by Karin Tanabe
“Yes, it’s in the chapel,” Christian said, reaching for both her hands and holding her still.
“Is the surprise that you’re going to try to convert me?” Emi said, walking in.
She let Christian lead her to the back of the chapel, where he started to open a little door to a storage closet. He hesitated, put one hand over her eyes, then opened the door wide. “It’s an empty chapel with an out-of-tune—”
“Piano!” Emi exclaimed, pulling his hand away. “I was hoping it would be.”
“You knew it would be,” he said, opening the dusty black lid. “But thank you for acting surprised.”
She pushed past him and sat down on the bench, leaning over and placing the side of her face on the keys. “How did you find out it was here?” She had played so many pianos in her life, but she was as excited to play this cheap one as she had been to play antique Steinways in Austria.
“I asked O’Rourke if there was a piano at camp and he laughed at me and asked why I hadn’t been to church yet. I guess it’s played on Sundays and then rolled back in this closet. Sorry I didn’t figure that out before, but I did get permission to come in here this evening. I told him it was so I could play, so let’s hope he doesn’t ask me to give a recital or anything.”
Emi ran her fingers across the keys and played a few chords.
“Is it okay?” Christian asked, sitting down next to her.
“It’s very out of tune, and it’s not the grandest piano I’ve ever played, but it’s perfect.” She hummed a few bars, then launched into a well-known Mozart tune. After a few chords she stopped and said, “That doesn’t feel right. Not when you went to all this trouble. I’ll play my very favorite for you.” Her favorite. The song Leo always asked for. She didn’t know if it was she who loved it or if it was her favorite because it reminded her of him.
She put her fingers on the keys and then started to laugh, lifting them again.
“It’s funny, I haven’t played the piano in over a year. I feel like I’m breaking a law.”
“Who cares if we are,” said Christian, pushing on one of the keys.
Emi moved his hand away and began the familiar piece, much slower and more emotional than the Mozart. She felt Christian’s eyes on her as her thin fingers stepped easily across the keys. When she was finished, she rested her hands in her lap, her eyes alight. “Chopin, Opus Ten, Étude number three,” she said, before he could ask. “It’s been my favorite for a long time. It’s not very hard to play, but difficult to perfect, so that’s why I keep playing it. Plus, everyone seems to like it.” The Hartmanns, at least, did.
“Play it again,” Christian said, placing her hands back on the keys.
“The same one?” said Emi grinning up at him.
“Yes, please.”
“There’s orange dust everywhere,” she said, blowing on the keys. “You can really see it on the black keys, like sand between someone’s teeth. You can’t escape it. Even in here.” She wiped some off with her shirt hem and launched into the étude again, elbowing Christian out of her way. He stood up and watched her from above, and when she was done, she exhaled happily. Emi played five more pieces and finished with a jazz song by Cole Porter. As soon as she had stopped playing, Christian lifted her up from the bench and held her close to him, humming the tune as they started to sway.
“Isn’t it illegal to dance in church?” asked Emi, looking around and tipping her head back.
“No,” said Christian laughing. “What gave you that idea?”
“I don’t know. Churches always seemed quite stiff to me.”
She rested her cheek against his shoulder as he hummed “I Get a Kick out of You,” which she’d just played.
“If you had to fight for one side, who would you fight for?” Emi asked as he held her tight, starting the song over again, adding the words in.
“The Americans, of course,” said Christian, looking into her eyes. “I’m American.”
“The Americans? Would you?” she said surprised. “You’d fly over Germany and drop bombs on your relatives? Or fly over Japan and drop them on mine?”
“I never thought of it that way,” he said, slowly. “That’s depressing.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“I just feel more American. I feel ninety-nine percent American. It’s only recently, with what’s happened to my family, that the one percent slipped away. I’m angry at this country now, at the government, at O’Rourke. All this,” Christian said, looking around the simple chapel, “is an awful thing to do to innocent people.”
Emi was about to answer when they heard a loud bang behind them. They turned around and looked, paranoia growing between them, but there was no one there.
“It must be outside,” said Christian, “but let’s leave anyway. We’re probably pushing our luck with the time.” They slipped out the back and, clasping hands, ran toward the orchard out of instinct.
Safely hidden in the trees, Emi collapsed to the ground. “Today was very memorable,” she said, looking up at Christian and smiling. “Thank you for that surprise. For a few moments I forgot where we were.”
He fell to the ground, too, rather clumsily and took Emi’s hand. “It scares me how much I like you,” he said. “I know I’m not supposed to say things like that, and I never have before, but caution seems like a ridiculous line to follow in here.”
“I’m glad you like me,” she said happily. She stretched out her legs so her feet were resting in his lap.
“Oh,” he said laughing. “You’re glad I like you? There’s nothing there on your end?”
“You’re not bad,” she said, before she sat up and kissed him gently on the mouth.
“Kiss me again,” said Christian, pulling her close to him.
When he let her go, he looked at her face, which she knew was more freckled from the sun than when he’d first met her, and said, “I know you think I’m a bit of a dumb kid. Seventeen. Wisconsin. All that.”
“I’ve never been to Wisconsin,” she said smiling.
“It’s not Austria.”
“Let’s not talk about Austria,” she replied.
“All I mean,” said Christian, reaching for her hand, “is that despite my age, and where I’m from, and this dopey wide-eyed look that I really can’t get rid of. It’s genetic,” he said, smiling and pointing to his big blue eyes. “Despite all that, I really like you. I’ve kissed other girls . . .” he said. “But it always felt a little out of expectation. That I should like a certain girl, because she was pretty, or interesting, or liked me. But this—you—it’s very different.”
“Because you’re imprisoned,” said Emi laughing. “Less choice.”
“I’ll have you know that I am a highly desired member of the German school’s class of 1944,” Christian said, laughing at himself. He plucked the pebbles in the dirt and threw them into the darkness, holding on to Emi with his other hand.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Emi, lying back on her hands.
“Don’t lie down,” said Christian, reaching for her. “Let’s weave deeper through the trees.”
“Weave?” she said standing. “And then do what?”
“I don’t know,” said Christian. “Eat oranges.”
“Eat oranges,” she repeated slowly, and she let herself be pulled gently inside the rows of trees. They walked back a few feet, as quietly as two excited people could do, and he kissed her as soon as they were partially hidden among the branches.
With that kiss, she knew his attempts at restraint were gone and so were hers. He put his hands under her shirt, feeling the muscles, the bones in her back, slowly and respectfully, but she was already pulling at his shirttail, trying to untuck it.
Suddenly, knowing what they were about to do, she was thinking about the last person to kiss her, to touch her in that way. Her body went cold from the memory. It wasn’t Leo. That boy, he had been the opposite of Leo. She stopped kissing Christian as she tried to push the image of what had h
appened in Vienna back into the depths of her mind. If she died in Japan, or en route to Japan, at least the last person she’d kissed would be someone she cared for.
Christian laid his shirt on the ground and Emi on top of it, asking too many times if she was comfortable.
She wasn’t comfortable, but she was comfortable with him.
“Even though nothing is perfect,” she said as he kissed her neck, “everything is.”
“Because here it’s just us,” he said, his clothes off, resting on her, still breathless. “You can take some of the humanity away from people, but not all of it,” he said, holding her tightly.
Emi knew that her time with Christian was finite. But that limitation helped her get over her fear of imagining a future with him. Her future had already been promised to Leo Hartmann, and she and Christian, they could only exist in Crystal City.
* * *
Emi’s life was different after that night. She was locked in an internment camp but everything else seemed to have been unlocked again. Her heart, her physical being, was thriving.
She had slept with Christian, on the ground in the orchard of an internment camp. How crazy, she said to herself the morning after it had happened. How wild and crazy and wonderful.
And how fleeting, she thought as she walked to meet him in the orchard two weeks later. Just like everything in her life had been lately.
Emi kissed Christian after they had their clothes back on and rested against one of the trees, trying to position herself around the roots. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said, not looking at him. “My mother and I. We’re boarding the train to New York in the morning.” She’d wanted to say it days ago, but the words refused to travel from her mind to her lips. Now she was out of time. In less than twenty-four hours, she would be gone.
Christian didn’t move, didn’t bend his head to look at her, and she thought he’d misheard her, but when she peered up at him, she knew he hadn’t.
He sank down next to her. “How can you find out one day and leave the next? They can’t make you just disappear like that. You need more time.”
“I didn’t just find out today,” she admitted. “I found out a month ago. But I thought if I told you it would upset you. You knew I’d be leaving sometime, just as you will leave, but you didn’t need to know when.”
“I didn’t need to know, but maybe it would have been better,” he said, moving his hand away from her body.
“Perhaps,” she said, sure that it wouldn’t have been. “But then we would have spent the last few weeks focusing on me leaving instead of on us being right here. Present. Together.”
She could tell that Christian was trying to agree with her, trying to remain stoic, but it wasn’t his nature. He, she had learned early on, wore his heart on his sleeve.
“I should be your shoulder to cry on,” he said, pretending to dust off his old blue T-shirt. “But we both know that I’m too crazy about you to be that person.”
“Crazy good?” she said laughing.
“Crazy great,” he said smiling back. “But heartbroken, too.” Christian threw his body back in the dirt and let out a helpless cry, looking straight up at the never-ending Texas sky.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter if we get caught anymore,” said Emi after putting her hand over his mouth. “But don’t be broken. You only feel that way because you had nothing to do here but fall in love.”
“That’s not true,” he protested, wrapping his arms around her so tight that she had to wiggle out of his grip so she could breathe. “Not every young person in camp is falling in love out of boredom. This was different.”
Yes, she admitted to herself, it was different. It was, like he had said, something.
“It was—you are—very important to me,” she said, tracing around his sad blue eyes with her fingers. “And we will write. As much as our hands will let us. Maybe the letters will even be delivered. I know I’m going back to our family house in Tokyo. It’s in a neighborhood called Azabu. It’s a really nice place to live, full of houses with quite a bit of space, and shops selling housewares and things, a few noodle restaurants for when the men come home from work and little schools down one-way streets. Best of all, there isn’t any barbed wire. I’ll give you my address and you will give me your address in Germany. In Pforzheim. Do you know it?”
“Unfortunately,” he said, holding her hand so tightly that it was beginning to sweat. “I will write to you,” he promised. “But it doesn’t feel like enough.” He sat up, dusted off his pants, and said, “You don’t know what you’re returning to, and I definitely don’t know what Germany is going to be like, but whatever the circumstances,” said Christian, “I want to see you again. I have to.”
“How will we do that?” she asked, letting her body fold into his. “Because I don’t think I’ll be allowed to return.”
“Not here then. Somewhere else.”
Where, she wondered, would two people like them ever be welcome again?
“You’re a dreamer,” she said, kissing him. But wasn’t that always what her father said of her?
“Am I? I feel I’m a realist,” he said, his gaze growing more intense.
“Do you know where Japan is?” she asked, stretching her arms wide. “Across an ocean. And who knows how long the war will last? Or if America and Japan will ever have good relations again?”
“I don’t care about any of that,” said Christian. “All I know is that we will see each other again and it will be wonderful.”
“It’s wonderful now,” she said, taking his hands and wrapping his arms around her even more tightly. She’d been sure that every moment in the camps would be misery. But sometimes, the world surprised her.
“Okay, then,” she said, leaning against him and closing her eyes. “Please come and find me. Life is long. I hope.”
CHAPTER 13
CHRISTIAN LANGE
SEPTEMBER 1943
At 10 A.M. on August 30, Emi was gone. Christian swam in the pool and reached out under the water for her invisible hand, he went into the silent orchard, and every night he walked past her empty house on the Japanese side. Unlike most of the families in the camp, Emi and her mother had not shared with another family. Perhaps, thought Christian, they were given preferential treatment. The windows were open, the two stumpy cactuses planted outside still growing—it looked as though the Kato women were home, quietly living their imprisoned lives. Christian knew how he appeared, dawdling outside an empty house on the Japanese side every night, but he was long past caring. A week after she’d left, he walked up to the door and slipped inside.
The small house smelled like a hot day in Texas, and a hot day in Texas meant Emi. He ran his fingers over the thin walls—the paint raised in places, the brushstrokes apparent, as if applied as hastily as possible—and sat on one of the twin beds. One of them was hers. He saw a makeshift broom in the corner, abandoned.
At the pool the next day, Kurt kicked back on the pavement beside him, his skin dark from spending every afternoon outside, and said, “Don’t be upset. What did you expect to happen? She’s twenty-one, Japanese, far better off than even you, and she’s going back to a country being shredded by war. Just be happy you knew her. Think about me. What have I known since I’ve been here?”
Christian shrugged and turned his face up to the sky. He rolled to the side, grabbed his shoe, and dropped it on Kurt’s head because, with that comment, Kurt had really reminded him of Jack Walter from the Children’s Home. He missed Jack more than he had expected to.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?” asked Kurt, picking up the shoe and hurling it into the pool.
“And that was the one with the shoelace,” said Christian, watching it bob up and down in the water.
That night after roll call, he went to Emi’s house again, but this time, he heard a man’s voice call out to him as he walked up to the door.
“You miss her?” asked a middle-aged man standing in front of the house next door h
olding the same kind of rough broom as Emi’s.
“Who?” said Christian, not sure what else to say.
“Who!” said the neighbor, amused. “Emiko Kato, who else? You two weren’t very good at hiding. But it was nice to see at least one thing grow in this desolate place. Love between two young people.”
Christian smiled at the thought and started to open the door, but the man spoke up again.
“This is the last night you can come here,” he warned. “Another family is moving in tomorrow. So take your time tonight, but don’t come back.”
“Thank you,” said Christian, adding, “I’m Christian Lange.”
“I know who you are,” said the man, introducing himself as John Sasaki. “And I’m sorry for your mother and her baby. Terrible thing.”
“Does this side know about that, too?” Christian asked.
“Of course we know. The camp newspapers leave a lot to be desired, there are barely any books to read. What else is there to do but gossip? I think we all know everything. Even the sad things.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s being cut off from everything that’s the worst part, isn’t it?” said John. “I don’t know any of the current troop movements in Europe, and my son is fighting over there.”
“For the Americans?”
John frowned. “Of course. I’m American and so is he. Just like you are.”
“I’m sorry,” said Christian, embarrassed. “That was a stupid thing to say. I hope your son is okay.”
“That’s the one thing they would tell you in here,” said John, relaxing again. “That your son is dead.”
“I suppose so,” said Christian. He thanked John for the update on the house and opened the Katos’ door.
Once inside, Christian immediately noticed an envelope on the floor that had not been there the day before. He bent down to pick it up. It was addressed to Emi and was postmarked from Japan. Ignoring his qualms, Christian stuck his finger in the flap of the envelope and opened it. Like all the mail that came into the camp, it had been opened and resealed, but unlike the letters he’d received from Jack, this one bore none of the censors’ black marks. It was short and written in Japanese. Christian studied the characters, as Emi had taught him a few simple kanji, but he didn’t recognize any of the writing.
