A ghostly wind howls through the rafters above their heads. The brothel seems to gasp, and the wind rushes through the window. Hana opens her eyes and stares into the darkness. A black shape stands by the door. For a long time, it doesn’t move. The crickets have stopped chirping, and the mice seem to have frozen mid-step. The intruder’s shallow breaths fill the void left by their silence.
He takes a step towards her, and she clutches the blanket tighter. He takes another step and before she can stop herself, she sits up and backs away from him, cowering in the far corner.
‘Do not be afraid,’ he whispers. ‘It’s me.’
Hana instantly recognises the voice. She shakes her head violently. He pauses in front of the window. Faint starlight streams across his face. Morimoto has returned.
‘It’s me,’ he repeats, kneeling in front of her. ‘I finally made it back for you.’
He touches her trembling knee, and the warmth from his fingertips sends a shock of electricity through her skin. She shrinks away from him, still shaking her head in horror at his return. He is the monster that invades her dreams as she relives her abduction and imprisonment. She has promised herself every morning that if she ever lays eyes on Morimoto again, she will stab him in the heart – or die trying.
Now the moment is upon her, yet her courage falters. She cannot keep herself from trembling. She wishes she’d simply vanish. When he reaches his other hand towards her, she has to bite her tongue to stifle a scream.
‘I’ve come back for you,’ he says, wrapping one hand around her wrist and pulling her towards him.
His tone confuses her. He sounds as though he thinks she should be happy to see him. She kicks and struggles against his grip, but soon he is on top of her, crushing her on the bare floor.
‘Why are you fighting me?’ he asks, not bothering to keep his voice at a whisper. If Keiko is awake, she will have heard him. ‘Don’t you understand? I came back for you.’
His face hovers above her, cloaked in shadow, and she fills in the black void with the man in her memory. The one who raped her first and called it a kindness, before condemning her to this unimaginable life. Not life, but purgatory in the underworld. Morimoto is Gangnim, the death god, reaper of souls, and he has come to claim hers.
He unbuckles his belt. Hana squirms beneath him, and he fumbles with the buttons of his trousers. She presses against his chest with the heels of her palms, heaving him upwards, and he nearly falls off her. He quickly regains his balance and punches her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. She doubles over, choking for breath.
‘Don’t make me do that,’ he says, shoving his trousers down to his knees.
‘I’ll scream,’ Hana manages through painful breaths. ‘And if the night guard finds you up here, you will be punished.’
Morimoto forces her to the floor, climbing on top of her once more. His face hovers above hers, their noses nearly touching.
‘I am the night guard,’ he says.
Afterwards, Morimoto lies next to her. Hana turns her back to him so he cannot see her cry. Countless men have used her since she arrived at the brothel – more than fifteen that first day alone. She hates them all. Their lust disgusts her. Their fear of death and of the emperor’s jubilant war sickens her. She wishes for each one to die a slow, painful death and be forced to suffer in his afterlife. But the hate she feels towards Morimoto outstrips any she has felt thus far. It consumes her entire being, paralysing her, and she can do nothing to release the force of her growing wrath but cry silent, pitiful tears.
His breathing slows, and she thinks he has fallen asleep. She wipes her face with a corner of the ragged blanket. The crickets have begun to sing again, and the mice scurry through the crawl spaces of the flimsy clapboard brothel. Her shoulders sag. She has no control over Morimoto’s whims or desires. If he wishes to visit her in the middle of the night, he can do so. If he wishes to beat her senseless every time he comes, he can do that, too. She has no dominion over her own body.
Her thoughts drift to the well behind the vegetable garden. If Hana falls head first, she might knock herself unconscious before drowning in the well’s dark depths. She sees herself hurrying down the brothel’s staircase, breaking through the glass in the kitchen window, running across the yard before Corporal Morimoto can rush downstairs to stop her, and then she sees the black water greeting her broken, unconscious face. This is within her power to do. This is how she can regain control of her own body.
Hana rises to her feet. She shivers with the sudden loss of Morimoto’s heat. He turns over, and she waits until his breaths resume the slow rhythm of sleep. The well looms in her mind. If she is lucky, it will be a quick, painless death, and she will never have to endure his touch again. When she is certain he is asleep, she steps over his naked body and heads towards the door. The floorboards creak beneath her feet, the noise of each step too loud for the quiet of the night. She is nearly at the door when she hears someone speak.
Wake up, daughter. Prickles ripple down her limbs. It’s her mother’s voice. She sounds so near. Hana closes her eyes, listening for her mother to speak once more.
It’s time, her mother says, and suddenly Hana can see her. She is home, and her mother is beside her, urging her to awaken from a deep slumber. Hana feels her mother’s hand gently shaking her arm, until finally she opens her eyes. The memory feels so real as Hana stands in the small room deciding between life in the brothel and the freedom waiting for her at the bottom of a well.
Come, her mother says, and Hana loses herself in the memory, a young girl, eleven years old.
The wind whirls through the cracks in the brothel’s rafters, and Hana remembers the shaman twirling on the shore, white ribbons dancing on the sea wind, and her sister’s hand held tightly in her own. Hana promised they would dive together one day. She felt it as a certainty. There was no question in her heart that she would one day stand on the shore watching her sister’s own ceremony as a fully-fledged haenyeo. The image of her sister standing tall in the early dawn light sends a jolt of warmth through Hana’s veins. She is suddenly desperate to see the ceremony, to watch it happen with her own eyes. There is nothing she wants more in that moment than to see her little sister, Emiko, join the haenyeo. Hana returns to Morimoto’s side. As she lies down, she decides that if she must die, then she will die trying to get home, not flinging herself down a well. She lies awake all night, imagining her escape.
Over the next few weeks, Morimoto visits Hana’s room each night he is on duty. She tries to resist him at first, but he easily overpowers her each time, leaving a parting reminder on her body before he leaves. The last time she resists, he nearly chokes her to death. After that Hana stops fighting. Morimoto will come and go as he pleases. There is nothing she can do about it.
With each visit, he grows more and more bold, speaking to her as though she is his lover and not his captive. It is as though her acceptance of her powerless situation has soothed him, making him less volatile towards her. And soon, he begins to speak of his discontent with the war.
‘The emperor has sentenced his soldiers to death. The Americans are defeating us in the South Pacific. No one knows if he is even aware of the losses we have suffered.’
Morimoto often speaks harshly as he stands at attention, waiting for Hana to finish undressing him. His voice is low, but never a whisper, and Hana often wonders if the other girls listen to him through the walls or whether they block him out so they can sleep. They never mention his late-night visits. It is as though nothing that happens in their rooms, unless blood is spilled, can be spoken about.
‘I have to get out of Manchuria. I refuse to die for a doomed cause. Not for the emperor or anyone else.’
It is an odd way for a Japanese soldier to speak. Most of the soldiers she encounters worship the emperor as though he is a true god. They gladly lay their lives at his feet to shed their blood as the deity wishes. Only a few ever speak against the emperor, and those men are usually touched
with mental instability. They have seen slaughter first-hand and committed atrocities at the front lines, breaking something in their minds. Hana begins to believe Morimoto is among those psychologically broken soldiers.
‘I’ll take you with me,’ Morimoto says one night. When he speaks of leaving Manchuria, Hana reminds herself that his talk of leaving may be a lure to get her to fall for him in some way, to trust him, or something else his deranged mind has devised. Her disgust for him is always present, but her desire to return home exceeds her hatred, so still she listens.
‘We can leave this place together. Escape to Mongolia. I know people there. I have connections.’ He touches her thigh, the palm of his hand unwelcome on her skin. ‘What do you think? Do you want to come with me?’
Hana remains silent. This is the first time he has asked what she wants. He might be tricking her. If she says she does want to leave the brothel, he could send her to solitary confinement for planning to escape, but if she says she doesn’t, he may beat her for rejecting his proposal. There is no right answer.
‘Did you hear me?’ he asks, his voice too loud in the darkness.
His hand grips her arm, and she can feel him daring her to upset him.
‘If it pleases you,’ she whispers.
His hand relaxes, slides down her arm, caressing her skin.
‘Being with you pleases me,’ he says, and kisses her, deep and probing.
Hana holds her breath when he kisses her or touches her. She often holds her breath so long that she nearly faints. Sometimes, she counts to see how high she can reach before she is forced to take in air. Her highest count so far is one hundred and fifty-two. Tonight she has counted to eighty-four when he finally climaxes and rolls off her. As he dresses, she looks past him, imagining the myriad escape plots she has planned if he really does free her from this brothel.
‘Don’t go,’ Keiko says as they kneel in the yard washing their used condoms.
They have finished servicing the soldiers and are now tending to the only barrier they have between the men and the threats of pregnancy and disease. Hana hates touching them. Even though the soldiers are gone for the night, it is like they are still around, like they have left a part of themselves behind so that she won’t forget that they will be back in the morning. They always come back – like she can possibly forget.
Hana concentrates on the sudsy water, rinsing the used condoms as quickly as she can.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Hana replies.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Keiko says, reaching out and holding on to Hana’s forearm. ‘And don’t leave me alone. You can’t trust him. He’s like all the rest. They’ll say anything to get what they want from you. They thrive on love affairs, they make you believe they want to help you to escape so you will hand them your heart. For what? A false promise. You’ll lose your leg … or more.’
Hana gently pulls her forearm out of Keiko’s now-tightened grip. She returns to rinsing the condoms. ‘I never listen to what any of them have to say.’
Keiko’s sharp eyes narrow. ‘Not even Corporal Morimoto?’
Hana is taken aback to hear his name on Keiko’s lips. They have never spoken about his nightly visits. She looks at Keiko and tries to see what she is feeling. Is it fear or anger or something more sinister … can she be jealous that a soldier like Morimoto chooses to visit Hana instead of her? Hana keeps silent, uncertain what to say or even to feel.
‘Learn from my mistake: never trust a man. Especially one in this place.’ Keiko gathers the condoms from her basin and dumps the murky water into the dirt. Without a word, she marches back inside.
Is Hana foolish for believing, even for a moment, that Morimoto is not a liar? That he isn’t leading her into a trap just to take pleasure in her punishment? Or that he isn’t merely a madman, leading them both to their deaths?
Hana fixes her gaze on the clear midnight sky. Tonight is the night. She is standing on her tiptoes, pulling herself up by the bars of her prison cell, so that she can peer over the window’s high ledge. The bars are rusty and scrape the skin on her palms as she grips them tight, lifting herself higher. The Manchurian summer is quickly dissipating, and with it, a cool breeze brushes against her face. On her island it is still the rainy season, and the night air would be wet with humidity. The early September heat would be rising from the volcanic rocks that form her stone home, and she would be sweating from the exertion. The crisp scent from the grasslands of the Manchurian plains rushes through her nostrils, pushing the thought away.
She holds on a moment longer to catch a glimpse of the dirt path beyond the perimeter wall. It’s too dark to see it, but she knows it’s there. In daylight, she can make out the skinny path stamped into the earth by hundreds of soldiers’ boots. Hana releases the bars and sinks to the floor. She hugs her knees to her chest and stares at a neat line of tiny crescents, barely noticeable in the floorboard closest to the wall. Her fingertips count each mark, painstakingly pressed into the worn wood … twenty-four … forty-eight … eighty-three. She presses her thumbnail into the floorboard to mark one more day turned into night. Eighty-four days. Her fingers trace over the evidence of her incarceration as her mind drifts towards the door and who lies beyond it. Hana listens for the noises of the brothel, but they, too, have been silenced. Or perhaps it’s the looming decision that seems to mute the familiar din from her ears as though she is submerged beneath a great ocean with only the pressure of the water sounding against her eardrums.
Footsteps interrupt her thoughts. Morimoto is downstairs, preparing to leave. Hana’s heartbeat quickens. He said he’d end his shift five minutes early and walk down the dirt path without turning his key in the dead bolt, five whole minutes before the next night guard would arrive to take his place, so that Hana could slip out and be free.
He is like a conquering king and has finally offered Hana terms: follow him through the unlocked door and into his arms. His terms are a second kind of death.
Sitting beneath the window, staring at the bedroom door, Hana hears him again as he moves through the common rooms below. She tiptoes to the door and slowly opens it. Silence greets her in the hallway. The other girls usually sleep like the dead, but she must still take care not to awaken them. Edging her feet around the boards that creak, Hana makes her way to the landing and listens to his boots go out the side door. The hinges squeal shut and the doorknob is released. Hana leans over the railing, straining her ears to hear the familiar slide of the key into the lock, the turning of the dead bolt as it shrieks into place, and the silence that follows. But there is nothing, except whistling. Hana listens to his song as it slowly fades away.
She has less than five minutes before the next soldier arrives to take Morimoto’s place as the night guard. Hana is tormented with indecision. If they find her out of her room, they will punish her with ten lashes of the whip and then throw her into solitary confinement. But if they realise she is trying to escape, they will saw off one of her legs. There is no judge or jury, just a group of men to hold her down. Her fear of getting caught does not outweigh the memories that plague her, memories of home. Do her parents miss her? Are they searching for her?
Her feet are cold from standing barefoot on the landing. How much time has passed? A minute? Two? Hana creeps back inside her room. Hidden in a hollowed-out cavity underneath the sweat-stained mat is everything valuable she has acquired in her captivity, wrapped carefully in a square of cloth: coins tossed to her by grateful young men, a gold necklace left by a commander, a ring left by a homesick private, a silver hair comb left by another faceless, nameless soldier. These are the only things of worth she has, and yet they are not enough to get her very far on her own.
‘Don’t you want me to take you away from this place?’ he asked before he left her for the night. Confidence radiated from him like the sun’s heat. She only had to nod to satisfy his ego. One slight motion to send him contentedly on his way.
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t make her
self do it. Her mind screamed at her to simply nod so that he would leave, but she stood frozen, staring back at him, her distaste threatening to appear on her face. He began to look confused. His confidence faltered, and his eyebrows drew together.
‘What’s the matter, my little Sakura? Don’t you trust me?’ His grip on her arms began to tighten.
When his grip was threatening to bruise, she blinked, breaking the tension between them. Then she bowed her head in a submissive nod.
‘Who am I not to trust you?’ she said, her voice so low she wondered if she had actually spoken.
He released her arms, satisfied with himself once more, and left her alone in her room.
Holding her meagre belongings, recalling his confident step as he marched from her room, Hana knows he is already out there, hiding beneath the bridge in the shadows of the night and waiting for her to come to him. He has no doubt she will do as he bids. She glances one last time at the darkness beyond the window, willing the universe to help her. Her mother’s voice, clear as if she were beside her, rings out: Look to the shore. If you see her, you are safe. She sees her sister standing on the shore … Emiko.
Hana clenches her jaw at the memory. Why would she think of that now? Her mother’s image fills her mind, followed by her sister’s and then her father’s. They are all with her now; their ghostly forms stand side by side in her tiny cell, as though waiting for her to make this decision: remain in this brothel and service the never-ending lines of soldiers or risk life and limb to escape with the man who brought her here. Their hollow eyes sparkle in the darkness. Make the decision, they seem to say. Hana takes a step away from them.
‘You’re not really here,’ she whispers. They only gaze back at her, unblinking phantoms. She squeezes her eyes shut. In her mind she sees them as they were before Morimoto captured her – before she became Sakura. She sees them on her island, living beside the sea when she was still Hana, a name she has not told anyone.
White Chrysanthemum Page 14
