A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

by Jackie Copleton

  I scanned the list the church’s head office had sent us. I turned the first page and then the next until only one more was left. And then there you were. I confess I wept as I read the date of birth, school, parents and next of kin: Hideo Watanabe; February 22, 1938; Yamazato Primary; Shige and Yuko Watanabe (née Takahashi); Kenzo Takahashi (grandfather), Mitsubishi Corporation (shipbuilding division). I think this is when the thought began, a kernel of hope, of possibility. As the days passed, this seed began to grow in my mind, burst open and push its way to the light until it became more than a shoot of possibility, but a living, fragile new life in the dead soil. Could this Hideo be your Hideo? Your mother told me he had died but could she have been wrong? And if she was mistaken about Hideo, what about you?

  I waited for Sister Abe to bring Ko to my office. She held his hand as I explained we had been trying to find out more about his family. I told him we had a list of boys, all called Hideo, who went missing on the day he was injured. There was a chance he might be one of them. Could we read the details to him and see if anything sounded familiar? He said nothing and I began to read the names. By the fifth one he began to cry. Sister Abe said we should perhaps stop, but I asked to try one more, and when I read out Yamazato Primary, he looked up. I promise I did not imagine his reaction. ‘Do you recognise the school, Hideo?’ He wiped his eyes and nestled into the nun. ‘Can you remember your mother’s name?’ He thought for a moment. ‘I called her Mummy.’ Sister Abe kissed the top of his head. ‘Can you remember what other people called her?’ He looked up at the nun. ‘Can I leave, please?’ She glanced at me and I said, ‘We have plenty of time. This is hard, Hideo, I know. Don’t worry. This might help us find your parents.’ He shuffled off the chair and touched Sister Abe on the wrist. ‘Miki says our parents are lost, but they’re coming back.’ The nun smiled as she led him away. ‘Miki sounds kind.’

  Over the next days and weeks, I replaced brittle evidence with malleable hope. I study his mannerisms, the signs of the boy before this trauma. There are moments when I begin to see you in him. Why not, Yuko? Why not? But then I give myself a shake. That would be too miraculous for this world. He is no doubt just another orphan. That would be much simpler to comprehend, would it not?

  I stopped reading. Sato had always been a foolish man, too ignorant of the damage he unleashed with his musings and desires. He had outdone himself here, playing a god to some boy. Why drape a past on a child that did not belong to him? My grandson would not be the only Hideo with lost parents. This boy could have been found at any number of schools destroyed that day. If Sato wanted to give this Ko an identity, he could have chosen any name pulled from that missing persons register, but he chose our Hideo Watanabe. Why? To ease his own grief, not to help one of too many orphans left behind. His selfishness was obscene.

  The man had said he would return today. What to tell him of the letters? I felt soiled by their contents. I wanted to slough the words off my mind, cleanse myself of Sato, but as always the lure of him was relentless. With the coffee long cold by my side, I continued to read.

  By 1950, he wrote, the church had managed to contact eleven of the families on the list. They were asked to provide facts that might help prove the boy’s identity: a birthmark, blemishes or other features peculiar to their son or grandson or nephew. Some parents were even brought to the island to meet their possible child. Sato explained Hideo’s injuries to them and the Mother Superior took them to a spot so that they could view him from a discreet distance. If there was any hint of recognition or desire to meet the boy, Hideo was brought to them and they stared at him and asked questions that he seemed unable or unwilling to answer. ‘Do you recognise us? Where do we live? Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ The process seemed crude and ineffective. The couples would fidget and cough and look to the Mother Superior and lower their heads, and she would thank them for making the long journey and apologise for wasting their time. They would catch the ferry home and another name would be struck from the list.

  Then Sato mentioned someone who had been understandably absent from the letters: Natsu. He revealed his wife visited him regularly on the island. She had grown fond of the children, and she was particularly moved by Ko, or Hideo, as people now called him. She admired his quiet stoicism and how accepting the other youngsters were of his burns.

  Forgive me for writing about my wife, but you will see my reasons. She came to mark the anniversary of pikadon with us. I watched her stare at my city map, flick through pages of my textbooks, pick up scribbled notes. She called my work an obsession, asked if I would come home for good. ‘You belong in the city.’ We talked about the children, what would happen to them. Suddenly, as if the thought had only just occurred to her, she asked how easy it would be to adopt one of them. The question was posed too casually. I think alone in Nagasaki, she has given this idea plenty of consideration. A child might have helped our marriage over the years, maybe. A child would have drawn me home sooner, certainly. She is a good woman and she would make a fine mother. My absence has been a cruelty to her but I could not grieve for another woman while she looked on. Our separation was a necessity, a kindness of sorts, but I realised if I was to return to Nagasaki permanently, I couldn’t leave Hideo behind, not when there is a chance he is your son. I told her I did have someone in mind. She seemed uncertain, worried that Hideo would be better off here at the centre, safe from all those prying eyes. Natsu ran her hand down the map. ‘Will people, strangers, look beyond his scars? If you don’t see people as human, it’s easier to hurt them.’ I told her if one city could accept him then it would be ours. What I tell you is this: I look beyond his scars, and all I see is you.

  I broached the subject of adoption with the Mother Superior. She tried to hide her surprise. I told her the chances of finding Hideo’s birth family were reducing by the days and weeks. We had some responsibility to protect him from this further disappointment. She looked at the list of Hideo’s possible parents. ‘Do we not owe the boy a thorough search?’ I offered her a cigarette but she declined. ‘Mother Superior, I should have said earlier but I know one set of parents on the list, the Watanabes, on the last page. They did not survive; it is likely the other names will prove fruitless too. I want to offer Hideo a future, stability.’ She asked if the Watanabes had other family members still alive and I explained my wife had made enquiries. I told her that one set of grandparents had moved from Japan, their destination unknown. No other relatives had left contact details. ‘You think this Hideo is Hideo Watanabe?’ I waited a beat before I replied. ‘I think we will never know.’

  What to do with anger that can go nowhere? Kenzo and I had left contact details with the authorities but only for our Nagasaki address. There had been no need to make contact from America. But surely we could have been found, somehow? What if the orphanage had contacted us? Would we have believed in the possibility? It felt like hope had died so quickly and absolutely back then. Sato’s letter made me try to comprehend the joy and agony of us being reunited with Hideo. How would he have fared in this country with those scars and the reason for them? How would we have coped as his grandparents turned parents? I imagined only good. I saw him sitting in a classroom in a baseball jersey, playing in the street with friends, going to summer camps, heading to university. We would have told him about his parents, how they met and fell in love, the sacrifices they made in the war. He would have had a better understanding of who he had been, where he had come from, maybe where he was going. This Hideo Watanabe would have been a blend of Japanese past and American future. We would have drawn such comfort from his presence. Our lives in this new country would have made more sense; the three of us would have known what we were supposed to be after pikadon: a family.

  But the doctor and his wife took away the opportunity for us to know if this was our Hideo. On Natsu’s next visit to the island they went for a walk in the woods with the boy and found a shaded spot for a picnic.

 
We explained that we had tried our best to find his real family but we had been unsuccessful. He asked why and I said that the likeliest explanation was his parents couldn’t find him because, as Miki had said, they were lost. I showed him the list of names. ‘It’s likely these were your parents, Hideo.’ I pointed to your name and Shige’s. ‘Will they find me again?’ Natsu took his hand in her own. ‘If they can, I’m sure they will. But until then we thought you might like to live with us, in Nagasaki.’ He raised his hand to his cheek. ‘What will people say about my face?’ Natsu put her arm around his shoulder and drew him to her. ‘We’ll just tell them you were hurt but now you’re better. We’ll tell them how brave you’ve been, how clever you are, how proud we are of you.’

  As the day drew near for them to leave the island, Sato could see how nervous Hideo was about the departure. He had been so closeted at the orphanage. The children seemed almost blind to his scars. His schooling, his confidence, they had thrived on the island. Natsu and the doctor were worried about how he would adapt to a busy city, strangers’ eyes, new classmates, but Hideo would have a future in Nagasaki.

  The island has been a good place for both of us to heal but we cannot hide here forever. For a doctor, I have done so few kind acts in my life. He can be one. I will love him as my own and raise him as my own. He will have a good life. He will be the child I never had. I cannot shift the thought that you and Hideo are connected. I imagine him to be your son, not only to keep you close but to push other memories away. And even though I cannot see the marks of you in his face, his presence is as close as I can get to you now.

  I checked my watch and skipped ahead. I wanted to know how Hideo had adapted to life in the city. Had he struggled, had he been tormented by bullies at school, had he pined for the safety and seclusion of the orphanage? On August 9, 1951, Sato and Natsu took him to a commemoration of the bomb. Crowds had gathered near what remained of the hypocentre. Survivors huddled together under umbrellas, sheltering from the heat. People wore garlands of paper cranes and carried doves made of paper. They listened, heads bent, as men and women took to the podium to talk of compensation and tolerance and medical assistance. A group of former Korean prisoners had gathered silent by a fountain. Hideo was enthralled by the spectacle; inspired was the word the doctor used. Sato said perhaps it was the one date in the calendar when Hideo could be accepted and embraced not as something to pity but a testimony, a caution, a living will.

  We stood next to widows dressed in black, hair scraped back, eyes damp with tears. In front of them were sombre children, summer-fresh in white cotton dresses, shorts and straw hats. Surrounded by one-storey wooden buildings that had risen from the rubble, we watched a procession of women as they danced in peach and coral kimonos. Next came a black-and-gold silk dancing dragon, its writhing body held aloft on poles by men. Buddhist monks followed covered head to toe in white, and then toward the end of the parade, survivors held aloft canvas placards, painted with the word ‘Peace’. Later we walked down to the river, its surface shattered by sunlight. We followed the tramlines to Tsukimachi and I found myself only a short distance away from the place where we began. I could not help myself; I had to go and look; I had to see the building once more.

  I told Natsu and Hideo I knew a short cut to avoid the crowds and traffic. We headed past the rows of champon and sara udon restaurants, their red lanterns still in the heat of the afternoon. Women hid from the sun under parasols. They gossiped as they walked under sheets dripping wet from the lines that stretched across the street from balconies. Housewives bartered for live eels wriggling in wooden buckets; they smelled the wart skin of bitter melons for ripeness, picked among the baskets of lime-green silk squashes and swollen purple eggplants. Rotten fruit abandoned in the dirt soured the air as men in aprons strung plucked ducks on hooks and greeted passers-by with the trading prices of the day. Remember that scene, Yuko? Remember what it meant to us? I searched for our apartment, but it is gone. A pachinko parlour stands in its place. Even if the building is no more the memory of what happened there taunts me. I think back to that last afternoon we spent together in that room, your father standing there, telling me to go. I hate myself for not staying, not fighting, not telling him what we meant to one another. The family left to me, Natsu and Hideo, walked on ahead. I felt unworthy of this second chance. I do not deserve to have the burden of your loss eased by Hideo’s presence. But he allows me to create new memories. He is the living wreckage I pull from the flames of August 9.

  I was glad that blackened facade of rooms to rent by the hour was gone. For that hovel to have survived and Yuko to have not would have been too cruel. Hideo had soothed the sorrow of Sato’s past. Kenzo and I had been denied such a gift.We had left Nagasaki so that the city might not torment us but, even in my American sanctuary, Sato was making me do what I had tried to avoid for so long: look back. I had mostly managed to keep my mind’s eye on only the good from the life we had abandoned, the days spent drawing with Yuko when she was a child, the mornings passed watching her try to play the shamisen as her teacher quietly despaired at her clumsiness, the trips shared with her to the markets to choose Kenzo a gift, the joy of hearing her singing to herself in the garden, her voice trembling at the high notes. These recollections were sweetly, desperately bearable if I tried not to think on them too long. Harder memories sometimes pushed their way through, but if they dared, I trained my mind to fight back. Go to the shops, clean that cupboard, and if all else failed, pour that drink.

  Sato’s letters were dragging me back, forcing me to unearth all that I had kept hidden, but I couldn’t tear myself away from his version of the past we shared. I wanted to hold these letters up to the dark light of my own memory. He had asked the same question that haunted me. Why was I still here when Yuko was gone? Why should we survive? I could not answer for him but if I believed in a god, my deity would have been a vengeful one. He would have ruled my death alongside my daughter too easy an outcome. My punishment must never stop being dispensed. My life was my sackcloth and my ashes. Sato must have reached a different conclusion. Maybe he thought he had been kept alive to save that boy. In turn this Ko, or Hideo, or whoever he was, would save him. Yes, I could see the reasons why Sato had needed the boy to be Yuko’s son, but I felt the opposite: my grandson was too pure for any world that would keep Sato and me alive but claim my daughter. Only scavengers and liars and cheats survived. The best of us died young back then.

  Humility

  Kenkyo: Modesty is one of the most important concepts of virtue in Japan. People are expected to be humble and modest regardless of their social position. They are supposed to modulate the display of their ability, talent, knowledge or wealth in an appropriate manner. Self-assertiveness, aggressiveness and ambitiousness are all more or less discouraged, and consideration for others encouraged.

  The knock was timid, unsure, as if he expected me to ignore him. I opened the door and we said cautious hellos to one another, shy without the whiskey. He stepped inside and removed his shoes and padded through to the kitchen in his socks. By the time I joined him, he was sitting in Kenzo’s seat.

  ‘I’ve made tea, and there are doughnuts, or I can make you a sandwich. You must be hungry.’

  ‘Please, don’t rush around for me.’ He seemed exhausted.

  ‘How did the conference go?’

  He undid the knot of his tie. ‘Speaking in America can be a challenge. You don’t want to be seen as lecturing or hectoring about the evils of the atomic bomb but also you have a duty to speak up, to say, this is what happened, not what you think happened.’ He gestured at his face. ‘And people find this too much, sometimes.’

  I did not know how to respond so I set the cups and saucers on the table, brought over a knife for the doughnuts and two napkins. I realised I had no side plates and looked for them in the cupboard nearest the door. Even these small chores flustered me, the simplest task of preparing refreshments for two people, no
t one, a trial. I sat opposite him, his face so close, the red lids with no eyelashes, the mottled yellow and pink ridges, the scars from surgeons’ incisions. Despite the lack of expression, his face was fascinating. If beauty was uniformity, he should have seemed abhorrent but the blasted skin around his eyes just made them seem brighter, more inquisitive. ‘Have the contents of the package been helpful?’

  I answered as honestly as I could. ‘They’re letters from Jomei. He mentions your orphanage and the adoption of a boy called Ko. That’s you, yes? And a girl called Miki.’

  ‘Ko is me, yes, and Miki, well, how to explain her?’

  He told me the story of when he arrived at the orphanage, how the doctor who worked at the centre before Sato made him sleep in the ward, in isolation. They were worried about infections and they didn’t want him to alarm the other children. His injuries were thought to be too shocking. He didn’t like being left in the basement on his own at night. He became convinced there was a demon stalking the corridors when everyone else had gone to bed. He believed this creature wanted to return him to the day of pikadon, or at least carry him off into the mountains. One night, he heard the creak of floorboards and he thought, this is it, this is the end, and he said he felt relieved. He was so lonely. At least the demon would be company. Who would miss him apart from his favourite nun, Sister Abe? The children would not care. They would not know. At that point in his treatment, his burns could not be exposed to sunlight. He was little more than a rumour to them. He watched the door handle shake and then move down as it released on the catch, and he thought, here he comes, I’m ready. But it wasn’t a monster, it was a little girl. This was Miki. She was a little younger than him, with short hair and scabby knees. She visited him most nights, even when he was allowed to sleep with the other children. She would climb into his bed and they would whisper, dream and plan adventures. Sometimes they sneaked outside and ran through the woods, or swam in the pond, or lay under the tree of dolls and Miki told him stories. She had no fear; she did not believe in demons; pikadon had killed them all. Her own parents had been too close to the light, but they were not dead, only lost. They were coming for her. She told him to be patient, his family would return as well. When Miki drowned in the pond, no one believed she had existed, but he kept telling them that Miki had gone in the water. He finished talking, and looked at the floor, maybe embarrassed.