The metallic smell of bloody rags clogged the air when I returned to Karin’s room. She was sitting up. ‘Will Sato say anything?’
‘You can trust him.’
Tears were in her eyes. ‘I wish he’d never touched me. He told me he cared for me but he wouldn’t like me all fat. Said he wasn’t sure the baby was his.’ Karin stared up at the ceiling. ‘I told him I’d be thin again. He said the problem wasn’t his, I should have been more careful. Some joke, huh?’
Karin scraped her fingers along her scalp and I came and knelt by her futon. ‘What will you do?’
She shook her head but we both knew the answer. We bribed the landlady not to mention Sato’s visit and we continued as before. She was back working in the bar a couple of days later, her absence explained by a stomach illness. Karin smiled and laughed and showed no discomfort, but some events leave a mark, even if they cannot be seen. Whereas before she had been a butterfly, lying her bright wings flat in the sun, now she held them close to her so that the customers could not see her colours within. She talked often of that lost foetus, her water child, she called it. She bought small statues, dressed them in red bibs and caps and took them to temples. Sometimes, rather than the figurines, she left round polished stones instead. She thought these offerings would ease her sadness but they did not. Her water child left its mark on me too but I don’t blame Karin for what happened. I chose to ask for Sato’s help. I chose to show him my life as it was, not how I wanted it to be, some room filled with roses and pictures of horses and herons. In the days that followed his visit to Karin, I waited at the bar, I visited the apartment and parks, I sent notes to his work, but Sato had disappeared. He was a conjuror’s trick, one minute there, the next gone. I told myself he just needed time to adjust to this truer version of me and he would return. I did not have to wait too long. I saw him two or three weeks later, on the night of Shoro-Nagashi, August 15, 1919.
Mama-san had given Karin and me a couple of hours off work, knowing the bars would be empty while thousands of people gathered in the streets. The festival is unlike any other in Japan. Families welcome back their deceased from the spirit world or send them on their way. Joy and sorrow march side by side as drums bang and incense burns. We stood among the throng and watched the procession of bamboo and grass boats built for the dead, some as big as real ships. Men wrapped in white sheets were carrying the vessels festooned with lanterns down to the water to be lowered into the sea and pushed off into the darkness. Those glowing boats floated off while the bereaved placed gifts of fruit on mats and sent them also into the night. The city was a flare of colour, dragon dances and men drunk on rice wine. The shouting, the high-pitched calls to the spirits, the fireworks, the crackers, the gongs, the noise is loud enough to scare off the wild cats and wake up the dead. Our departed cannot rest. They cannot ignore us. They must leave or return to us. We are too loud to ignore.
Karin and I jostled among the people to find a good spot next to a stall selling grilled caramel. The smell of burnt sugar filled the air along with sulphur from the fire crackers. One of the men from the procession, his hand bleeding, his face dripping sweat, stumbled up to Karin and shouted at her, ‘Hey, beautiful, marry me,’ before offering her a bottle of opened plum wine. We moved away from him, and that was the moment, with the streets vibrating with music and voices and the air filled with smoke, when I saw him. Not the ghost of his face reflected in another, but him. What joy, that jolt of recognition, mixed with surprise. He was heading toward us and then I saw that he was not alone. A girl, taller than me and perhaps a little older, was holding his arm. Without thinking, I went to raise my hand in greeting and he looked up. Instead of a smile, he seemed furious. Karin must have seen him too. She pulled at my arm to move away but I was paralysed by that expression of anger and then disgust. I did not know what to do or where to go. There was no room among the crowds to slip past them. Instead the mass of people were pushing me directly into their path. He was only a step or two away when he whispered something in the girl’s ear. She laughed and just seconds before they reached me they disappeared between two food stalls and joined the parade. Karin asked if I was OK and searched for a handkerchief in her purse, worried that I might cry, but I was too shocked for tears. I looked down and saw myself as he must have done. Too gaudy, too bright, too cheap. How to describe that moment of humiliation? How to paint the pain of his rejection? After all those months, after all that I had risked for him and hoped of him, I did not even merit an acknowledgement. That is Jomei Sato.
A Lordless Samurai Warrior
Ronin: In feudal times it often happened that samurai warriors would lose their lord in a war or social upheaval. These lordless samurai warriors were called ronin. Because they were poor, they had to work. Many taught children reading and writing. Thanks to their contribution, it is said, the literacy in Japan at the time was considerably higher than in Europe.
I am suspicious of nostalgia, pliable as it can be to our moods or needs, but sometimes I allowed the memories, however dubious, to take me to the bar before Sato, when the glow of the lamps was the only sign of time passing, or energy spent, or old jokes shared not just to fill the silence. The doctor had done a cruel thing; he brought light into this black hole of survival and then, just as easily, he withdrew into the shadows. Sakamoto was another absent face from the bar, much to Mama-san’s displeasure. She never asked why he vanished but learned from a rival bar owner that he had set up camp two doors down. I thought Mama-san would blame me for the loss of his custom and send me away. The thought was not unappealing; too much had happened, too many opportunities lost, too many tears of self-pity shed when alone at night, but all I knew how to be was a hostess. Like Karin, I had nowhere else to go. I did not want to end up like Kimiko or the other women down by the wharves offering themselves for coins, a warm meal, brief shelter.
With Sato and Sakamoto gone, other admirers began to sniff around. Basho Arai was not so bad. He had a large head, small chin and skinny fingers, yes, but he was not without charm. He liked to talk politics, his eyelids half shut, one hand waving a cigarette as a conductor might, drunk on the music. His subject that September night was the Paris Peace Conference earlier in the year and the Treaty of Versailles. ‘We’ve got the German Islands, Shantung, Jiaozhou. America and China might not be happy but they’re ours. Do you know what all this means, Amaterasu? We’re a first-class nation now. Good, eh?’
I smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Tokyo, I tell you, is the place where you need to be.’
‘Why, sweet thing?’
‘That’s where the action is, my friend.’
‘Not here?’
‘Here?’ I lit my cigarette, my voice dismissive. ‘Don’t be silly.’
He touched my knee. ‘I’ll go to Tokyo if you come with me. You can be my assistant. Think of the stories we will write together.’
I pretended to type on the table with my cigarette hanging out of my mouth. ‘Like this?’
‘Perfect. Why not? Now get me some stew. I need to sober up. I have a story to file.’
I stood up, dizzy from the drink, and as I neared the kitchen I saw Mama-san talking to someone by the entrance. I was surprised to see him, another lost customer. He walked toward me, self-conscious. ‘How delightful to see you, Kenzo.’
He bowed, smoothed down his hair. ‘Hello, Amaterasu, it’s been too long.’
‘It has.’ I gestured at the nearest banquette. ‘Please, sit. You’ve been missed.’
He considered this. ‘Work is busy. We have so many orders for ships, soon we will have more ships than people. You should come down to the docks. I can show you around.’
‘Your boss would allow that?’
He smiled. ‘Well, I’m my own boss and I give myself permission.’
I laughed and he seemed pleased by my reaction. But then he cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. ‘Jomei sends his regards.’ Hea
ring his name felt like a knife wound in my chest. I could not speak. ‘We need not talk of him if you would prefer?’
‘Please, do not trouble yourself.’
He studied my face. ‘Amaterasu, you need not hide your disappointment. Jomei is discreet but we are good friends.’
My cheeks burned at the thought of them talking about me. Akiko placed two glasses and a sake bottle on our table. ‘Here, let me serve you. Please tell Sato that I am fine.’
He watched me pour the drinks. I think my hands did not shake. ‘I am glad, Amaterasu. I would not like you to be sad.’ I offered him a cigarette but he declined. ‘Jomei is my friend and so I don’t say this easily, but he is not a serious man when it comes to women.’ He took a drink. ‘Perhaps his marriage will change all that.’ My face must have betrayed my shock. Kenzo looked abashed. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you knew?’
I lifted my hand as if the news were nothing. ‘When?’
‘A few weeks ago. A daughter of a surgeon at the hospital.’ I did the calculations: his gift of the key must have coincided with the start of their courtship. Had his plan been to keep me as some unofficial mistress? For how long? Karin’s pregnancy must have caused him to weigh up the dangers. He couldn’t risk the same predicament with me.
‘Forgive me, Amaterasu. You should not have heard that from me.’ He seemed to wrestle with something, and almost as if in confession, he said, ‘I know how charming Jomei can seem but I don’t think he would have made you happy.’ I drank to this and he moved a little closer. ‘Sometimes it is easy to overlook what will make you happy.’ He took hold of my hand. ‘Perhaps you need to open your eyes, Amaterasu, to other possibilities, ones that have been there from the start.’ He smiled and for the first time I paid proper attention to Kenzo Takahashi. And he held my wounded heart softly in his hands.
We married a month later. Neither of us wanted to wait. He wanted me to invite Mother to the ceremony but I would not. I had expected objections or tears when I told her but she shrugged off any hurt or anger. I needed to leave the past behind. I could not take her with me. I paid her off with cash saved from my earnings. I told her there would be more payments if she left me alone. Her voice was low as she looked at the box of money on her lap. ‘I did the best for you, Amaterasu.’ She shook her head, resigned maybe. ‘I did what I could.’
‘I was a child, Mother.’
‘And look at you now. The bride of a respected engineer. You have me to thank for that.’
The Wind
Kaze: The wind as well as the rain has been more than a mere natural phenomenon with the Japanese. There was an ancient belief that the wind was caused by the comings and goings of invisible gods. With ancient people, therefore, all winds except ill and nasty winds were literally kamikaze (divine winds).
Hideo ran his finger down his glass and used the condensation to draw a circle on the wooden bar. Two eyes and a mouth. A smiling face. He glanced up and we looked at each other across the divides of time. I was the past; he was the future. By tomorrow night, he would be on a plane to Nagasaki. We had so few hours left to glue dead leaves to an infected family tree. What could I tell him? What parts of Sato’s letters should I reveal? In his one from 1971, the kanji and hiragana had been whispery across the page, the writing of an ill man. Sato wrote he had hoped that the older he grew the more certain he would become of his life, the choices made, the mistakes, the few small triumphs. He had assumed they would all solidify into some kinder version of the past. Old age had tormented him with a harsher understanding. The years had made the pain of regret grow not lessen.
Who knew my body would rail so much against the dying of the light? Now I think I am nearing my destination, I remain plagued by this thought that I should have fought harder for you, Yuko. Or maybe I should have never gone near you. Did you think of me in those final seconds with love, or anger, or at all? Increasingly, I play a dark fantasy game in the hours when my medication cannot kill the pain. I try to rewrite our last meeting together so that you did not leave for Urakami Cathedral that day. I ask myself what I would have said to have kept you from going. I had been ruled by the orders of your mother for one final, catastrophic time. Together we put you in the path of pikadon. Our love for you drove you to the cathedral. How has she lived with this knowledge all these years?
I will confess that I have, more than once, thought about ending my life. Such an act seemed not an indulgence but the only honourable step to take. What stopped me? An injured boy we brought into our home called Hideo. He was reason to continue. He was reason to fight to be a better man. Was I wrong for wanting all those years ago to believe that the scarred child we found in the orphanage was your son? We had expected his memory to come back and when it did not I began to give him the small facts I did know. Natsu warned me against giving him a label. What good was it being Hideo Watanabe? she asked. But I had wanted to give him a sense of self, of history, a line of ancestors from which to draw. His face can tell nothing other than that day of August 9, 1945. I wanted to give him more than one day. Was that cruel of me? And maybe, just maybe, I am right. Amaterasu will know whether he is your son. Maybe it is not too late to find her. Can I let her near my boy? Will this be my last act of contrition?
Sato would have been too ill to look for Kenzo and me anew. No, Natsu had led the search. She had been the most selfless of all of us. That is why she had written the introductory letter. The lies, the tangled affairs, the hurt and losses; in the end, none of them mattered. She was concerned with only one element of our shared past: Hideo. In that dark bar, I smiled at her son, the pikadon boy. Was this my grandson? Or had my Hideo always been among the 75,000 dead?
I reached for his hand and caressed his scars. ‘Tell me, if you can. What do you remember about that last morning?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think it will help.’
I squeezed his fingers. ‘Try.’
He nodded but he could not look at me as he spoke. ‘I was playing with some other children. We liked to use our magnifying glasses to set alight weeds or ants and we were waiting for the sun to burn through the clouds. Teachers were working in the rice paddy or on the school air-raid shelters. I don’t remember the sound of an aircraft above but suddenly someone shouted to run to the shelter. I ran as fast as I could, my friends were behind me. I managed to reach the shelter when some force propelled me forward to the back wall. I blacked out, I don’t know for how long, and awoke in the darkness. I called out for my friends but they did not reply. As I crawled my way to the entrance, creatures appeared out of the gloom. They must have been human beings but they had no skin. They could not speak. They just made a terrible croaking noise. I was too scared to stay in the shelter with them.
‘Outside the sky was purple. I looked for my friends, for the teachers, but they were gone. More people were heading to the shelter, naked, moaning, their torsos bloated. I ran away from them. I did not want to hear their cries. In the playground, the sandbox was full of bodies and the school was on fire. All I could hear was the blaze. I had never realised how loud fire is. Beneath the roar, I heard another noise, a voice in the fire, crying out for help. I knew I had to be brave. I can’t remember how I got into the school, how I found her, but I did. A girl was cowering under a desk. I must have told her to come with me but she wouldn’t move. Perhaps I begged her as the fire came closer, but she just cried out for her mother. I couldn’t make her come with me, so I left her. I don’t remember flames on my skin.’ He held up his hand. ‘But there must have been contact. My next memory is being in a hospital.’ He stopped for a moment, his voice unsteady. ‘The school had nearly 1,600 students before pikadon, three hundred survived. You heard such terrible tales in the months that followed, orphans foraging for food, searching for their parents’ cremated ashes in the ground, the injuries that would not heal, the suicides. Children killing themselves. Can you imagine?’ He took a drink. ‘People feel sorry
for me . . . but I’m the lucky one.’
He had described exactly the scene that had confronted me at Yamazato school. ‘I remember a school building on fire. You must have been rescued by then, taken away. It is a miracle you survived. Truly.’
‘The air-raid shelter saved me. Not God.’
Why could I not accept my own miracle of a grandson returned from the dead? Why could I not hold him to me and say, yes, I believe you now. I know I didn’t deserve such joy. Was this why I hesitated? Guilt? If he knew what I had done, who I was, how could he not push me away? How could I bear that ending? And yet I couldn’t leave us in this limbo. He needed to know one way or the other. I scrabbled for confirmation again.
‘Do you remember the question I asked you when you first came to my door the first morning?’ He cocked his head. ‘About what we saw in the garden that last day?’ I waited, hopeful, but he could only shake his head, apologise. I checked the clock behind the bar. His train was due. Next to the clock postcards from around the world had been pinned alongside a rainbow of foreign banknotes. I even spotted a one thousand yen among the francs, sterling and Deutschmarks. As I looked at that crumpled piece of paper, I knew there was one way to resolve who this man truly was.
‘Hideo, I know you’ve been waiting for me to tell you whether you are my grandson. Thank you for your patience. But before I answer, I have one final request. I’m afraid it’s rather a big one.’
A Female Medium
Itako: These women are divinely inspired and supernaturally possessed. They are supposed to be able to bring forth messages of ancestors to their descendants, mediate between the spirits of the dead and living persons, and divine the fate of a family or an individual. Before these women become independent practitioners, they live with experienced masters of these magic acts.
An overlay of maple trees hung above our heads as we travelled in a taxi from the airport to the city. They must have looked glorious in summer, a lime covering of sunspots and dazzled leaves, but that day the stripped branches bounced above the road in eddies of air. I lowered the window to hear them creak in the wind but the car’s engine masked their aria. The low sun lit the underside of birds’ wings on the dive. I breathed in the air of Japan. Like no other. So ripe with possibility. So cleansing. How I had missed it. Hideo was sitting next to the driver and was wearing beige trousers and a matching sweater. I was disguised as an old woman, navy-blue crinoline pants, synthetic purple jacket, floral scarf. We drove past the outskirts of Nagasaki toward its beating heart and I clutched the door handle to steady myself as the streets rolled by.
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding Page 21
