‘What happened? Did you hit your head?’ her son asks, gazing down into her face.
He looks older than his sixty-one years when he crinkles his forehead like that. When he was a boy, Emi would smooth the wrinkles away with her hand and tell him he’d get old too fast if he kept worrying. She fights the urge to touch his face with her wrinkled palm now.
‘It was an accident. A girl in a rush, that’s all. Nothing to worry over. You look tired,’ she says.
‘I am. I had to go to work at four this morning so that I could extend my lunch to get you at the airport.’
He turns to one side and ushers her in front of him towards an awkward-looking boy standing slightly behind the crowd. Emi smiles and rushes towards her grandson with arms extended.
‘How you’ve grown, you’re taller than me!’
He blushes as she hugs him, pinning his arms by his sides in a long embrace. When she finally releases him, she has to look up slightly to see into his face.
‘I brought something for you.’ Emi reaches into her shopping bag to retrieve the box of chocolates.
‘Not now, Mother. Let’s get to the car first. I’m in one-hour parking.’
Her son leads her away, and her grandson follows without protest. Emi marvels at her grandson’s new-found self-control. A year ago, he would have thrown a tantrum if his father had interrupted his chance of receiving a gift. He was a miracle child, as her daughter-in-law was over forty when she finally conceived, and they spoiled him rotten. Emi had spent many sleepless nights worrying over how he would turn out, but looking at him now, her heart is content. He’s shy, obedient and kind. He’s carrying her suitcase for her, but also for his ageing father. He’s only twelve. What a difference just one year has made.
Emi follows her son to the car park, looking back at her grandson, marvelling at his maturity. She remembers her son at that age. He wasn’t as tall as her grandson. Perhaps it’s all the Western food he’s eating. She wonders if she shouldn’t have bought him sweets, but then decides a little chocolate never hurt a growing boy.
Emi remembers the first time she had chocolate. It was after her daughter was born. Her husband brought home a bar of chocolate and broke it into little squares for her and her son to eat. It was like eating the food of the gods. She never forgot that first bite. How it melted on her tongue. How she reached for a second square, and a third, before her husband could change his mind and take them away. But he didn’t. He just sat and watched her eat the chocolate. It was the first time she thought that perhaps he did care for her after all. It seemed as though it pleased him to see her enjoy the chocolates so much. She couldn’t understand how he didn’t eat a piece, when he clearly knew how delicious it tasted, but she didn’t comment. She never spoke to him if she could help it. That’s how their marriage lasted so long. It was loveless but survived because she always held her tongue.
‘Here we are,’ her son says, opening the door for her to get into the car.
She climbs into the passenger seat and, remembering the chocolates, reaches into her shopping bag to hand the box to her grandson. He grins when he sees it, tears off the cellophane wrapping, and opens the box as eagerly as she hoped. He pops one of the chocolate truffles into his mouth before blushing and shyly offering one to her.
‘No, no, they are all for you. I enjoy watching you eat them. Go on, have another one.’
Hana
Korea, Summer 1943
At first Hana doesn’t move. Her groin sears with a burning pain. She fears the wetness between her legs. Is she bleeding to death? Slowly, she sits up, but she is too afraid to look down to see what he did to her. She breathes through the pain, slowly letting air out through her nostrils.
When she has steadied her breath she looks down. First she sees the blood, but then she sees it is mixed with a thick fluid dripping out of her. It is this she feels, not blood. She isn’t dying.
She dabs between her legs with the handkerchief. Each touch against her skin awakens a new pain sensor in her mind. This is rape, just as her mother described it. Hana shuts her eyes, wishing she didn’t know, that this was a nightmare she would soon wake up from.
The door’s metal handle squeaks as it turns, and she quickly pulls up her cotton knickers and nylons. She forces her knees closed even though it hurts to do so and stands warily, waiting for another soldier to attack her.
‘Hurry up, we need this room,’ the soldier says, leading her back to the small cabin containing the rest of the girls and women.
Hana pushes through the inquisitive stares and makes her way to the very back of the cabin. She sinks to the floor, facing the wall so she won’t have to look at them. She feels the girls watching her, but she doesn’t care. The soldiers take two more girls with them when they leave, locking the door behind them.
Soon a murmur of concerned voices rises up among the women questioning what the soldiers are doing. Some of the voices are aimed directly at Hana, demanding to know what happened to her, but others are simply laments from the women who know what is happening and fear they are all destined for the same fate. A fist pounds on the door. The room falls silent.
Hana covers her face with her hands. She’s afraid the women will know what happened to her just by looking at her. She suddenly wants to cry. She holds her breath for as long as she can, focusing on nothing but the need to breathe and her will not to give in. When the urge to cry passes, she lets herself breathe again, gasping gulps of air.
The tender skin between her legs still burns from the assault. She does her best to move past the pain, but images of Morimoto’s naked legs and other parts of him she doesn’t want to recall invade her thoughts. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, pressing against her eyelids until white light flashes behind her fingers, blocking the images out. When her eyeballs feel near to exploding underneath the pressure of her fingertips, a girl whispers into Hana’s ear.
‘Where did they take you?’
Hana jerks and looks up. Her vision is at first blurry, and it takes a moment before she recognises the young girl from Jeju Island. She’s so slight, her dress falls loosely around her shoulders and waist. It hurts Hana’s head to imagine Morimoto, or any of the soldiers, doing to this young girl what he did to her.
‘Stay near the back,’ Hana warns. ‘Maybe if they don’t notice you, you’ll be safe.’
‘Won’t you tell me?’
‘It’s better if you never find out.’
The door opens before the girl can speak again. The two girls are returned to the cabin and the door shuts without the removal of any more. The overhead lights blink out, and they are left in darkness.
Like cattle, the girls begin to settle in for the journey, lying down and falling asleep. Sniffles and gentle sobs fill the room. Hana and the young girl lie close together; the girl links her arm through Hana’s.
‘That way you’ll wake if they come for me, and I’ll wake if they return for you.’
Her words touch Hana in their simplicity. She is taking control of her situation the only way she knows how, by making sure she at least knows when to be afraid. She doesn’t want to be asleep when the terrible things happen. She wants to see them coming, even though she knows she will be powerless against them when they do. They are all powerless here.
‘My name is Noriko, but my mother calls me SangSoo,’ the girl whispers into Hana’s hair. Her breath warms the nape of Hana’s neck.
She doesn’t reply. She tries, but she can’t speak, as though her lips are sealed shut to keep in the pain of what happened to her. SangSoo’s mother calls her by her true Korean name at home. Like so many Koreans forced to assimilate, SangSoo’s family speaks Korean in the privacy of their home, only speaking the required Japanese in public. Hana always thought she was lucky to have been named by a clever mother. In Korean, hana means ‘one’, or in her case ‘firstborn’, but in Japanese, hana also means ‘flower’. So Hana never has to change her name, in public or in private. Her younger sister is not
so lucky, and neither is SangSoo.
‘Goodnight, Big Sister.’
In the darkness, SangSoo’s voice could be her own little sister’s. Hana suddenly feels crushed beneath the weight of her captivity. Her sister is so far away. Each moment spent locked up on the ferry takes her even further. A small hand slides into hers, and Hana squeezes it tight.
Hana wakes with a start. It is still dark in the cabin, but a faint glow from beneath the door illuminates the sleeping shadows on the floor. She has no idea how long she has been asleep. Gently, she unhooks her arm from SangSoo’s and sits up. She needs to use the toilet but has no idea what to do. The urgency presses against her bladder and threatens to flow.
‘I need the toilet,’ she whispers to the room at large. At first no one answers. A few bodies turn and shift positions. When still no one answers, she repeats her statement a little louder.
‘Hush, stupid girl,’ comes a response in the darkness.
‘I’m sorry, I have to—’
‘I know, I heard you both times,’ the woman cuts her off. ‘Can’t you smell? We all have to use the toilet.’
Hana is taken aback by the woman’s harsh response. She inhales slowly. Nothing. She doesn’t smell anything. Is there something wrong with her nose?
‘I don’t smell anything.’
‘That’s because she smells like cologne. She can’t smell above the reek of a man,’ says a different voice in the darkness.
‘Yeah, I smell her, too. He must have poured the bottle over his head.’
Their words sting her, and her skin feels inflamed. Hana lifts the collar of her dress up to her nose and breathes in. She smells like him. He is in her clothes. She wants to rip them off her body and tear them to shreds, but his words echo in her head. Is that what you want, travelling for days and days on a train full of soldiers without a single piece of clothing to cover your beautiful body?
Instead of stripping his scent from her, Hana lets her bladder go, not caring if she smells like a toilet. SangSoo must have woken up when they were talking because she links her arm back through Hana’s without a word about the mess she has made of herself. Her silence comforts Hana, and she tightens her arm around SangSoo’s. They lie together, side by side in Hana’s sour wetness, and soon fall back asleep.
A loud thud against the metal door wakes everyone in the cabin with a start. A few girls yelp in surprise. The overhead lights flicker on, flooding them in a greenish glow. Four soldiers enter and three yank a girl each to her feet. Cries of resistance wash over the room but do nothing to sway the soldiers’ resolve. The last soldier looks at Hana and beelines towards her. He reaches down for her but then suddenly cringes backwards, covering his nose.
‘She pissed herself!’ he cries out to the other soldiers, and kicks her in disgust. ‘You Koreans are animals.’ His eyes fall on SangSoo. ‘You’ll have to do,’ he says, and grabs her wrist, yanking her over Hana.
‘She’s just a child,’ Hana pleads with the soldier.
SangSoo looks down at Hana with sorrowful eyes.
‘Don’t worry, Big Sister, I will be OK, just like you.’ Her voice is shaking yet brave. It breaks Hana’s heart.
‘I will take her place. I volunteer,’ Hana says, rising to her feet and meeting the soldier’s eyes.
The whole room watches the scene; not even a breath can be heard in the seconds that follow. It is as though they are all waiting for the sun to fall out of the sky and burn Hana to ash. She has stood up to a Japanese soldier. They all know better than to do that. Seconds stretch by as the tension from the stand-off thickens. Hana’s knees turn to rubber, and she fears they will betray her. Then, before she knows it, other girls, older girls, the women, are volunteering to take SangSoo’s place.
Their voices echo in the small space like a cacophony of seabirds, each one offering her body in the place of the child’s. A few of the stronger girls try to wrench SangSoo’s arm free and convince the soldier to take them, but he won’t budge. Without warning, he punches one of the women in the gut. She doubles over, panting for breath.
‘The next girl to open her mouth will get worse,’ he warns, wrenching SangSoo’s arm behind her as he marches her out of the cabin.
The metal door slams shut with such finality that the darkness that follows as they switch off the lights feels like a reckoning. Cries fill the darkness, soft and heartfelt, grieving for the little girl – chosen because Hana soiled herself.
The ferry docks on the mainland, and Hana can’t contain her worry. The soldier never returned SangSoo to the cabin. The other three girls came back one by one, but the youngest girl, the girl everyone volunteered for, was still missing. When the soldiers arrive and order everyone out of the cabin, Hana is desperate to know what has happened to her. But she keeps her mouth shut.
With heavy feet, Hana follows the others as they disembark the ferry and are led towards a motorcade of military trucks. Hana’s eyes scan the faces of the girls she passes, hoping to find SangSoo’s familiar terrified brown eyes. The trucks take them a short distance to a railway station, where Hana is placed into a train compartment with another girl. Newspaper has been taped over the glass and then painted black so they can’t see out. Hana asks her in whispers if she has seen SangSoo and describes the young girl. The other girl shakes her head. She wasn’t in Hana’s cabin on the ferry. She was in one with forty other girls who were supposed to be going to Tokyo to work in a uniform factory. For some reason she has been separated from that group and stuck on this train with Hana. She doesn’t know why.
She is Hana’s age, perhaps only a year or so older, and attractive, what her mother would have called moon-faced, with white skin and pink lips. Her teeth are mostly straight, not protruding, and her eyes are larger than the average Korean’s. All the boys in Hana’s village would have fallen in love with her.
‘Did they take you from the cabin?’ Hana asks in a quiet voice.
‘No. They didn’t take anyone. Why, did they take you from yours?’ The girl looks alarmed.
‘Yes, and my friend, the little girl, SangSoo. But they never brought her back.’
‘Why did they take you?’ she asks warily. Her eyes dart about the train compartment as though someone might be listening.
Hana can’t say the word aloud. It is one small word, and certainly this girl, older than her, would know what it means. Still, she can’t muster the courage to say it. Hana turns away from her and sinks back into the seat. She sits there worrying about SangSoo, wishing she hadn’t soiled herself, yet simultaneously relieved that she did – and hating herself for the thought.
The train edges out of the station with a slow start, and the compartment door slides open. Two soldiers enter, one dragging SangSoo in with him. Hana immediately moves over so she can sit next to her.
SangSoo’s face is pale, and her bottom lip is swollen. A thin line of dried blood has crusted along one edge. Her neck is bruised, and she can’t stop shivering. Her dress is torn and fastened together with pins where the buttons should be. Hana leans her shoulder gently against SangSoo’s, and the young girl emits a pitiful sob. She clasps SangSoo’s hand in hers without a word. She survived, Hana thinks, but her happiness is muted by the state of the poor girl.
One of the soldiers sits across from them, next to the other girl. The other soldier steps over Hana’s legs and squeezes next to her beside the window. She is too afraid to look at the man’s face, but as the train gains speed and begins to glide over the tracks, she knows exactly who he is. She recognises his cologne. She stiffens at the sudden realisation and glances at his hand. Morimoto fingers the hem of her dress, playing with it like a cat toying with a trapped mouse, flicking its tail and blocking its escape without ever directly looking at its prey.
Throughout the journey, he smokes cigarettes non-stop, tobacco smoke filling their compartment. His fingertips constantly graze the hem of her skirt, taunting her, but he doesn’t look at her. Her heart thuds in her chest, erratic beats that m
ake her strain for breath. She does her best not to move, except when his fingers come too close and threaten to touch her skin, and then she very slowly edges her leg away from him.
The train travels through the night, and soon everyone in the small compartment dozes off, except Hana. Anger and fear swarm through her body, radiating in hot waves towards the soldier beside her. He stole her from her seaside home, from everything she knows and loves, and then raped her. All she can think about is murdering him in his sleep. The more time passes by, the more she cannot get the thought out of her head. Slowly, she turns to face him. Did he rape SangSoo, too? Hana looks at the other soldier sitting across from her. Did they both hurt her?
Hana turns back to Morimoto. His chest rises with each deep intake of breath, and Hana imagines his heart beating beneath the buttons of his uniform. At his waist, she spies a pistol safely tucked in its holster. Can she retrieve it without waking him? Hana stares at the black pistol barely visible in the leather holster. She imagines what it might feel like in her hands, aiming it at his heart. Will it be heavy? Does she merely have to pull the trigger or is there something more technical she has to do first? Could she really shoot him? No, she thinks, finally, but she could stab him. The thought feels right, comforting somehow.
A knife she knows how to wield. She dived with one every day, cutting abalone from the reef beds, harvesting seaweed, and even prising open the odd oyster left behind by the Japanese oyster boats. She would carve out his heart as if it were a pearl tucked deep inside an oyster’s flesh. The thought sends trickles up her spine, fingers of revenge dancing on her vertebrae. Is this what courage feels like? She imagines stabbing him in the chest, the surprise on his face. Her anger courses through her veins. And then, she thinks, she and SangSoo can flee the compartment, hide on the train or jump from an open window, and escape. Hana wishes she had a knife to make it all come true.
Morimoto shifts in his sleep, startling her. Hana jerks, accidentally nudging SangSoo, asleep beside her. Struck by the chill of her skin, Hana notices SangSoo has stopped shivering. Hana places the flat of her palm on the girl’s forehead. It is cool to the touch. Her lips are flesh-coloured. Stifling the rising panic in her gut, Hana bends her head forward, placing her ear in front of SangSoo’s mouth to listen for breath. Nothing.
White Chrysanthemum Page 5
