How was that possible? Where did they get the money? What had her elder brother been doing while ’Baa-chan was out dumpster diving for the limp vegetables she’d famously turned into pickles to keep them alive?
Nori can’t believe that the other Okudas had been lazing around on their futons, letting the youngest kid to do all the work. She’d bet her last yen that ’Baa-chan’s older brother had been busy providing for the family too, in ways her grandmother wasn’t at all eager for her to know about.
36.
Wartime Japan
MARCH, 1945
Tokyo
It’s been raining off and on for two days since Chiyo discovered that her brother had survived—in a manner of speaking—and her grandfather hadn’t.
Now she and her mother stand in line, alongside the tent erected as a makeshift temple near the pile of charred beams that used to be Senkō-ji. They’ve been waiting since early morning, taking turns standing in the circle of shade cast by the waxed paper parasol they share, now so accustomed to the mingled scents of burnt wood and incense that they don’t notice them anymore. As the daylight fades, Chiyo unwinds her shawl, draping it over the one her mother already clutches around her shoulders.
She stretches her aching back. How much longer? The droning sutras being chanted for the dead rise and fall, simultaneous funeral services sending discordant notes through the thin canvas walls. The next mourners in line shuffle inside as those from a just-finished rite stagger out. Some clutch makeshift urns filled with ashes, some carry even smaller mementos of the deceased. But most are empty-handed, their loved ones entombed in mass graves, along with tens of thousands of other victims whose earthly remains were too mingled by the bombing to separate.
Chiyo holds a tobacco tin. She loops its carrying cloth over her wrist and turns to her mother to adjust her obi cord, which has slipped as the hours lengthened. Her mother wears the borrowed black kimono being passed around among the mourners in the refugee barracks. Little decent clothing had escaped the bombing. Most women had fled in cheap cotton monpe, the farmers’ pants that are warmer and more practical than kimonos for a hardscrabble, wartime existence. The rest wore everyday cotton kimonos altered in the same way as Chiyo’s—split and resewn into a sort of jumpsuit. Hers had sported a purple and white arrow pattern until she’d taken it to be dyed yesterday. Now it’s a deep, solid indigo, more fitting for a funeral.
“O-kaa-san, move up,” she whispers to her mother, gently prodding her as the line advances a notch. Her mother’s body complies, but her mind is elsewhere. She has barely spoken a word since Chiyo came home with the news that she’d seen Grandfather Okuda’s smashed and melted hardhat being pulled from the wreckage of the Kototoi Bridge. A compassionate relief worker had given her the tobacco tin filled with ashes that she now holds, but Chiyo had seen the aftermath of the bridge bombing and doesn’t really believe that what’s in the tin had once been part of her grandfather.
That’s not what she told her mother, though. She needs O-kaa-san to believe that the ashes the priests will soon chant sutras over are his. Her grandfather’s ghost must be sent on its way, so it will stop tormenting them.
Even as a child, Chiyo had scoffed at ghosts, but in the aftermath of the bombing, she’s heard so many tales of survivors being visited by loved ones wrenched from this life before their time, she’s developed a grudging respect for the power the dead can wield over the living. Grandparents have been seen moving among the wreckage of the houses where they’d died, searching for doors that no longer exist. Babies cry in the night. And her grandfather has been haunting her mother. Every night since the attack, O-kaa-san has jolted awake, her face a mask of horror, wailing that her father’s specter is standing at the end of her futon in his volunteer fireman’s coat, asking when they’re going home.
But everyone knows that the dead linger only because survivors refuse to let go. The haunting will stop once her mother gives Grandfather Okuda’s spirit permission to journey on to the next life.
They inch up two more notches. Only one group ahead of them now. Maybe they’ll make it to the temporary hospital where her brother is being cared for before sundown.
“If you’ll come this way, please . . .”
The priest at the door invites them into the tent, escorting Chiyo and her mother to another priest kneeling behind a makeshift table built of blasted bricks and a board. The seated priest’s glasses are mended with tape, and she remembers him from her stint digging out the temple’s treasures. He doesn’t seem to recognize her, though, so she says nothing as he offers his condolences, then gestures for them to sit. He asks their names, and the name of the deceased.
“With regard to the kaimyō” he says, tactfully addressing the question about her grandfather’s after-death name to Chiyo when he sees her mother is too shell-shocked to answer. “Will your honorable grandfather be satisfied with a four-character name for use in the eternal everlasting, or do you wish to honor him with more?”
Chiyo doesn’t know what to say. Everyone receives a new name when they die, but she has no idea how they get it. She pictures the columns of kanji characters inscribed on the black and gold funerary tablets they’d snatched from their home altar the night of the bombing. She’s pretty sure the names on them are longer than four characters.
“We’d like to honor my grandfather as much as possible, of course,” she says.
The priest bestows an approving smile.
“Very well. The eight-character after-death name will be two hundred yen, in addition to the funeral.”
“Two hundred yen?” she gasps.
That’s outrageous! Two hundred yen would feed them for months.
Noting her distress, the priest quickly adds, “Of course, a six-character name is still quite honorable. A hundred and fifty yen. Plus the cost of the funeral.”
“How . . . how much is the funeral?”
“Three hundred yen.” Then he adds, somewhat reluctantly, “That of course includes a four-character posthumous name for inscription on the ihai tablets.”
Three hundred yen. That’s a big chunk of the money they have left. She turns helplessly to her mother, whose unseeing gaze is fixed on her hands, folded passively in her lap. Did she even hear what the priest said?
They can’t afford to part with three hundred yen, but what choice do they have? She turns back to the priest, desperate.
“I . . . we lost everything in the bombing. Our family owns Okuda & Sons. You know, the pottery shop? Right around the corner? We . . . we can’t afford three hundred yen. We barely escaped with our lives. Is there any way . . .” she swallows, “any way that you could do it for less?”
Shuffling back from the table on her knees, she bows so deeply that her forehead bumps the tent floor.
The priest radiates profound discomfort.
“Just a moment, please.”
He disappears, returning a few minutes later with a middle-aged man dressed in lavish green brocade robes. The intricately patterned silk, shot through with gold, strikes Chiyo as incongruously opulent in the grimy tent.
“Okuda-san,” says the head priest in a smooth voice, his deferential bow including both Chiyo and her mother. “We’re very sorry for your loss. These are terrible times. For all of us.”
He pauses, drawing attention to the suffering all around.
“It’s a terrible thing that you have lost your beloved grandfather and father,” he nods to Chiyo and her mother, “but most regrettably, we are all in the same boat, and priests must eat too. Three hundred yen is already a special compassionate rate, because we want to be sure that everyone can afford to shepherd their loved ones safely to the other side. But I fear we can’t reduce it any further, if we wish to rebuild the temple and serve the community. Because you’re our dear neighbors, however, you can pay us half now, and bring the rest when you’re able.”
He bows, preventing further negotiation.
Chiyo’s face burns. He didn’t offer t
hem even the slightest break. She lowered herself for nothing. She manages to produce appropriate words of gratitude, but her thoughts are murderous. He should be ashamed! Profiting from the misery of the very people he’s supposed to be helping. The temple’s treasure house is stuffed with valuables—she’d seen with her own eyes how much had survived the bombing. Why doesn’t he sell some of those, instead of squeezing people who have nothing left?
But it would be a bad idea to alienate the priest she’s counting on to send her grandfather’s spirit on its way, so she holds her tongue. With a face like stone, she opens her purse and counts out a hundred and fifty precious yen.
She’ll have to join those who scavenge through the refuse of the marketplace for discarded food, but she can’t afford to let her grandfather’s ghost haunt them any longer. Her mother has to be jolted out of her twilight existence and dragged back to the land of the living. Her brother is worse than dead, and Chiyo can’t rebuild their lives alone.
37.
Present-Day Japan
SATURDAY, APRIL 5
Tokyo
Nori stands before the Okuda family grave, feeling slightly guilty. She ought to have brought flowers and lit some incense, even though she’s merely stopping by to check the year ’Baa-chan’s brother died.
The tomb in which generations of Okuda ashes are laid to rest stands among other graves that date to the early 1800s, its once-shiny granite obelisk weathered to a dull gray. The small altar at the foot hasn’t been swept since last summer, and still holds curls of ash from the incense they’d lit during their annual O-bon visit. The Okuda burial place resembles every plot in the sprawling ghost metropolis that surrounds Senkō-ji temple, except that a newer slab had been erected to one side, when it became fashionable to commemorate individuals whose ashes are interred there. Above the most freshly carved name (her father’s) are five more. Her grandfather (who had taken the name Okuda when he married ’Baa-chan), her grandmother (whose name, Chiyo Okuda, is already carved into the stone, but filled in with red paint that will be removed when she dies), ’Baa-chan’s grandfather Okuda and his wife, and the name Nori came to see, her grandmother’s elder brother.
He’d died in 1946, sixteen years after his birth. Which meant he’d survived the 1945 firebombing that had sent so many to the surrounding graves, but something else had felled him within a year.
Accident? Sickness? Hunger? Or had ’Baa-chan’s brother made the mistake of stealing something worth killing for?
38.
Wartime Japan
APRIL, 1945
Tokyo
The astrological forecast for the last day of March is butsumet-su —a bad day to embark on new ventures—which is why Chiyo is crouching amid the ruins of Okuda & Sons, waiting for midnight. At twelve o’clock, the astrological calendar will tick over to taian, and she’s counting on twenty-four hours of uninterrupted good luck to deliver a turning point in her family’s fortunes.
She’d learned that lesson the hard way. On her first attempt to sell her scavenged pottery, she’d walked all the way to Ueno Station and sat by the roadside from dawn to dusk, but by the end of the day, her load wasn’t lighter by a single teacup. Everybody and his brother were trying to turn their battered belongings into something that would fill their aching bellies. The motley collection of Okuda & Sons dishes she’d spread on her carrying cloth hadn’t attracted a single glance from shoppers hurrying by. She’d trudged back to the refugee camp, where the woman living next door had laughed and said, what did you expect? Today is butsumetsu. If you learn nothing else from this crazy war, it should teach you to respect how much depends on luck.
After that, she knew not to attempt anything important before consulting the stars. She became better at turning a profit too. Dealers who displayed a wide selection of wares attracted more customers and better prices, so she became a steady supplier to one of the more successful stalls. Soon she was selling enough to stop dipping into their savings and start adding to it.
Until her brother was released from the hospital.
Out of danger, they’d been told, even though his burns were so severe he might never walk or talk again. His bellows of pain and despair echoed through the barracks day and night. Between the additional mouth to feed and his never-ending need for ointments and bandages, it quickly become clear that even if she sold every piece of unbroken pottery buried in the shop ruins, they’d never have enough money to rebuild.
Which is why she’s squatting by the skeletonized bushes behind the wreckage of Okuda & Sons tonight. She chose the lucky day nearest the full moon so she can make it across the broken landscape without mishap. But the bright moonlight will also make it easier for the priest guarding the temple’s treasure house to spot her, so she’s dressed head to toe in deepest indigo, her grandfather’s work clothes freshly dyed to blend with the shadows. She scoops up a handful of ash and washes her hands with it to blacken her pale skin, then rubs soot all around her eyes, until only the whites gleam in the darkness. Then she unrolls the long indigo strip she’d sewed together from scavenged rags. She winds it around her head and face, leaving a narrow slit so she can see. Knotting it under her chin, she tucks in the ends and shakes her head to make sure it’s secure, then stuffs her carrying cloth inside her jacket.
Clack-clack. The neighborhood watchman’s sticks send the reassuring message that all is well, even though nothing is. There’s little left to steal in the burnt-out kitchenware district, but patrols had resumed within days of the bombing to provide routine and a sense of purpose to those suddenly finding themselves with none.
Chiyo hides behind the mound of debris until he passes, then listens until diminishing claps tell her he’s far enough away that she can pick her way toward Senkō-ji, unseen.
Two blocks of houses and shops used to stand between, but they’ve been reduced to a low obstacle course. Crouching, she darts in short bursts toward the burned-out temple until the broken wall that encircles the cemetery looms before her. Squeezing through a gap in the masonry, she slinks down an avenue of blasted gravestones toward the place where the temple’s valuables are kept.
The reinforced storehouse had faithfully protected the temple’s wealth against fire for hundreds of years, but it was no match for bombs dropped from the sky. The walls and iron door were stout enough to remain standing, but the roof is gone. She has investigated it thoroughly in the past few days, and decided to clamber up and over via the rain barrel from which the priest had refilled her water jar. Once she’s inside, she’ll have her pick of the treasures she helped stack there.
The only real barrier is the guard. She peers out from behind a tomb, searching the darkness. There he is, a slumped figure, sitting beside the padlocked door. For ten long minutes she watches, but he doesn’t move. Then his head droops and he emits a snore.
Thanking her lucky stars, she creeps around to the opposite side, gathers her strength. Up and over, with only one scrabbling scrape. She has to inch precariously along the top of the wall for a meter or so, until she’s above the stepped cabinet she remembers from digging duty. Lowering herself onto its top, she spiders her way down, leaping softly to the packed earth floor. Listens. The wind bangs a loose shutter against the wall. The snoring stops. Her nerves stretch as taut as a kite string in a stiff breeze. If the guard begins wrestling with the rusty padlock on the door, she’ll have to abandon her mission and flee.
She surveys the shelves, but there’s no time to pick and choose. Trusting the gods to lead her to pieces of value, she piles six small boxes of different shapes onto her carrying cloth. Knots it around them.
She stands, shouldering her plunder. As soon as she’s on the other side of the wall, she’ll be a thief, a looter. If she gets caught, the wartime police will show no mercy.
Mouth set in a thin line, she begins to climb.
39.
Present-Day Japan
SATURDAY, APRIL 5
Shigaraki
Tramping up t
he muddy track, Robin is glad she dug out her JL rubber boots before boarding the bullet train early this morning. Tokyo was cold and overcast, but rain had apparently come down with rural determination in the mountains near Shigaraki last night. Countless rivulets are now joining the twin streams carving the tire tracks leading to Hayashi Ceramics even deeper.
Robin had spent the past hour examining the writing box and poetry fragments at the town’s small museum. When she asked if there were any other places nearby with Saburo or Yakibō artifacts worth seeing, the curator had smiled and told her that the Hayashi family actually had a little museum of their own now. Their eleven-year-old son had come to her office a few months ago, asking to take the poetry drafts back. He wanted to earn money for a Hanshin Tigers baseball jersey by setting up an exhibit. The curator had convinced him to leave the fragile paper scraps in the museum’s archival storage, but she gave him color copies and offered to pay him ¥250 for every museum patron who asked to see the real ones. Robin had laughed and promised to give him the agreed-upon fee when she stopped by the kiln later.
The grass growing between the tire tracks is tall enough to wet the tops of her boots, and she’s cheered that this road doesn’t look much traveled by Saburo scholars. Up ahead, she glimpses an old-fashioned farmhouse between the trees. Like most in the area, its cedar siding is charred black against insects and oiled against the weather, with a band of white plasterwork winking at her from beneath gray-tiled eaves. Before the entrance lies a single, massive, stone step, split by a seam of vibrantly green moss. A wooden plaque next to the door announces “Hayashi Ceramics,” and tacked below are two rain-rippled notes in plastic sleeves.
In an unnecessarily fancy font, the top one reads:
HAYASHI POTTERY, POETRY, & BASEBALL CARD MUSEUM
Please ring bell for tour
The other is handwritten. “For kiln business, please go around to office in back.”
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 19
