by Frank Wynne
The girl nodded obediently, and beckoned her brother and sister.
“Go through the front today,” their mother called.
Grandma Hotta was an old lady who lived all alone, just three doors down the street from them. She had suffered a series of terrible misfortunes, the girl had heard. She and her husband had once run a wholesale paper business, but had gone bankrupt, soon after which her husband and her only child, a daughter, had died. Now she lived at the end of a small alleyway, in a tiny place, consisting of the kitchen and one two-mat room of her former residence. The rest had been sold off and made into the accounting office of a copper-ware dealer. Despite her poverty, however, the neighbors still acknowledged the old lady’s previous status as the wife of a prosperous shopkeeper: they called her “O-ie,” “O-ie-san,” or, in the local dialect, “O-e-han.”1 In the girl’s family, too, the grown-ups always referred to the old lady as “Hotta no O-e-han.”
It was possible to enter the old lady’s house from the back of their own. At the end of the garden, by the little cottage where the children often played, was a wooden warehouse built up against the family storehouse: at its far end was a sliding door, and opening that, they would find themselves right inside Grandma Hotta’s house. The door was usually kept closed and locked, however, with a bolt on the old lady’s side.
That day, the girl escorted her brother and sister out to the street, where trucks, carts, and bicycles were busily passing, and turned down the little alley to the old lady’s front entrance. They pounded on the heavy wooden door, which had a smaller one set within it, and shouted all together, “Grandma!”
“Yes, yes. I’m coming,” they heard her say in the same way she did when they went via the warehouse. They heard her wooden clogs cross the earthen floor, then a pause, and the bolt rattled back.
“We’ve come to say goodbye,” the girl announced as soon as the door opened.
“Really? Thank you, dear. It’s very nice of you to remember me.”
The old lady looked at the children in their travel clothes. “Are you leaving right away? I suppose you don’t have time to come in for a little while….”
The kitchen was spacious, large enough to have catered to the needs of an entire family. Now it served as the old lady’s living space and entryway as well. There were two skylights in the ceiling, and directly below them, several detachable planks gleamed darkly, covering a small cellar. A rough mat had been laid alongside these.
O-ie-san stepped back to fetch three cushions stacked neatly at the far end of the mat. She set them on the edge of the raised floor for the children, and settled herself opposite them, in front of the simple unlit charcoal brazier.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, formally. She was slight of stature and very pale, and her hair was nearly all white.
“When we get there, I’m going to swim every day!” the girl’s sister announced.
“Me too!” her brother said. “Mummy bought me a float!”
Grandma Hotta gave her usual response: she had a habit of opening her eyes, which were very wide to begin with, wider still, so they almost met her eyebrows.
“I see,” she nodded.
Now would be a good time to carry out her duty, the girl thought, taking a deep breath.
“But we’ll come back and visit you, Grandma!” she said. “And we’ll write you letters. And we hope that you stay well!”
“Thank you, my dear,” the old lady replied. She nodded several times, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve.
The girl was only saying what her mother had told her she should, but she realized that Grandma Hotta was genuinely touched. It occurred to her that Grandma Hotta must be terribly lonely, and that she would be even lonelier when they went away. Remembering that she might have left without saying goodbye, the girl felt ashamed.
Her mother always took very good care of poor old O-ie-san. Two years ago, a fierce typhoon had blown up across their part of the country, with gale-force winds and floods. As soon as her mother saw signs of the coming storm, she sent a clerk from the store over to bring O-ie-san back to their house. Their mother took O-ie-san to the theater, and was always visiting her, almost every day. Whenever the old lady wasn’t feeling well, her mother would report her health to her father, even though he usually disliked being bothered by anything unrelated to his work.
“She’s no longer running a fever,” her mother would say. “But she’s still a little dizzy. I’ll go over after dinner and see how she is.”
On summer nights, the children would play with fireworks and sparklers in the back garden. They would go out into the dark with their mother, taking fireworks, matches, and a bucket of water. Glimpsing a pale shape in the gloom, they might suddenly hear O-ie-san’s voice say, quietly: “I’m out here enjoying the cool. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all,” the girl’s mother would reply, quickly disappearing into the cottage, and a light would come on, throwing wan rays out the small round window. The girl would see O-ie-san sitting in the small rattan child’s chair that she always brought out with her, fanning herself with a round paper fan.
“What a lovely cool breeze,” her mother would remark, coming out and sitting on the edge of the veranda.
The children set about lighting their sparklers. Each time she brought a flame to the tip of one, the girl’s fingers would tremble slightly. She had to be careful: she could never tell exactly where the first sparks would shoot out. Then the darkness suddenly would be ablaze, and transfixed, she would be in another world. The sparkler would make fiery, spitting sounds, fizzling away before her eyes. In those few seconds, though, she knew the sparkler was living for all it was worth—fiercely, keenly, in a beautiful world of color and light. Even when everything became dark and still once more, the girl would be sure that she still saw something there, glowing and fizzling away.
“This one next,” her brother would say.
Sometimes, the girl would be aware of her mother and the old lady gazing at the sparklers, their faces reflecting the light, but they mostly just chatted. The children would light firecrackers, which shot out at unexpected angles with a loud bang. “Oh!” the women would exclaim: “That made me jump!”
Some nights when they went into the garden to play with sparklers, though, O-ie-san wouldn’t be out there enjoying the cool night air. Then, their mother would urge them to go and invite her to join them. But no one would want to go alone to fetch her—it was too scary to go all that way through the dark warehouse. Even the girl was afraid, and she was the eldest.
Through the open door of O-ie-san’s house, the girl caught sight of her mother walking up the alley.
“Did everybody say goodbye nicely?” she asked, entering the house.
“They’re all such good children,” O-ie-san said. “Thank you so much for your kindness this morning,” she said to their mother. “You’re always so very kind.”
So her mother, the girl realized, must have come by herself to see the old lady earlier in the day.
O-ie-san came out to the end of the alley to see them all off. “Good luck!” she said to the children. “Grow up healthy and strong.”
*
Though the girl was going to switch to a new school once summer vacation was over, that didn’t mean she got out of holiday homework. At the closing ceremony, their teacher gave all the girls in her class a copy of Summer Holiday Companion. She’d been told that she must be sure to complete all its exercises and hand it in to her teacher at her new school at the beginning of the next term.
After breakfast every morning the girl filled in that day’s homework in her study book. Then she went straight out with her brother and sister, accompanied by the maid, to swim in the sea. After that, they all had a snack and took a midday nap, and then the children went out by themselves to play in the parks along the grassy river banks lined by pine trees.
In the old house it had been the rule that their father took his bath first, before anyone els
e. But after they moved to the new house in the suburbs, he told them to have their baths over and done with before he returned. So every day the children were fresh and clean by 5:30. Sometimes their mother would bring them when she went to meet their father on his way home from work.
Away in the distance, astride the river at its source, the mountain peaks bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun. The evening air around them would be pleasantly cool. Even the rush of the water sounded much less noisy and hurried than during the day. The lights in the windows would have just been turned on, and the houses flashing into view between the pine trees all looked very safe and secure behind their hedges. Far away, they would hear the clang of the railway crossing bell.
One evening, as they all went out together to meet him, the girl’s brother and sister headed diagonally across the road, a little in front, and up on to the grassy bank.
“Don’t go up there,” her mother called. “Stay on the road. That’s right.”
Then she turned to the girl, who was walking beside her.
“You know,” she said, “I often think about all of your futures. Of course, I can’t say for sure what kind of husbands you and your sister will marry, or what sort of lives you’ll lead, but don’t think you’re always going to be this happy, dear. We’re almost too happy. Life isn’t always like this.”
The girl didn’t know it then, but a time would come in her life when she would recall her mother’s words over and over again. That evening, she assumed her mother referred to Grandma Hotta and her terrible misfortunes—it had already been some time since she’d last thought of her.
Several evenings later, a fireworks display was held at the beach. Their parents took them to watch it, and for the first time the children saw real fireworks shooting up high into the sky.
It was a few days after that when swarms of plump moth-like insects with dark brown wings came flying through the garden and along the rows of pine trees. According to her father, the swarms came in even greater numbers to the city—so many that they blotted out the sun. There was a long article about them in the newspaper: the insects were known as “one-stroke skippers.”
The girl sent off two postcards to Grandma Hotta. The first one was about the fireworks display, and the second one about the one-stroke skippers. She began to feel a little bored now with the seaside and the river. Addressing the postcards, she found out that Grandma Hotta’s given name was Tsuné.
Fall came, and the children had their father take them to the park with the tallest slide in Japan. It was their first visit since moving to their new house. In the summer, he’d told them, the slide would be burning hot, impossible to touch.
On November 3rd, a national holiday, crowds of people started gathering on the shore in the morning. They’d all heard about a naval parade with over a dozen ships. The ships were due to go by at around two o’clock, but just in case, the children urged their mother to take them there a good hour early.
The scheduled hour for the ships’ arrival passed, and still nothing appeared on the horizon. In the meantime, the clear blue skies became sullen and gray. A mist seemed to have gathered out at sea. By now, quite a crowd had collected, and a row of stalls selling roasted chestnuts, paper balloons and other festive things had been set up, but with nothing else to entertain them except the heavy waves rolling in and crashing on the shore, the enthusiasm soon dampened. Some people started shivering in the cold sea spray.
It was three o’clock.
“When are the ships coming?” the girl’s brother asked.
“Can’t we go home?” her sister asked. “We can come back later.”
“But what if we miss them?” the girl scolded her. “I’m not going with you.” Bored, the children started to quarrel.
“There they are!” somebody shouted. “Now I can see them!”
The girl looked out to sea.
“Where?” she asked. “Where are they?”
“There,” her mother pointed to the distance. “Way over to the left. See?” She lifted the girl’s brother up in her arms.
All of them stood staring out to the left of the river mouth, where, far away, in the mist joining the low sky with the murky sea, they saw a slightly darker blur.
“That’s a warship?” The girl’s sister turned back and looked up at her mother.
“Keep your eye on it,” her mother said. “It’s getting bigger.” The blur did seem to be getting longer. But it was just a vague shape slowly extending to the right, not taking on the outline of a warship at all.
The dark gray blur, flat and long like a sash, had reached the midpoint of the bay. Then, suddenly, near the head of the line, far out to sea, a single black silhouette of a ship came a bit more sharply into view. From the shore rose a shout of admiration. But the next minute, like a ghost, it faded back into the gray.
The day had grown quite dark. A dull drone, like an airplane engine, could be heard in the distance. The gray line was still there, but now it stretched from one side of the bay to the other, so they could no longer tell if it was even moving. At one moment, the girl realized no ships were appearing on the left any more. And then it began to rain.
She didn’t write O-ie-san about watching the naval parade, nor their visit to the park with the very tall slide. The truth was, her city days were fast fading from her memory. She was preoccupied with the new friends she’d made at her new school. She invited them to her house to play, and was invited to theirs.
Sometimes, back when they’d been living in the city, she would come home from school in the afternoon, and her mother would say, after giving her a snack: “It’s sekki today.” Sekki was the last day of the month, the day for settling accounts. That all of the houses in their neighborhood were especially busy with their own affairs meant that she shouldn’t go over to her friends’ homes, and they couldn’t come over to hers.
But in her new neighborhood, nobody seemed to bother with sekki. A few of her friends came from families with shops in the city like hers, but most of their fathers worked in an office or a company, so it didn’t matter if she visited on the last day of the month. As they played at being grown-ups, she learned new words like “department manager,” “company director,” “bonus,” and “transfer.”
At her new school, fathers didn’t come on parents’ day to observe classes. Only mothers did. She found two of them particularly amazing: one was a lady who wore Western clothes and a hat with a fluffy crimson feather; the other hummed along with the children during their singing class. The girl had never seen such eccentric mothers in her old school.
A year passed. Soon the girl no longer noticed anything surprising about her new environment. Then, suddenly, yet another change came over her way of life—a change that didn’t just affect her and her family, however. It was the beginning of outright war with China.
The army was starting its advance on enemy territory, winning victory after victory. The children were told by their teacher that they should study as hard as they could, so they wouldn’t put their soldiers to shame. They should copy the example of the children of Japan’s ally, Germany, who were not only robust and healthy, but obedient and industrious too. They were told the same thing again during the opening lecture of summer-school classes.
One evening, playing with sparklers in the garden, the children placed on the ground a spiral-shaped firecracker with something like a candle wick at one end. Holding a match up to this, the girl lit it carefully, and then jumped back. The firework started spitting out blue sparks, somersaulting madly about and bathing the garden in a dazzling white light.
The light turned yellow.
“It’s changed color!” her sister cried.
Next it turned red. Her brother put his hands to his ears. The fiery husk leaped into the air, made a terrifically loud bang, and then lay still.
Her sister let her breath out, “That was my favorite.”
Just then came a man’s voice from the other side of the fence: “A
re you the people playing with fireworks?”
“Yes,” the girl answered, remembering the loud bang.
“Japan is at war!” the voice shouted, as if he’d been waiting to pounce on her reply. “What’ll you do if Japan loses because you’ve wasted gunpowder on your games? Don’t you dare play with fireworks ever again, do you hear? Children who do are not Japanese children! I’ll be back to check.”
The deep voice was replaced by the sound of wooden clogs on the road, retreating into the night.
The children were crestfallen. Even her brother—who had been excitedly pointing into the box of fireworks and saying, “This one next!”—was silent.
“What’s the matter?” Their mother came out to the edge of the veranda. The children went up to her and explained.
Their father, who was in the sitting-room, commented, “What a jerk!” and went back to reading his newspaper.
“Well, but…,” their mother said dubiously. “Are there any fireworks left?” she asked the children. “Or have you used them up?”
“We still have some,” the girl replied.
“Well, let’s put them away till the war’s over. Mommy’ll put them in a tin and store them very carefully.”
The girl went to fetch the box of fireworks that she’d left on a rock in the garden. Only a few remained, but she could see two fat sticks and a spiral-shaped one her sister had said was her favorite kind. She felt very sad and disappointed as she handed the box over to her mother. The fireworks weren’t the source of her sadness: even if she were encouraged to play with them, she knew she would never feel that same joy again.
That summer, the beach fireworks were canceled. When the fall term started, it was clear that the war would already affect the girl’s life at school.
Once a week they had a lesson in national ethics: their teacher would lead a party of them to a nearby Shinto shrine and have them pray to the gods for victory in the war. And once a month, during composition class, they were all made to write letters of comfort and encouragement to soldiers at the front.
