Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms

by Anita Heiss

  ‘I have something for you. A surprise,’ she says, handing him some rabbit stew and a jar of water, before working the surprise out from under her dress in as ladylike a fashion as possible.

  Hiroshi takes the food and water and doesn’t have much interest and even less imagination at that moment to begin to wonder what his surprise might be; news that the war is over, or word of his friends from the camp is what he would like. He sets the food down beside him and looks at Mary like a lost child.

  ‘Two books of poetry,’ she says, ‘the best poets from Australia, apparently. They are from around this area. I thought you would like to read something.’

  Hiroshi can see that Mary is excited about the gift, but as hard as he tries, he just cannot muster a reaction to match her mood. He can see the disappointment in her face when he can only manage to nod his thanks. He takes the books, appreciative of the gesture, knowing that they must have come from someone else, but not knowing from whom or where; unaware that the girl in front of him was willing to commit a crime, get herself into a lot of trouble, to make the gift possible. Hiroshi wants to be grateful but poetry will not fix anything. Nothing.

  The moment is awkward. There is so much expectation and emotion: one wants to see a smile; the other wants to see the world again. Both want the space between them to be different.

  ‘I better go,’ Mary says, embarrassed that her gift has not been received as it was intended. She wonders if she has overstepped the mark, if she has misinterpreted their friendship. If Hiroshi really doesn’t care about anything other than getting out, then the books of poetry are a stupid offering.

  Seeing the disappointment in her face, Hiroshi steps towards her. She does not hide her feelings well, and that makes Hiroshi feel uncomfortable. ‘Arigat-o,’ is all he can say. He moves to touch her arm, but knows that is not the right thing to do. It is not respectful. But he says, ‘Thank you,’ once more and smiles sincerely.

  Mary’s heart fills with relief that he is grateful and that they are friends.

  IT RAINED RED MUD: DUST STORM ENVELOPES COWRA

  No one at Erambie needs the newspaper to tell them about the dust storm that has beset Cowra over the last two days. The reddish brown dust from the dry western plains turned the rain into globules of red mud falling from the sky. The kids all loved it. They got as red and dirty and muddy as they could. But Joan found it a nightmare to get the bed linen clean. It felt like she was wearing her own path from the kitchen where she had to boil the water in copper pots before carrying it to the tub outside. Washing in a galvanised tub was also hard on the back.

  Everyone is keeping windows and doors shut tight to keep as much dust out as possible. With rising temperatures taking the mercury to 93 degrees Farenheit with high humidity, no one is comfortable. Mary and her family sit in the kitchen but the walls are thin and the heat penetrates from early in the day. Although locals complain about the humidity, everyone is grateful that the drought looks like it will be broken by the downpour of rain, regardless of the dust storm. Joan is trying not to complain too much about the extra work in the laundry when rain is so needed.

  All of the kids and most of the adults just want to swim in the Lachlan River, which is usually fed by the summer rain rather than the unexpected downpours of recent days. No one cares if the water is cold or not, the wet relief is all that matters. And the heat doesn’t seem to bother the kids as much as the adults. They are out for hours on end picking blackberries along the river and making plenty of noise, because snakes like blackberries too. And according to the stories that Uncle Kevin tells, snakes also like little kids. The stories he tells make little James never want to leave Mary’s side, but she doesn’t mind. She likes having James and the other kids around and she teaches the younger ones to only pick large, plump, deeply coloured berries because, she says, ‘They are the ripest and taste the best.’

  For Mary, the dust storm also means extra cleaning at the Smiths’ as a thin veil of reddish dust has settled throughout their home too. As she dusts the bookshelves she looks carefully at what else she might take to Hiroshi. Even though his reaction to her previous gift wasn’t as she had hoped, she didn’t think she should stop trying to keep his mind occupied, and there is little else she can offer to do. She looks for the poets Blake and Keats that Mrs Smith mentioned and finds them after some searching, but she guesses that they are prized possessions so will most definitely be missed, and decides not to ‘borrow’ them.

  As she dusts the sideboard at the Smiths’ she sees a pile of letters that have Red Cross stamps on them. They are addressed to people in Italy. She picks them up to read the names.

  ‘Thank you, Mary,’ Mrs Smith says, taking them from her. ‘They are letters from the Italian soldiers, probably to their families, their girlfriends.’

  Mary frowns.

  ‘We have a letter exchange program,’ Mrs Smith explains. ‘The men write letters home. We post them, and quite often, they get letters in return.’

  ‘All the prisoners do this?’ Mary asks cautiously to conceal her excitement.

  ‘No, just the Italians,’ Mrs Smith says. ‘Oh, we did have one Japanese soldier, but mostly they don’t write home.’

  When she arrives at the air raid shelter late that night, Mary can’t wait to tell Hiroshi she has found a way to post his letter. But before she can share her news, Hiroshi gently takes his sleeve and wipes Mary’s right cheek, an uncharacteristic gesture. It is the first time they have touched and while Mary is shocked, she doesn’t show it, nor does she move.

  ‘What is this?’ he asks as he wipes her left cheek and looks at the dirty material, forgetting for the moment that back home he would never be so forward with a woman.

  Mary explains what a dust storm is as best she can, trying to describe the debilitating heat and how it was talked about on the wireless at the Smiths’ place.

  Hiroshi has experienced the Cowra heat at the compound, and even though some of the dust has made it under the corrugated iron sheet and down to where he is hiding, he cannot imagine what the actual dust storm looked like above.

  Mary can see that he is frowning with confusion. ‘Do you have red dust and dust storms in Japan?’ she asks.

  ‘My home is near the sea, we have short, mild winters and long, hot summers, but we don’t have the dust like you. We have a lot of rain in summer, and many typhoons.’

  ‘Typhoons?’

  ‘Yes, where my family live is the most dangerous place in all of Japan because of the typhoons. They are big storms that come from the ocean with very strong winds and torrential rain.’

  ‘That’s probably why we don’t have typhoons in Cowra – there is no sea for hundreds of miles.’

  ‘It rains mainly in the middle of the year when it is warm, but in spring and winter we have very little rain.’

  ‘When is the best time of year?’ Mary asks. ‘When is it the prettiest?’

  ‘Autumn is beautiful.’ Hiroshi’s mind wanders back to his home. ‘We have very colourful leaves, we call them koyo.’

  ‘Koyo, sounds like yoyo,’ Mary says.

  ‘Yes, and the koyo in autumn are like the cherry blossoms in the spring. And it has been a tradition for a long time for people to view the koyo.’

  ‘Where do people go, is there a special place?’

  ‘Oh, Mary, there are many special places all over Japan, each region has its own time in autumn when the leaves are at their most red or yellow or orange. Hiroshima, Fukushima, Nagana, Tokyo and Kyoto – they all have mountains and gardens people visit to enjoy the beauty of koyo.’ Hiroshi closes his eyes for a few seconds.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Without opening his eyes, he says, ‘I miss my country when I think about the landscape. It is very different to here.’

  ‘The mornings are darker later here and the days get cooler in autumn, and the leaves change colour in Cowra but we don’t have a name for it,’ Mary tells Hiroshi, who opens his eyes. Before she can think of any
thing else to say, he speaks.

  ‘My favourite season is spring; I love the cherry blossoms. Near my home is a park, Kagamino Park, it has hundreds of cherry trees. Every weekend in spring my parents would take us there.’ Hiroshi savours the memory. ‘We would have picnics under the cherry blossoms. Special Hanami picnics where we looked at the cherry blossoms. I was a young boy who loved flowers. It must have been funny for my parents seeing me so happy with flowers.’ But his happy memories cause sadness that overwhelms him again. He slumps down. ‘I miss home. I miss my family.’

  He buries his face in his hands and Mary doesn’t know what to do. She sits next to him for a few minutes but she knows that her time is up. She must get back to the hut. She puts her hand on his shoulder as she stands and says, ‘We are your family, too.’

  As she gets to the ladder, she turns. ‘I can’t believe I almost forgot. I can post your letter, safely – it will go through the Red Cross.’

  ‘Really?’ Hiroshi feels renewed hope that there may be a chance he can contact his parents.

  ‘Yes, quickly, here.’ From her apron pocket she pulls an envelope that she has ‘borrowed’ from the sideboard at the Smiths’. She hands it to him. ‘Can you write your address on here?’

  Hiroshi rummages around in the dim light for the pencil he wrote his letter with. His hands are unsteady as he writes on the envelope. When he finishes, he slips his letter inside and hands it to Mary.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ she says, and leaves.

  11

  2 November 1944

  The Williams children run into the hut, breathless and scared but excited at the same time. James is squealing and as soon as Mary lets him off her hip, he heads straight for his mother, nestling between her legs as usual although he’s shot up in height in recent months and he’s almost too tall to fit. He clings to her thigh and the grasp is so uncomfortable that Joan has to pry her son from her body. She wonders if being the baby of the family and the only boy means he will always be this clingy.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks Mary, who looks overwhelmed by all the noise.

  ‘I don’t know, I was just coming back from the Smiths’ place and all the goothas were screaming and running in all directions and the mirris were howling and chasing their tails and I can’t work out what happened.’ Mary rubs her temples. ‘It’s giving me a headache.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ Betty says. ‘Dottie, Jessie and I were all helping the littler kids play drop the hanky.’

  ‘I got the hanky,’ James pipes up, grinning widely as if he was the fastest in a race. Joan pats him on the head and nods for Betty to continue, but Dottie butts in.

  ‘Then,’ she says, ‘a small man came and joined the game. He seemed friendly, he just wanted to play too, but –’

  Before she can finish, Jessie jumps in. ‘We all remember what Uncle Kevin told us about the birricks, and we got scared.’

  ‘Uncle Kevin said the birricks move around the mission at night, remember? He told us to make sure we had all the wood we needed and everything inside before dark. Before the birricks start moving around the mission.’

  Joan knows the story only too well. Like others, she believes there are spirits moving around outside of a night. ‘That’s it, no more playing outside after dark.’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ comes the collective cry from Betty, Dottie and Jessie, and when James finally catches on, he says in a whiney voice, ‘Oh, Mum,’ and starts jumping up and down in protest.

  ‘Don’t make me get your father to talk to you about this. From now on, as soon as the big lights come on, I want you inside.’ Joan is not going to argue with the children about it, and is glad that at least there is a little electricity at Erambie to give some light during the night.

  ‘But, Mum, you know that playing outside when it’s warm is what we do, there’s nothing to do in here,’ Jessie says grumpily.

  Banjo walks in with Kevin just as Joan turns to wash some potatoes. ‘What’s all the racket? I can hear you lot outside. A man doesn’t want everyone knowing his business.’ He walks over and plants a dusty kiss on his wife’s cheek.

  The kids hope their mum doesn’t tell their dad what’s going on. Their father doesn’t get cranky often, but they’ve seen him get wild when they misbehave and, as Jessie says, ‘it’s not good’.

  ‘Maybe your Uncle Kevin can tell the story about the bunyip again,’ Joan says, hoping her brother-in-law hears. She thinks it’s a good time to remind the young ones of the stories the Wiradjuri live by and the beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation that keep them all safe.

  Kevin pulls up a stool, sits down and rolls a cigarette. ‘The bunyip is half man and half beast.’ He opens his eyes up wide and looks at each child one at a time to suck them into his story. The kids’ eyes and mouths open wide too. They love it when their Uncle tells stories and it doesn’t matter how many times they hear the same one over and over again, or how scared they might get, and they often do.

  ‘The bunyip only comes out at night.’ Kevin looks at his watch. ‘So he’s out there now!’ The girls squeal, James cuddles into his mother and Joan smiles, grateful for the story. ‘If you go near the river, and you know you are not supposed to, then the bunyip will drag you under and . . .’

  The children all wait in anticipation as Kevin leans in.

  ‘He will EAT you!’

  With that, the girls all scream and run into their bedroom and James starts to cry.

  ‘Come on, big fella, don’t bung on the waterworks.’ Kevin picks James up and mouths ‘cry baby’ to Joan as he carries the child into the bedroom, where the girls are cuddled up in the bed together.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Banjo asks.

  ‘It’s all under control,’ Joan says and winks. ‘I’ll tell you later.’ She doesn’t want to stop her kids having fun, but the stories of the birricks, bunyips and gooligahs, the long held Wiradjuri stories are the same stories she heard as a child and they are real. She’s not going to take any risks.

  ‘Come,’ Mary says the minute her feet touch the ground. ‘Come.’ She motions to the ladder.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘It is a clear sky and a full moon, I want to see the rabbit. I want to see the rabbit with you.’ Mary knows it’s a risk. She knows it goes against everything her parents would allow. It’s against everything her Uncles Sid and Fred had agreed to. But she wants to see the rabbit in the moon. ‘Come,’ she says again.

  Hiroshi does as he is told, following Mary up the ladder and into the night air. It is hot and dry but the air is clean and the sky is a blanket of stars. Mary leads Hiroshi quietly behind the lavatory, where they sit on the grass and look at the moon high in the sky.

  Hiroshi clears his throat then says, ‘And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.’

  ‘You remember the words from “Clancy”!’ Mary says, astonished at how beautifully he recites poetry.

  ‘Yes, I have read them many times, and usually they make me feel sad that I cannot see this.’ He waves his hands in the air as if to run his palms across the starlit sky. ‘Being trapped without this beauty, it is one of the hardest things, Mary.’

  There are a few moments of silence.

  ‘I heard alarms today Mary, I was worried.’

  ‘It is November the eleventh, Armistice Day,’ she explains. ‘Everyone in the town stops at eleven am to remember those who have died in war.’ She pauses. ‘I was at the Smiths’ today and I slipped your letter into a pile of Red Cross letters written by Italian soldiers. I think it will be on its way to Japan now, Hiroshi.’

  Hiroshi closes his eyes and imagines his parents reading the letter but his thoughts are broken when Mary asks, ‘Can you see the rabbit?’ She is so enthusiastic he can’t help but smile. ‘Is it there?’

  Hiroshi stares up to the moon and Mary stares at him, waiting to see recognition in
his eyes. When he breaks into a smile, she knows he has seen it and she too looks to the sky.

  The pair sit for a few minutes. There is silence, other than a barking mirri somewhere across the other side of the mission. Hiroshi is conscious of the female next him. He is only human.

  He is present in the moment, enjoying the fresh air on his face. His thoughts shift to a vision of cherry blossoms – the warmth of the light pink flowers, the pure whites and the soft yellows – that always calmed his mind, that often inspired his own poetry, the blooms that carried him home whenever he was lonely. The blossoms he knew as a child were in a world that is so far removed from the life he is living now that he wonders if he ever really had a childhood or if he just dreamed it.

  Life is like the cherry blossom, he reminds himself; short, but exquisite. He thinks of the last time he was in Ueno Park when he was at university and how he sat beneath a tree waiting for a cherry blossom to fall on his head for luck – the myth that most students half-believed in, just in case their study didn’t pay off. Back then he had Benika, also a uni student. They were in love. He momentarily forgets that Mary is there and remembers the feel of Benika’s flesh against his and wonders if he will ever feel a woman’s breath on his skin again. Will he ever know the joy of love again? Will he ever have children? A son that he might one day may be forced to send to war? His head is aching with the same thoughts he has had over and over and over again.

  He thinks of Benika naked, her soft flesh against his own, of their lovemaking in a hotel room they rented for a few hours before he left. It is a treasured memory that kept him warm and hopeful in the brutal landscape of New Guinea.

  Then Mary gasps, startling him from his thoughts.

  ‘I see it! I see it, Hiroshi.’ Tears form in her eyes – her belief that they could be brought together by sharing the sky was correct. Sharing the rabbit in the moon has helped them connect like she knew they would. She feels close to Hiroshi, and he lightly touches her hand.