by Tad Crawford
“Not the happiest thoughts,” I said.
“That was the good part.”
“What was the bad part?”
“Well … ” Tex looked down and cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I hardly know if I ought to say this, but somehow I want to. You know the way daydreams can be.”
“Yes?”
“Well, the cave is pitch black at night, but we know how to find things in the dark. While you sleep, I reach up on the ledge and take Tsukino-san’s knife. Then I rest my hand on your chest.”
“In the dream,” I said, not liking how easily this might have actually happened.
“I feel your heart beating, throbbing against my palm. There’s a place where a knife can slip through the ribs and right into the heart. I hold the knife over that place and wait. I hear your breath going in and out. I hear Tsukino-san’s breathing too, just a little distance from us. You know how dark the cave is. I can’t see at all, just feel and hear. I smell sulfur. Taste it in my mouth. It’s coming off the volcano or leaking out of the rock walls. I don’t have a thought in my mind. Then I press the knife down. I hear a little sound, like a pop, then gurgling. I don’t know if you bleed a lot. I run outside. I want to launch the raft and get away from here without you or him.”
I couldn’t answer when he finished. Tex seemed such a gentle man, but was this fantasy a warning?
“I told you it was pretty bad,” Tex observed when I didn’t say anything. “I should have kept my big trap shut.”
“Why would you have a fantasy like that?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Tex answered. “Dreams have a mind of their own.”
“I’m willing to stop working on the raft,” I said.
“I know.”
Tex didn’t meet my eyes. He looked at the sand and brushed his free hand aimlessly back and forth.
“If that’s what you want, you only have to say the word.”
I was as willing to stop as I was to continue. I found it curious that I didn’t feel more strongly either way. I wanted to join them in a community of shared interests and hopes. If they wanted to leave, then I wanted to help them. If they wanted to stay, then I would stay and never have to condone taking Tex’s life on the high seas.
“No,” he finally answered, “I want you to finish that raft as quickly as you can.”
“You’re sure?”
He looked up at me.
“As sure as I’ve been about anything.”
Tex’s daydream made me work even harder during the days that followed. I wanted to leave the island as soon as possible. Tex remained friendly, but I worried about the emotions he might be concealing from me and perhaps even from himself. I convinced Tsukino-san to leave his samurai knife at the raft so it would always be available for our work. It made me feel safer.
The raft slowly took on the shape we had imagined. It had a prow and a mast. Since we had no navigational instruments, we would rely on the position of the sun and the stars to set our course. We built up the raft’s outer edges so they would extend down below the waterline as a precaution against capsizing and be high enough to keep out the waves. Whatever fresh water and other supplies we took, such as our rudimentary tools and scraps of clothing to protect us from the sun, would be covered with branches and tied to the deck to keep them from washing away in heavy seas. Life preservers frequently washed ashore. We left three loose, to take on deck, and lashed the rest to the outside of the raft for flotation.
From time to time, Tsukino-san returned to his leisurely cross-examination.
“Did you live in a house?”
“As a child. Now I live in a building in the city.”
“A building,” he repeated as if inhaling the scent of a rare blossom.
To my surprise, Tsukino-san brought out the parachute that saved Tex’s life more than sixty years before. The thick fabric was stiff and hard to shape, but in the sand we made a pattern for the sail and used the samurai blade to cut what we needed. Then we trimmed strips to fasten it to the mast and the boom. It was makeshift, but we did our best with what we had at hand. In a storm we would be able to untie the sail from the boom and fasten the fabric around the mast.
“Did you have running water?” Tsukino-san asked when we finished attaching the sail.
“Yes.”
“A bathroom?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Did it have a bathtub?”
He had stopped working and leaned against the side of a boulder.
“Yes, it did.”
“Electricity?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Gas?”
“For cooking on the stove.”
“And heat. Did you use wood?”
“No, oil. It heated the whole building.”
I finished tying the thick strips of cloth in place and looked up to find Tsukino-san in a reverie. His dark eyes looked through me to somewhere in the distance.
“What a glorious life,” he said at last, focusing his gaze on me. “How you must miss it.”
29
I heard the dogs. Their howling seemed to rise from every direction as it bounced off the rocks. A shiver fluttered up my spine. I carried the package wrapped in paper in my right hand. Soon the headlamp dimmed ever so slightly. I shut it off. Whether I closed my eyes or kept them open, I was picking my way forward in the same utter darkness. I would carefully put a foot down to test the ground while moving my right hand in front of me to make certain nothing blocked my path.
I stopped as my hand touched a smooth surface. I flicked on my light and saw a tall doorway made of white marble. Immediately beside it another white doorway stood framed in the black rock. The howling of the dogs came closer.
I pushed the door on my left. Light blinded me as I stepped through it. I threw my arm over my eyes and only very gradually adjusted to the brightness. Above me was a vast expanse of white, like the skin of an albino. It was not sky. There was no sun. On the ground in front of me, lit by this light that had no discernable source, I saw burial markers.
I had once been to Normandy and seen the cemeteries for the soldiers. The white crosses went on and on in rows as neat as strong, young men aligned in a vast formation. Here, before me, was a cemetery reminiscent of that, except that each grave had a marble headstone. Still dazed by the brightness of the light, I wandered on the lawn among the headstones. After a while I stopped here and there to read an inscription, but most of the stones were written in languages I didn’t know. I could identify French, Spanish, Italian, even Latin and Greek. And I could at least guess at the countries represented by Cyrillic and other characters. But there were other markings—like hieroglyphs, runes, and even stranger symbols—of which I could make nothing.
I tried to understand the reason for this vast cemetery. Who had created it? Why bring together remains, not only from every region of the world but also, as the inscriptions indicated, from vastly different times?
I walked on and on until I realized that this burial ground must have no boundaries. I might walk forever and never come to where the headstones ended. The grass was perfectly manicured, like a putting green or the infield of a major-league baseball stadium. Perhaps every thousandth headstone had an inscription in English. I lingered over these. The first one simply said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I moved on and found another that said, “Thy will be done.” When I read the entire inscription, I saw that this little girl had died in the third year of the Civil War. I could feel the grief of her parents in the brief epitaph and the careful record of her age—two years, two months, and eleven days. But, I thought, even if she had lived a full life span, she would have died long ago.
Another inscription said, “Sacred to the memory of my mother. As a wife devoted, as a mother affectionate, as a friend ever kind and true.”
“’Tis not the whole of life to live, nor all of death to die,” I
read while kneeling in front of another headstone, and the next one I found said, “Each lonely scene shall thee restore.”
“To know him was to love him,” wrote a wife.
A husband said, “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
Tired at last, I sat facing a headstone on which the epitaph read, “Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.” I felt something vibrate in my memory. I had come here to find something or someone. Why no image shaped in my mind, telling me what or who, I don’t know. If I looked at a thousand headstones, I might see a name that would waken me to my purpose. I rose and moved among the tombstones more quickly. If I found a familiar name, the right name, I might know why I had been compelled to come here at all. I walked farther and farther, looking left and right for names that might spark my memory. Finding none, I began to run along the rows. When I could run no more, my face wet with sweat or tears, I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. Carefully I began to retrace my steps. Several times I feared I had lost my way, but at last I pushed against the door and returned to the darkness on its other side.
Now I opened the door on the right. The same light flooded over me, and I shaded my eyes. I could see no difference in the long rows and columns of headstones that, as in the first cemetery, filled the landscape, seemingly without end. I sighed and shifted my package from one arm to the other. I looked for headstones with inscriptions in English. Everything about this cemetery suggested that it was identical to the first.
The first headstone in English showed me my mistake. There was a name and a date of birth, but no date of death. It had to be an oversight. I walked farther, but even the headstones in foreign languages showed only dates of birth. There were no inscriptions, no epitaphs. Studying the birth dates, I realized that all of them were relatively recent. Because no date of death appeared, I could only assume these people were living. If I searched far enough, I would find headstones for myself and everyone I knew.
Fatigue sapped me. Though only a short distance from the entry, I didn’t know if I could return to the marble door. Slowly I placed one foot after another, like a man in a storm leaning forward against the violent shove of the wind. When the door slammed behind me, I collapsed in an exhausted stupor.
I woke to the sound of chewing, interrupted by snatches of conversation.
“He’s coming around,” said a shrill voice.
“How are you, my friend?” asked a deeper voice.
“Who are you?” I replied, struggling to move my arm and turn on my light.
“Thanks for the meat,” said a voice in between the other two.
“Yes, thanks.”
I finally managed to flick the switch. At first I imagined I saw a dog with three heads—a dachshund’s, a golden retriever’s, and a German shepherd’s. But my vision steadied, and I realized that their heads were only close together over the torn paper of the package I’d been carrying. I could see their separate bodies as they tore at the red meat.
“This is very good,” said the golden retriever. “It reminds me of the delicacies that turned up outside a butcher shop I used to frequent. How I looked forward to pawing through those trash cans.”
“Are you all right?” asked the German shepherd in his deep voice. “You look as if you’ve had a shock.”
“Do you know what’s behind these doors?” I asked, gesturing toward them.
“You weren’t supposed to get in,” said the shrill dachshund. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I can’t remember the last time somebody came,” said the retriever with his mellow voice. “So we’re not always here. We like to get exercise, go for a run.”
“You were supposed to keep me out?”
The German shepherd nodded, and all three of them looked abashed.
“Why doesn’t one of you guard the doors while the other two run?” I asked.
“It’s more fun if we all go,” said the retriever.
“It’s just better,” agreed the dachshund.
“But …,” I started to protest.
“How can we help you?” asked the German shepherd.
The dachshund stretched, his small front paws extended and his spine curving from low between his shoulders to where his brown rump reached upward. “I’m getting sleepy.”
“What’s up ahead?” I asked.
“You don’t really want to know.” The German shepherd punctuated his response with a large yawn.
“I’m going there anyway.”
He shook his head. “We can’t allow that.”
“But why?”
“It’s for your own good.”
“Let me decide what’s for my own good,” I answered sharply.
“You can’t go,” he answered, and yawned again.
“Are you sleepy?” asked the dachshund.
“Yes,” said the golden retriever.
“I am too,” agreed the German shepherd.
“This happened before,” said the retriever, “quite a while ago. Remember?”
“You’re right,” said the dachshund. “We ate and then we had to sleep. We simply couldn’t stay awake.”
The dachshund closed his eyes, and the German shepherd kept showing his long teeth as he yawned ever more widely.
“It’s such an effort to stay awake,” he said as the retriever lay down to sleep beside the dachshund. “Look, I can’t stop you, but I’m asking you not to go forward.”
“I have to go,” I repeated, feeling the compulsion that had brought me this far.
“Listen to me. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“Will you be all right?” I asked, concerned to see him getting groggy like the others.
“We’ll be fine. It’s you I’m concerned about.”
“I’m sorry about the meat,” I said.
“You won’t reconsider?”
“No,” I answered.
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes fluttering in his efforts to keep them open, “it will all work out for the best.”
“But why would you want to stop me?” I asked.
“You’ll see. She’s in her kitchen. That’s where we went on our last run.”
“Is it straight ahead?” I asked.
“You can’t miss it. All the paths end there. Take care, my friend,” he said with a sad glistening in his dark eyes. He walked a few times in a circle and at last curled up to sleep beside his comrades.
30
“Did you parachute from a plane?” I asked Tsukino-san one evening as we tidied up the work site. His suspicions about my being a spy made me hesitant to ask questions like this.
“No,” he answered, placing scraps of wood in piles.
The glow of sunset tossed a scarlet wash over the long striations of the horizontal clouds. The raft was nearly complete. Crude, yes, but far better than before. The mast lifted skyward. The rudder could be fit in place to move the pointed prow this way or that.
“How did you come here?” I asked.
“Underwater.”
“By submarine?”
He shook his head.
I smiled because he had to be joking with me. I would have called him Jonah, but he probably hadn’t read the Bible.
“How then?”
“A kaiten.”
“A what?”
“A torpedo.”
“You came in a torpedo?”
“Yes, in 1944 our navy modified large torpedoes so they could be piloted. I volunteered to protect Japan from invasion.”
“I never heard of this,” I said, not sure if he was telling me the truth.
“It was necessary.”
He spoke matter-of-factly. If young pilots had been willing to die for their country, why not men in the navy?
“You volunteered to die?”
“I was willing to do whatever was necessary for my country.”
“Didn’t you care about your life?”
Tsukino-san smiled, or perhaps he grimaced.
“When I volunteered, I said good-bye to the life I had hoped to live. Later, as I trained, I felt great sorrow to be leaving my parents. Each night we drank sake together, hundreds of young men in uniform. We wrote poems about cherry blossoms and recited them. How brief is that beautiful moment of the blossoms—that is what all the poems said. Then we sang songs and drank more sake.” He gestured to the island. “There are no cherry trees here. I haven’t seen their blossoms in such a long time.”
“You didn’t want to die?” I always thought the pilots eager to kill themselves.
“No one wanted to die.”
“But your mission was certain death.”
“No.”
“To ride a torpedo into a ship?”
“If it were certain death, I would be dead.”
“Why aren’t you?”
We had settled on the rim of the raft as we talked.
“The kaiten could go at,” he paused to calculate, “forty knots and had a three-thousand-pound warhead. They were small enough to slip through submarine nets and get into harbors. The first group of kaiten engaged the enemy in November 1944, at the Ulithi Atoll. Eight kaiten sank three carriers and two battleships. This great victory encouraged us, and my mission came soon after. We had one submarine with four kaiten held on the deck by cables. When we found the enemy, I squeezed into the pilot’s tiny chamber. There was a periscope. Look … ”
