“Ever since the war ended, I’ve thought about what Miyabe-san did. Back then, in the midst of a hopeless situation, he found a single spider’s thread dangling before him that might be his salvation. If he caught hold of that thread he might be saved—but others would die. And in the end he refused to take that thread for himself.”
Matsuno was still facing downwards and silent. At long last she whispered, “I wonder why he chose you.”
“I don’t know. Or rather—there’s only one thing I can think of.”
I told her what had happened when I was still a flight student, about the day I’d come to Miyabe-san’s rescue and suffered grave injuries, and how he had come to visit me in the hospital—and given me his overcoat.
“I retailored that overcoat,” Matsuno said in a small voice.
I recalled how it had a cotton lining and leather on the collar.
“I see. Then Miyabe-san gave me something he truly treasured.”
Matsuno looked up. “So Miyabe meeting you on the day he went out as a kamikaze was fate.”
She looked at me fixedly. When I saw those eyes brimming with sorrow, I felt my heart seize up with regret. Why, oh why did I allow him to trade planes with me that day?
“Please forgive me,” I said.
Matsuno looked down, not responding.
“The only reason I am alive today is because of Miyabe-san. So please allow me to do what I can until I feel I have satisfied that debt. He entrusted you and Kiyoko to my care. That’s why I was allowed to live. If I’m not able to fulfill my obligation to him, then my life has no meaning.”
Matsuno didn’t reply, but neither did she reject my plea. In any case, I had no intention of halting my support, no matter how she felt.
* * *
—
My trips to Osaka continued.
After two years, she moved from Osaka to nearby Toyonaka. The new apartment was small, but there were actually two rooms including the kitchen. Matsuno found a job with a transportation company in Toyonaka. The company was affiliated with the National Railway, and I’d used my connections for her.
I’d told her just one lie.
It was true that I supported Matsuno and Kiyoko because I wanted to carry out Miyabe-san’s last request, but that wasn’t all. I wanted to see her. Likewise, the reason for my visits to Osaka was not entirely genuine. Had I merely wanted to support them financially, I could have just sent them the money. The only reason I took the night train all the way to Osaka was to see Matsuno.
I wonder if she knew. Well, maybe she didn’t. After all, I did my best to keep her unaware of my feelings.
Normally, there would have to be some sort of emotional factor for my actions. But Matsuno wasn’t the type to say, “Just send me the money.”
In this manner, our strange relationship continued for five years.
During that time, my mother passed away, and Kiyoko started middle school. She had grown into an intelligent, lovely girl. I turned thirty. Matsuno was thirty-three.
Then came that day in August 1954.
On the anniversary of Miyabe-san’s death, the two of us went to visit his grave. Two years prior, Matsuno had purchased a plot in a public cemetery in the northern part of Osaka and erected a small tombstone for her husband. She did not have the stone engraved with a posthumous name in the Buddhist style. It simply read: GRAVE OF KYUZO MIYABE.
The public cemetery had been carved into a hillside, and the surrounding area was lush and green. There was a temple some distance from the spot, and after visiting the grave, we stopped by there.
It looked empty, and we sat down on the porch of the main hall.
Abruptly Matsuno said, “Oishi-san, thank you for having supported us for so many years.”
I was surprised by this sudden remark. What’s she saying? I thought.
“You have been entirely too generous to us.” Matsuno bowed deeply. “I can’t allow you to continue to care for us.”
“But I still have not repaid my obligation to Miyabe-san.”
Matsuno looked me right in the eye. “And when will your obligation be fulfilled?”
I didn’t have a reply.
“If you were indebted to him, then you have sufficiently repaid that debt.”
“No, not yet,” I mumbled.
“Are you going to devote the rest of your life to supporting us like this?”
“And would that be so wrong? Miyabe-san saved my life. No, he died for my sake.”
“And what about your own life? What about your happiness?”
“I had a fiancée once. I broke it off as soon as I became a student reservist, but I had intended to be with her were I to return from the war alive.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died in an air raid.”
Matsuno was silent. We both were for some time, and she was the one to break the silence. “Is your sense of obligation to Miyabe the only reason you’ve done so much for us?”
I found I couldn’t answer her. She looked me directly in the eye. Her gaze was so sharp it felt like she saw right through my heart. Instinctively, I looked away.
“I’m ashamed.” I turned my back to her. “I do indeed feel an obligation to Miyabe-san. But that’s not the only reason I have been aiding you. I am an uncouth person.”
Somewhere a cicada buzzed. I was so embarrassed by my ugliness that I shed tears.
Then I felt a gentle pressure on my shoulder. I turned around to find Matsuno had placed her hand on my shoulder. Large tears spilled from her eyes. “Will you listen to me?” she asked.
I nodded.
“The last time I saw Miyabe, he had just returned to the interior after fighting in the south, and was on leave for a few days in Yokohama. He said to me before he left that he would absolutely come home to me. Even if he had no arms or legs, he would come back.”
I nodded.
“Then he said, ‘Even if I die, even then, I will come back. Even if I have to be reborn, I will come back to you.’ ” Matsuno fixed me with a stare. I had never seen such a fierce look in her eyes. “The first time I saw you, I knew that Miyabe had been reincarnated and had come home. You were wearing his overcoat—and when I saw you standing before my house, I thought, ‘He kept his promise.’ ”
I embraced her. She clung fast to me. I cried. She was crying softly, too.
* * *
—
“Do you think it’s just another man-and-woman thing?” Grandpa asked after he’d finished telling his tale.
I shook my head. I found I couldn’t speak.
“And so Matsuno and I got married. Nine years had passed since the end of the war. After that, we never spoke of Miyabe-san again. But neither of us forgot him, not even for a moment. And Matsuno was a devoted wife until the day she died.”
I closed my eyes, recalling my grandmother’s face. She was smiling ever happily in my memories. And yet she had led such a life…
“I will tell only you two this,” Grandpa continued quietly. “I don’t want to tell Kiyoko. This is the only secret from her that I want to carry to my grave.”
I nodded, still unspeaking.
“Matsuno suffered terribly after the war. It was very difficult for a single woman with no one to rely on to raise a young child. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
My heart beat faster in my chest.
“Before we married, she told me everything that she’d had to do to survive in those immediate postwar years. I think she hadn’t wanted to lie to me. I listened to everything she said and accepted her without even the slightest reservation.”
Grandpa sighed heavily. “Matsuno was deceived and became a kept woman of a certain yakuza boss. She never went into detail, but I think she was forced to yield to him because of the gangster’s money and violence. Perhaps, af
ter losing Miyabe-san, she’d given herself over to despair.”
Keiko covered her face with her hands.
“Normally, it would have been very difficult for her to free herself from the clutches of such a demon. But something surprising happened—something strange enough to make you wonder if such things actually happen in the world.”
Grandpa lowered his voice. “The yakuza boss was attacked by someone and killed at the house where Matsuno was being kept. Two other yakuza who were serving as bodyguards suffered severe injuries as well.”
I felt something cold race down my spine.
“Matsuno experienced something bizarre then. She was right there at the scene of the murder and saw this man who was wielding a bloodstained sword. Matsuno said she’d never met him before. He was covered in his victims’ blood, and as she cowered, trembling in fear, he tossed her a wallet full of money and said, ‘Live.’ ”
Instantly, the image of a certain man floated up in my mind.
“Matsuno thought that he was Miyabe-san, reborn. She knew that couldn’t possibly be true, but sometimes miracles really do occur. Perhaps his spirit had come through somehow. I think Matsuno was under Miyabe-san’s protection. Just as he drew her and me together, he’d worked through that killer.”
I thought that I might know who the killer had been. I had no evidence, but I felt certain. That man, too, had spent the years after the war searching for my grandfather’s wife…He, too, had been ready to sacrifice himself for Kyuzo Miyabe.
Tears spilled from my eyes.
Grandpa stared hard at me. “Was that a shock to you?”
I shook my head. He simply nodded.
* * *
—
“In her final moments, Matsuno thanked me.”
I remembered that, too. They were her last words, delivered in a voice so clear it hardly seemed to be coming from someone breathing her last. Then she closed her eyes.
“Do you remember me weeping then?”
I nodded. Grandpa had wailed out loud. He had clung to grandmother’s body, his voice wracked with sobs. He’d cried loud enough to fill the hospital room.
“I wanted to say, ‘No, it is I that must thank you.’ But there was another reason I cried. I saw Miyabe-san then, standing right beside Matsuno. He was wearing his flight uniform. He’d come for Matsuno…I’m sure you don’t believe what I’m saying.”
Grandpa had a very faraway look in his eyes.
“It’s fine if you don’t. I myself feel like I saw a phantom. It must have been an illusion. But at the time, I felt it quite clearly. Then Miyabe-san and Matsuno departed together. Just as Matsuno left, she said to me, ‘Thank you.’ ”
“No!” I cried. “Grandma loved you!”
“Yeah, I know she did!” Keiko interrupted too.
Grandpa didn’t reply. Tears streaked down his face. “I’m not long for this world myself. When I was young, I was afraid of death. When I was ordered to become a kamikaze, I was scared. I fought back against that fear desperately. But I’m not scared now. I have led a very happy life. I think that when I die, Matsuno will come for me. And I bet Miyabe-san will come get me with her.”
Then he said, “Pardon me, but I would like to be by myself for a bit.”
Keiko and I left the room.
* * *
—
Night had fallen by the time we left Grandpa’s house.
As soon as we passed outside the front gate, Keiko started to cry hard. It was like a dam breaking open.
I hugged her about the shoulders. She clung to my chest and wept. We hadn’t embraced since we were kids. I’d never known she was so petite. The only sound along the dark, quiet residential street was her crying. The pavement was wet, perhaps from a passing afternoon shower.
After a while, Keiko regained her composure. As she started to apologize, I shook my head.
“I can’t marry Takayama-san,” she said. “I’d been worrying over it for a long time, but today my feelings became crystal clear.” Her face was wet with tears, but in the light from the street lamps, it looked almost sunny.
“But you might miss out on your chance to become a writer,” I joked.
“So what?” she laughed. And then she quietly added, “Kentaro, I didn’t tell you this, but I got a long letter from Fujiki-san.”
“Okay.”
“He apologized for having said it over the phone. He wrote, ‘I hope you find happiness.’ And then he went over all these memories, even ones that I’d forgotten about. Fujiki-san had always watched over me.”
Keiko started to cry again. I didn’t say anything. She wiped at her face, and then laughed.
“If I don’t marry the person I love, Grandpa will scold me.”
She turned her tear-streaked face to me and smiled.
I nodded and looked up at the night sky. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was clear and starry. Never before had I seen such a lovely dome of stars over Tokyo. Keiko looked up, too.
Just then, a bright light shot through the eastern skies. It drew a short line and vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.
Epilogue
Looking back now, I can tell you I think that it must have been the devil himself that was piloting that Zero.
Otherwise, how could it move about with such agility with a 550-pound bomb strapped to her belly? It was unbelievable. I think there was a devil, not a human, in that cockpit.
The Zero approached the ship at an extremely low altitude. It skimmed just barely above the ocean surface, coming up dead center of the carrier’s stern. We fired on her with artillery armed with VT fuzes, but the ocean surface reflected the radar, and the shells exploded before reaching their target. Had the bastard figured out the weak point of the VT fuzes?
But even if the fuzes were useless, we could use machine guns once he got close enough. By then, the Essex-class carriers were fitted with an awesome amount of anti-aircraft cannons and machine guns. Twelve 5-inch turrets, seventy-two 40-mm machine guns, and fifty-two 20-mm machine guns, like a hedgehog with all quills braced outward. It should have been impossible to take a bite out of that hedgehog.
Once the Zero had reached 4,000 yards from the ship, the 40-mm guns all fired at once. Thousands of bullets showered a single aircraft. Countless varicolored tracer bullets streaked out from all the many machine guns.
At last, I saw flames burst forth from the Zero. “We got ’im!” I hollered. Black smoke unfurled from the Zero as she abruptly pulled up into a climb. The gunners hastily followed the plane’s course, but they couldn’t match the Zero’s sharp maneuver. It ascended, fuselage on fire, then flipped around so the canopy faced down. Once above the carrier, it began arcing back towards the deck, still upside-down. We were left staring helplessly as this devil descended upon us. I had never seen a dive like that. I mean, how could a burning plane pull off such a move?
The Zero plunged at a ninety-degree angle to the ship. I closed my eyes at the moment of impact.
The Zero struck the dead center of the deck. It caused a terrific bang, but its ordnance didn’t explode—a dud. The plane burned in the middle of the deck. Bits of the aircraft had scattered about the area. A few seamen told me afterwards that the wings had blown off just moments before impact.
We were all so badly shook up that we couldn’t speak.
On the deck lay the upper half of the pilot, torn off. It wasn’t a devil. He was a human just like us. Someone gave a scared yell and fired at the corpse with his handgun.
The flames on the flight deck were soon brought under control. Then the captain arrived.
He stared for a while at the torn body of the pilot then said to the dead man, “Good for you, dodging our superb interceptors and anti-aircraft fire and making it this far.”
We were all impressed, too. The Zero had broken through our ferocious an
ti-aircraft barrage in a brilliant manner.
The captain turned and addressed us in a loud voice. “I believe we ought to pay homage to this man. Tomorrow morning, we will give him a proper sea burial.”
A wave of distress rolled through the crew. I, too, was shocked.
I thought such a thing was completely unheard of. Had the pilot’s bomb gone off as it was supposed to, we could have lost any number of men.
But the captain only glared at us. The look in his eyes made it clear he would hear no objections.
We collected the scattered remains of the pilot. Then someone pulled a photograph out of the breast pocket of the guy’s uniform.
“It’s a baby.”
Everyone gathered around to get a look. I looked, too. The photo showed a kimono-clad woman holding an infant.
“Dammit, I’ve got a kid too!” Senior Chief Petty Officer Lou Amberson practically spat out. He carefully replaced the photograph back into the dead man’s breast pocket. Then he told the seamen under his command, “Be sure to bury him with it.”
The body was wrapped in white cloth and laid to rest in the holding area beneath the bridge. As I was wrapping the body, I closed the pilot’s still opened eyes.
I remember how his fearsome face turned gentle.
We tossed the Zero’s fragments into the ocean. We were unable to remove the lower half of the corpse that was still in the cockpit, so we sent it overboard with the plane. The bomb that the Zero cradled was defused and thrown overboard as well.
The next morning, all free hands were assembled on deck.
Looking back now, I think the captain’s attitude was very admirable. I learned after the war was over that his son had been killed in action at Pearl Harbor.
It made me admire what he’d done all the more.
By dawn, most of us had come to feel some respect for the nameless Japanese pilot. Our own pilots, in particular, seemed awestruck. They said the Zero pilot must have flown just above the waves for hundreds of kilometers in order to avoid detection by our radar. Such a feat required superhuman technique and concentration, as well as immense bravery, they pointed out.
The Eternal Zero Page 39
