, leaving the shelter of the umbrella. Rain spattered onto her shoulders and hair.

  “I know what I should say. That I thought of my parents, that I thought about their sorrow. Or my duty. That I worried over my friends.”

  Her cheeks were bright red now, but she continued quickly, as if running through thorns. “But I will tell you the truth, because you are tokkō and because you ask it of me.”

  She stepped closer, out of the rain, and looked him in the eye. It was unnerving, this girl who had so often bowed or hidden from view.

  “I was glad. I had no burdens. I was done.”

  Like a sudden downpour, her deferential shyness returned. She looked away, her voice dropping. “Since then, life feels as if it is two steps away.”

  Taro took a deep breath, absorbing her words, her stillness.

  “‘No burdens.’” He tasted her words in his mouth and exhaled. “Life becomes very simple when you know you will die. It didn’t seem appropriate to say so before now. That is what it means to be tokkō, too.”

  She was watching him from beneath the umbrella, searching his face again.

  “Do you? Have burdens?”

  Taro began to walk, and she kept pace. “I have a mother who will be sorrowful. And a father who will be proud. I will never master the violin, but that is a small enough loss.”

  “My father used to say one does not master an instrument, only befriends it.”

  Taro smiled. “Well, then! At least I can say we have been friends.”

  “Good friends,” Hana replied, and Taro smiled wider.

  “How long have you been playing?”

  “Since I was five.”

  “And yet you are a pilot.”

  “My father said, ‘The Emperor needs pilots, not musicians.’” He mimicked his father’s stern tone.

  “How very fatherly,” she said.

  Taro laughed.

  “But I enjoy flying. Have you ever been in an aeroplane?”

  “Only to decorate it with flowers.” She grew quiet then, as if sorry she had said it. The specter of cherry blossoms on Ki-79 wings filled the silence.

  “My father is a pilot,” he said abruptly. “And an engineer. He used to take us up in his plane before the war. It’s quite beautiful. All of Japan spreads out before you like a quilt, under the dome of a blue sky.”

  “You make it sound peaceful. The planes at the base are so loud, I never thought of it that way.”

  “It can be.”

  They fell silent for a while as they walked, and buildings rose up around them. They were nearing the center of town. Hana seemed to realize it and veered to the right, toward the rushing sound of the river.

  “It will take a bit longer, but there is a very pretty walk along the riverbank. Will you take it with me?”

  Warmth spread through Taro’s chest. “Yes.”

  They cut across the wet field until they found the well-trodden path. The river rushed by below them, white cataracts and swirling pools dotted with fallen leaves. The air was clear and light, chilled by the mist rising from the water. They stopped, standing close together beneath the small umbrella. River noise surrounded them like a blanket. He could feel the heat of his shoulder against her coat, smell the damp warmth of her hair. Raindrops gleamed on her head like jewels. He closed his eyes and drank in her voice.

  “Taro-san?” She said his given name for the first time. He held his breath. “When did you first know you wanted to fly?”

  A shiver ran through him. He thought back.

&
nbsp; And shared everything.

  The wings of the crane, white as snow . . .

  The burning blue sky.

  CHAPTER 41

  HANA

  A butterfly of sunshine twitches in my chest, bursts into a swarm.

  I am on a high wire, teetering between this moment and the next.

  Before he went to war, Otō-san told me that we live on in the memories of our loved ones. It is why we burn incense and leave gifts of food at the temples of our ancestors. It is why we sing songs from our ancient days. It is why, he said, he wanted me to remember him—the way his mustache tickled my cheek, the way his callused fingers guided mine over the koto, the way he laughed. And he would remember me the same way—my laugh, my hands, my mustache. That made me giggle, and he smiled. I will never forget that moment. Even if this war should do its worst, Otō-san will live in my memory and I will live in his until memory is no more.

  And now there is Taro.

  Tell me everything, I want to say. I will hold on to each word, each reminiscence. But it is too forward, too intimate. Perhaps I am just a silly little girl to him. What does a tokkō, even a young one, care if I promise to remember him—who he is, who he was, who he wanted to be?

  I cannot ask for so much.

  And yet, it is exactly what he gives me.

  CHAPTER 42

  TARO

  “Konnichiwa, Hana! Good afternoon!” a girl called from the doorway of Tomiya Shokudo as Hana and Taro stepped into the street, but Hana did not respond. She was listening to him. Taro could hear Tomomichi and the others carousing inside. The present dropped like a theater curtain. The walk was over.

  “I’m afraid I’ve bored you,” Taro said. They had paused at the edge of a small stream that ran alongside the road through the center of town. A few carp swam beneath the surface, heedless of the rain. The swollen sky had darkened further, and he realized just how long he’d been rambling. He shook his head. “Forgive me.”