100 Years of Vicissitude

by Andrez Bergen

  ‘It’s the sound of over three hundred American B-29 Superfortress bombers.’

  I glanced at her. ‘As many as that, you say?’ I walked around her arm. ‘So why are we here, again? Would you like to fill me in on something poignant?’

  ‘I’m getting there. Give me time.’

  ‘Time, time. That’s all we ever seem to talk about.’

  ‘Wolram, this one does take time, believe me. There’s so much I need to tell you. There are three hundred and thirty-four B-29s on their way here, right now, powered by one thousand, three hundred and thirty-six twin-row turbocharged radial pistol engines, manufactured by a company founded by aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright—you must know them?’

  ‘Of course, I do. I’m not thick.’

  ‘Never the implication.’

  ‘This is the second time we’ve been here. When are you going to tell me what this is about? I detest a mystery.’

  ‘Well, where do I start? There are so many facts and figures to relate to you, before we arrive at the big event. I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you. For starters, these aircraft carry three thousand, seven hundred crew-members and have two thousand tons of an experimental device, incendiary explosives, neatly tucked away in their bellies—a hotchpotch of white phosphorus and napalm.’

  ‘Napalm? The munitions used in Vietnam?’

  ‘Invented twenty years earlier, during World War Two. This street will be one of its first testing grounds—along with all the other roads you can picture, in every direction, for miles.’

  Kohana punctuated the sentence with a sweep of her huge, hanging sleeve. I was impressed with the flourish.

  ‘That includes the laneway over there?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She was apparently not listening. ‘Napalm was a brand new, jellied-gasoline mixture, concocted from a wonderful Harvard University recipe of oleic acid, naphthenic acid derived from crude oil, palmitic acid derived from coconut oil, and aviation fuel.’

  ‘How do you know these ingredients—let alone remember them, off the top of your head, this way?’

  ‘I read a lot about it.’

  ‘Obviously. You and your reading.’

  ‘Yes. Me and my reading.’

  She gave me a lively look, before rattling off more data.

  ‘The mixture was placed inside M-69 cluster bombs, nicknamed “Tokyo Calling Cards”, which were designed to spray napalm over a one hundred foot area, before or after impact, then explode—sending flames rampaging through the densely packed wooden buildings.’

  The houses here were, indeed, densely packed.

  ‘Asphalt will boil in the one thousand, eight hundred degree warmth; super-heated air is going to suck people into the flames. The fires can be viewed one hundred and fifty miles away. Operation Meetinghouse, as it’s dubbed by the Americans, is going to be the most devastating air raid in history.’

  The urgent wail of air raid sirens began.

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Can we leave now?’ I asked.

  11 | 十一

  ‘Snug?’

  ‘Extremely. Especially now we’ve fled the sirens, the bees, and those bluntly annoying B-29s.’

  There I was, loafing back in the familiar cradle of the couch, with a hot toddy in one hand and my feet up on a medieval footstool. My head rested on a soft pillow and I even had on nice woollen socks that Kohana had kindly donated. It would be difficult not to be comfy.

  ‘Would his lordship like a pipe?’

  ‘By God—you wouldn’t have one handy, would you?’ Right away, I twigged she was teasing me again. Typical. ‘One of those South American numbers will do fine.’

  The enamel case was whisked out of some pocket, sight unseen, the lighter flicked, and I was presented with a cigarette my hostess had pre-lit. Service, with a whimsical smile to boot.

  ‘Now you’re all battened down,’ she was saying, ‘I think I’m going to assail you with a good lecture.’

  ‘Another one? Dragons? B-29s? I’m exhausted.’

  ‘None of these things.’

  ‘It’s not regarding my recent behaviour, I should hope?’

  ‘No, no, a different kind of lecture—a throwaway one on Japanese history.’

  ‘That tedious address on saké you warned me about?’

  ‘Fear not. I’ll steer you there another time.’

  Kohana smiled again, as she sat back on her Egg chair, facing me.

  ‘Now, try to imagine me as the teacherly type in a white lab coat, scrawling stuff across a patchy-coloured old blackboard—in green chalk, mainly because I can’t find the nicer yellow or orange pieces.’

  ‘Is the chalk important?’

  ‘No, shhh. I write this simple question, circled twice for effect: “What is the oldest novel in the world?” Straight after, I look at you, my star pupil, and await your perspicacious response.’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  Kohana looked bothered. ‘Would that be regarding the novel, or the word “perspicacious”?’

  ‘May I opt for both?’

  She blew out her cheeks. ‘Moving along, if you were to toe the Anglo-Saxon line, you might end up clutching at a name like Shakespeare.’

  Here I threw up my hand, as I felt I had something solid to add to the conversation.

  ‘Yes, Wolram?’

  ‘Dubious, to be sure, Miss—I know there’s something older. By Chaucer? Please don’t tell me it’s Thomas Malory’s Arthurian drivel.’

  ‘You’d be backing the wrong horse, either way. They’re too recent. You could opt for Beowulf—anonymously put down on parchment some time between the eighth and eleventh centuries—but it’s a poem, not a novel, and if the original inscription did fall into the eleventh century, then it’s also too late.’

  In spite of the whisky, I was beginning to feel drowsy. Lectures from other people tend to have that effect on me, no matter what the subject matter. This one was feeling particularly dusty.

  Kohana, however, was on a veritable roll.

  ‘The earliest contestants for “prenatal novel” bounce between Satyricon, possibly written by Gaius Petronius in the first century AD, and Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe in the second century—yet, while there were a couple of other novels hacked together in archaic Greek and Latin tongues around the same period, these in no way relate to the modern “classic” novel, with more emphasis on character psychology.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I noticed my nails were getting long and needed a trim.

  ‘This is where Genji Monogatari, better known in English as The Tale of Genji, slinks in.’

  ‘Oh, of course it does.’

  ‘Wolram, have you heard of this book?’

  Now she did sound like a teacher. ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘Then be a darling, shut up, and listen. Where was I?’

  ‘Something about slinking.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Nice try with the red herring. Here, we have to introduce Murasaki Shikibu. She was a noblewoman at the Japanese imperial court, who composed The Tale of Genji in the early eleventh century, during the Heian period. Murasaki first mentioned the story in her diary—in the midst of an otherwise dull day’s activities—on November 1, 1008. The tale is supposed to have been finished in 1021.’

  ‘You’ve really done your homework.’

  ‘Actually, to be honest, I never read the book itself.’

  I looked up from my nails. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s enormous, it weighs a ton, and my other excuse is that the original text is illegible to contemporary Japanese.’ She leaned over, performed a theatrical glance to either side, and whispered in conspiratorial fashion: ‘I did, however, read the manga series Asakiyumemishi, which was published in the 1980s. That’s how I brushed up on the story and the characters, though it’s a modern adaptation.’

  ‘Are you sure that counts?’

  ‘In my opinion
it does—there are thirteen volumes of the manga. Anyway, we’re veering wildly off course. Let’s get back to Murasaki’s original work.’

  ‘Which you haven’t read.’

  Kohana cleared her throat. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Yes. Hang in there. I’ll try to make it quick and painless.’

  ‘Can I anaesthetize myself with another drink?’

  ‘That will be your reward at the end of the lecture.’

  ‘Oh God, I’ll die of thirst well before then.’

  ‘Nonsense, I’m on the scoop’s home stretch. This yarn may have taken over a decade to complete, but the ink was dry forty-five years before the Normans invaded England, Harold Rex inter-fectus est, the arrow through the eye, and all that nonsense. Genji is also the first full-length novel still considered a classic—though some cranky people decry the honorary status, and whether or not Murasaki wrote all fifty-four surviving chapters. I think that’s something you might be able to relate to.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, armchair critics continue to insist that the real writer of sixteenth-century England’s best-known plays may not in fact have been John and Mary Shakespeare’s wee tacker.’

  ‘Oh, that old rumour.’

  ‘Yes—scuttlebutt.’ She winked at me. I was impressed. This wink had flair. ‘There was also a rather infamous piece of legislation written in Australia not long before either of us died, with rumours circulating regarding its true authorship. Isn’t that right, Wolram?’

  My head lifted from the pillow.

  Kohana, for her part, took up right where she’d left off, with Genji.

  ‘While he might be the dashingly handsome son of an emperor, for political reasons—namely, that his mum was a low-ranking concubine—Genji has no hereditary title, and he ekes out life as an imperial officer. As the tale unfolds, we quickly come to realize just how much of a womanizing character this man is, tempered with a debonair edge that leaves the womanized swooning.’

  ‘As fictional characters do.’

  ‘Unfortunately, the impact isn’t always mutual. Genji finds the dalliances dull, and sometimes said romps are fatal affairs for his partners.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Yes. And, in an iddish twist worthy of Oedipus and Freud, our hero has a penchant for his father’s new wife, the beautiful, responsive Lady Fujitsubo, while forced to deal with his own cold, haughty spouse, Aoi no Ue.’

  ‘Could I have that drink now?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Soon. Allow me to finish. The Tale of Genji is a mix of James Bond’s bedtime antics, which you would like, with a dash of Don Juan histrionics, which you may not—distilled into a Romeo and Juliet pot-boiler. There’s also kidnap, court intrigue, danger, chronic infidelity, deaths aplenty, and other plot contrivances recently found in dramas on the other side of the Pacific, like that whipped up by the Bill of Deviations.’

  ‘Unsubtle hint, number two,’ I muttered.

  Kohana shrugged. She took my cup from me to refill it, saying, ‘Subtlety tends to be pointless on occasion.’

  I recognized the line from one of my business motivation speeches.

  12 | 十二

  Air raid sirens were blaring and a dark, empty street beckoned.

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake. Are we back here—again?’

  I leaned against a bamboo pole on the street corner, as I’d now lost both the sofa and stool—and then decided to go for a walk to exercise my legs.

  There was always that alley a few houses down from Kohana’s okiya, the one I had a hankering to explore. I considered strolling straight in, but Kohana’s arm barred me.

  ‘Not there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t get distracted. It’s not the reason we’re here.’

  ‘Well, what are we doing?’

  ‘You’re so impatient.’

  ‘Absurd. I’m far more bored, and annoyed.’

  ‘And I pray for considerate.’

  Aside from distant buzzing and the loud bawl of the sirens, I could make out light chatter. This time, a few other people had ventured outdoors, moving slowly here and there around us.

  ‘Friends of yours?’

  Kohana skipped the question. ‘Most people had become accustomed to nightly visits by the B-29s, since in practice they dropped few or no bombs, so we paid scant attention to the sirens this specific evening.’

  I decided to play along. Perhaps if I did, it would be easier for me to get to the bottom of things—and then get back to the hovel for a spot of bed rest.

  ‘All right. What’s the date?’

  ‘March 9, 1945, almost March 10.’

  This didn’t ring any bells—and since we were in Tokyo, there was no need to get over-excited about atomic antics.

  ‘No,’ Kohana agreed, interpreting my train of thought, ‘but more people will die tonight than at either Nagasaki or Hiroshima, where the atom bombs were dropped six months later. Those B-29s you hear up there are on their way over to kill a hundred thousand of my neighbours.’

  ‘One hundred thousand?’ I stared at her. ‘You’re pulling my leg?’

  ‘The master of the appropriate comeback,’ she muttered. ‘Sadly, I’m pulling nobody’s leg. I may be off in my stats—you can give or take twenty thousand. No one knows for sure. The exact figures are unknown, probably because a lot of people simply disintegrated.’

  ‘Here? Tonight?’

  ‘Now.’

  13 | 十三

  Our two porcelain saké cups, pressed up against one another, began to rattle in collusion.

  Kohana was up from her seat in a jiffy, and hovered beneath the staircase as the room began to do a merry jig. Odds and ends around me proceeded to swing, jump, smash, and topple.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, trying to repress panic. ‘That air raid?’

  ‘No, intermission—it’s an earthquake.’

  ‘An earthquake? Oughtn’t we to duck and cover?’

  ‘You really are a Cold War child. Come over here, or you’ll get yourself conked on the head by something.’

  I didn’t require much persuasion. I quickly found myself in an inappropriate position, pressed up against my hostess in the small stairwell, and attempted to cover the impropriety—and my fear of the tremor—with mindless prattle.

  ‘I thought, by the setting outside, that this hovel was supposed to be somewhere in northern Europe, where earthquakes don’t happen.’

  ‘Well, it also reminds me of northern Tōhoku and Hokkaido—where earthquakes do. What can I say, I’m Japanese. These things hit with shocking regularity.’

  ‘This hard and this long?’

  ‘Sometimes more so.’

  ‘You called me a relic of the Cold War,’ I said as I watched the walls continue to sway and the axe skittle over. ‘Aren’t you as well?’

  ‘I was a teenager before anyone knew anything at all about splitting the atom,’ she reminded me. ‘There. I think it’s subsiding.’

  ‘Look at us. Acting like it’s real, or that it matters.’

  ‘Old habits die hard. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘I’m not an earthquake veteran.’

  I could feel her warm breath on my neck and was cosy right where I was. To be honest, I didn’t want the temblor to end.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ Kohana said. ‘Now we have to clean up.’

  ‘You ought to invest in a maid.’

  ‘Well, now—there’s a job opportunity for you.’

  14 | 十四

  ‘The planes didn’t come together.’

  Kohana, geisha’d up, stared at a black sky that this time did have some stars in it.

  ‘Not like the Valkyrie, swooping to select the dead on some Norse battlefield. The B-29 bombers arrived in formation at five thousand feet, three planes every minute.’

  There—and back again.

  I was mesmerized by her speech, in spite
of better judgment. ‘God, is there no time for rest? I’m still getting over the quake.’

  The few high-school world history lessons I recalled had skipped over this part. One hundred thousand people dying? Napalm being used?

  Then again, this shouldn’t have surprised me, since we were on the winning side of the war. The victors write the history, remember? George Orwell put it perfectly: ‘Who controls the present controls the past.’ I had had that quote framed up and placed in my kitchen in the latter years of my previous existence.

  Kohana was riding a pulpit of self-indulgence to match mine.

  ‘Two percent of Tokyo’s residents, most of them civilians, perished,’ she said in a voice that wavered. ‘The lucky ones died quickly in the initial explosions; others would be burned or boiled alive. Twenty-five percent of the city—three hundred thousand mostly wood-and-paper buildings in the downtown Shitamachi quarter, right around here—was destroyed. One million people were made instantly homeless.’

  I felt like my head would implode, and I wasn’t certain I could blame the whisky I’d enjoyed earlier on. ‘All these facts and figures confuse me. Can we fast-forward a tad, preferably in mute, and get to the conclusion?’

  ‘About to happen.’

  She took bitty steps around me. Due to the restrictive kimono, or because she was becoming increasingly upset?

  ‘Like most of the Asakusa I loved, this entire street will be destroyed—not by the bomb-loads but by the furnace that follows. Oume-san and our two maids were victims. We found no trace of Oume, but discovered the charred remains of Midori and Naoko in a strange, desperate embrace. They were younger than me, you know. Midori was eleven. My best friends – Noriko, Yuki, and Harumi – perished. The two geisha lodging with us, Miyoharu and Eiko, died. My dresser Iwabuchi-san survived, with burns to sixty percent of his body. I—I found—too much.’

  Kohana had closed her eyes. There were tears, but she wasn’t crying, per se. She brought her hands together and appeared to pray.

  ‘I don’t mean to interrupt you,’ I spoke up, ‘and forgive me for doing so, but what about you? How did you—?’

  ‘How did I survive? Me?’