Fireflies

by Ben Byrne

  “Back already, dear?” the old lady clucked. She smoothed out the fabric and counted a few notes and coins into my palm.

  It was less than half of what Michiko had paid. Confused, I asked if she had made some kind of mistake.

  “Take it or leave it, dear,” she said, her nose wrinkling. “There’s plenty more like you about.”

  Over by the railway arches, I saw a flash of colour. I was in the heart of Blood Cherry territory. I hid behind the old woman’s table, laden with kimonos, as unfamiliar girls headed toward the market.

  Somehow, in the light of day, they seemed different. They glowed with life as they scoured the stalls, cursing and biting apples and flinging the cores over their shoulders. They barged their way through the dreary crowds in their bright Western dresses, flicking banknotes under the noses of the peddlers. As I stood there watching, I felt a sudden stab of realization. They really were different from me, I thought.

  They were honest. I’d let Michiko and the managers fill my head with sheer nonsense — that we were Butterflies, Foreign Specialists, modern-day Okichis! But we were all just whores. These girls admitted it. They were the lowest of the low, and they just didn’t care.

  Just like that, they’d washed their hands of the slogans and lies we’d been fed for so many years. The curbs and controls that had made us slaves and that had brought our country to the brink of ruin. These were the New Women of Japan, I thought. Not us. No happy endings for them, no heartbreaking affairs like Kyoto geisha. They would smoke and spit and sell themselves out for the last penny, until one day they would collapse, dead in the gutter, free at last.

  ~ ~ ~

  The next day, I washed, dressed in my brightest clothes, and painted my eyes in vivid colours. In the afternoon, I took the Yamanote Line to Shimbashi, and walked in the direction of Tokyo Bay past the old, abandoned market of Tsukiji by the low, dull arches of the Kachidoki Bridge. I examined the card that the Blood Cherries had left. The sky was pale and blustery, and there was a reek of fish.

  Their house was a big, broken-down mansion that must have belonged to a merchant once. A girl dressed in a short green skirt opened the door. She wore a sprig of clover in her hair and her eyelids were shaded with silvery-green powder, like the wings of some exotic butterfly.

  I bowed meekly as she showed me through to a gutted hall. The place was like an enormous, smashed up doll’s house. Landings jutted out from the walls, and splintered stairs and ladders led up through holes in the collapsed ceiling. Dozens of girls lounged about in their underclothes on the bare flagstones with cigarettes in their mouths, playing flower cards and swigging from a large bottle they passed between them. Piles of clothes and empty saké flasks were scattered all around and a large mirror stained with verdigris was ratcheted to the split wooden panelling of one wall.

  Underneath the staircase, a gaudy little shrine had been set up, decorated with star-shaped scraps of silver paper and burning candles. Pictures of angels, torn from Western books, had been pasted in a circle on the crumbling plaster. In the centre, a carved statue of Jesus Christ was splayed upon a wooden cross, naked but for a loincloth, his head turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at the world.

  The stout girl was kneeling on the ground before it, hands clasped, mumbling to herself. As I stood there, Junko emerged unsteadily through a large, dark hole in the wall. Her face was smooth and white, framed by tight black curls, and she wore a pair of round sunglasses. She walked toward me, steadying herself every now and then. When she stood in front of me, I noticed little pricks along her inner arms.

  “Did you know that Maria-sama was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus Christ?” she rasped, gesturing at the stout girl. “Yotchan over there believes that if she prays hard enough, Jesus Christ will make her a virgin again!”

  As she laughed, I noticed faint lines on her forehead. Her cheeks sagged beneath powder. Her fingernails were painted crimson and the skin on her hands was wrinkled.

  “How old fashioned!” she spat. “Relying on a man for everything.”

  She gave a tight smile and took off her sunglasses. Her eyes shrank as she looked at me.

  “So you’ve come to work for me now, is that it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “They always do.” She counted on her bony fingers. “We charge eight yen a time. That’s the standard rate so don’t forget it. Four goes to us and two more goes on food and drink. You work out the rest for yourself.”

  Two yen, I calculated. It really wasn’t much. A packet of cigarettes alone cost twenty. But I just nodded, feeling a sudden, painful itch between my thighs and a sharp desire for one of my little pills.

  Junko came very close and pressed her fingernail against the skin of my cheek.

  “Holiday season for the yankiis,” she mused. “Plenty of work for a pretty girl like you.”

  All of the other girls had abandoned their games now and crowded in front of the big mirror, painting their faces and trying on different pieces of clothing.

  “Well, then,” Junko said, “time to get ready.”

  I nervously prepared myself behind the scrum of girls. After half an hour, Junko clapped her hands and we all stood in a wide circle and turned to face each other. The girl next to me stretched out her tongue. All the other girls were doing the same, placing little tablets into their open mouths as they looked into each other’s eyes. The girl beside me delivered my tablet, and I felt my heart pounding as it dissolved upon my tongue. The big bottle of shochu went around the circle and I took a deep swig, washing the pill down my throat.

  The girls held each other’s hands. We stepped forward and swooped them up into the air. Banzai!

  Excited and nervous, the girls streamed toward the door. As I passed, Junko gripped my wrist.

  “You see?” she hissed. “You’re just like us, after all.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The night was freezing and there were patches of black ice on the ground. The girls were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, their hair styled in rumpled permanents, their lips like dark petals. Restless from the pills they had taken, they screeched out vulgar comments to nervous passersby.

  Junko walked beside me with Yotchan following. The faint smell of the sea drifted toward us from the nearby bay, and as we passed the pale green roofs of Hongwan Temple, some of the girls began to peel away down side streets. Junko prodded me in the back to indicate that I should carry on. My throat was very dry and my heart was beating fitfully as I thought about the night ahead.

  The streets grew busier as we crossed the Ginza and turned north toward Yurakucho, following the brickwork of the overground train track. Delivery men rode by on bicycles, and the Americans were muffled up against the cold, grinning and shaking hands as they passed each other.

  “Over there,” Junko commanded, as we arrived at the back of Yurakucho Station. She pointed to a low-slung arch beneath the train tracks and I walked over and leaned against the tunnel wall, my fingertips pressing the cold, glazed tiles. Junko stood beneath a nearby streetlamp in a freezing cloud of mist.

  An elderly Japanese man approached. His breath was heavy as he inspected me through his glasses.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Eight yen, sir,” I said. “And worth every sen.”

  He squeezed my arm so violently that I cried out.

  “Not so rough!”

  “Come on,” he ordered. “Hurry up.”

  Junko was still standing against the streetlamp as he pushed me deeper into the low tunnel. Her arms were folded, and she had a look of triumph on her face.

  Headlights blazed white all around us. Sirens blared and there was the throb and roar of engines as military trucks careened toward the tunnels, men leaping down from the cabs. The old man thrust away my hand and limped off as fast as he could, as the jeeps screeched to a halt on each side of rail
way track, searchlights blazing in great white beams. Women were running out like rats from their holes, screaming as American military and regular Japanese police seized hold of them. They hauled them by the waist and swung them into the open-backed trucks as if they were sacks of rice. Shadows veered wildly as a truck skidded to a halt in front of me, its tires sliding in the icy gravel. Two Japanese policemen leaped out and advanced upon me with torches in their hands. I gasped as one of them grabbed my wrists, jerking so hard that my arms nearly came out of their sockets. The other gripped the collar of my dress, and I heard the fabric tear as he dragged me toward the back of a truck like an animal.

  “What are you doing?” I shrieked. “Get off me!”

  “We’re clearing up tonight,” the policeman snapped. “You whores are giving Japan a bad name.”

  Us? I thought, speechless with rage, despite myself. Us, giving Japan a bad name?

  “How dare you,” I cried. “We’re the only honest ones left!” I kicked at his leg, but he shoved me heavily into the back of the truck and I tumbled onto the cold, rumbling metal floor.

  As I pulled myself up, I could smell cheap perfume. Girls were perched on the narrow benches that lined each side of the truck bed. All of them were pan-pan, and they had covered their faces with their hair in shame.

  “Where are they taking us?” I asked.

  Through the canvas flaps, I could see the lights and the bustle as herds of Americans crowded on the Ginza. We came to a juddering halt near the junction by the Continental Hotel. Staff cars were dropping off elegant men and women in dinner dress, and uniformed bellboys were rushing over to escort the guests. Just as the truck jerked forward, a sleek American sedan pulled up and a boy saluted as he opened the back door. A white-haired man in dress uniform climbed out, clasping the hand of a petite Japanese woman. She was wearing a black velvet cocktail dress, and draped over her arm was a white fox coat.

  “Michiko!” I screamed. “Michiko!”

  I thought for a moment that she had heard me. She cocked her head to one side, then stood on tiptoe and kissed the man on the cheek. His hand slid down her back as he guided her up the red carpet toward the foyer. The truck pulled away, their figures shrinking as we accelerated up the avenue.

  We crossed the Kanda River and turned onto the Edo Road. Very soon we would pass through Asakusa. I pictured the Sumida Park to one side of the road, the charred remains of my neighbourhood on the other. As we passed the Kototoi Bridge, I had a sudden, sharp premonition of where we were being taken.

  The Yoshiwara canal was dark, the water low, and as we crossed over the bridge, I had a vivid memory of Hiroshi, standing on the high bank opposite as I floundered there, the fire pelting from the sky.

  Thank heaven he couldn’t see me now, I thought. Thank heaven he was dead. I groaned and pulled my hair over my face.

  The truck crunched to a halt. The canvas flaps were pulled aside to show a huge, solitary building with flat grey walls lit by floodlights. Women were shouting and screaming as policemen hauled them from the trucks. I climbed down, shivering in the freezing night, and blinked. American soldiers and Japanese doctors in white coats were herding women toward a gatehouse. From high above us there came eerie shrieking. I gazed up at the towering building, shielding my eyes. Women were leaning out the windows on each level, waving and howling. As we swarmed toward the building, more trucks rolled up to deliver yet more girls. The women called down in a dreadful chorus, their hair falling wild about their shoulders, their tattered white gowns swaying in the wind. It was as if they were a horde of screaming souls, welcoming us all to hell.

  18

  PUBLIC RELATIONS

  (HAL LYNCH)

  The corridors of the Continental were quiet and the peace of the Sabbath reigned throughout the building. A smell of roasting chicken drifted from the basement dining room and from somewhere came the regular report of an endless game of ping-pong. I locked my door and heaved my knapsack onto the bed and retrieved my rolls of film. Jittery and exhausted, I needed to sleep, but felt a deep and anxious need to develop my photographs straight away.

  I figured I could use the darkroom in the basement of the newspaper office without being disturbed, so I took a taxi without changing my clothes. As I’d hoped, the newsroom was empty, the building silent. I went downstairs and unpacked my kit.

  I felt a tightening in my stomach as I drew the first spool of glistening negatives from the reel. I’d had an irrational fear on the train that something would have gone wrong with the exposure, that the radioactivity in the city would somehow have damaged the film, that all I would be left with was blank prints and the uncertainty of memory. But now I could identify the scenes in miniature, as they threaded out under the red glow of the safety lamp, mute testament to the fact that all had truly occurred.

  Once the negatives were dry, I lined up the paper beneath the enlarger head, and fed the strip through. I exposed the paper to the light, ticking off the seconds until they were done. One by one, I shook the sheets in the developing fluid. Slowly, the mysterious images welled back into existence.

  As the pictures hung there, dripping on the drying line, a sensation of almost unbearable loneliness washed over me. The mangled pile of bicycles in the riverbed. The curving ribs of the ruined dome. The silent Buddha smiling enigmatically as snowflakes settled upon his head. I recalled the strange story the ambulance driver told me of how people’s shadows had been burned into the bridges at the moment of the flash, and as I looked into the ancient eyes of the dance instructor, at the frail smile of the withered railwayman, I had a sudden comprehension of the deep, lingering malaise the victims had complained of, the terrible void that had developed within them, as if a cancer had devoured some vital part of their souls.

  While the prints dried, I went upstairs to the empty newsroom. I sat at a desk and fed a sheet of carbon paper into the drum of a Smith-Remington. I stared at the blank page for what seemed like an eternity, lost in thought. Then, almost without thinking, I began to press my fingers down on the keys and a confusion of words and letters slowly clicked out onto the page.

  “The Aftermath of the Atom,” I titled the piece. I described the day as clearly and as simply as I could, from the moment that I had arrived at the station to the second my train back to Tokyo had passed into the tunnel. Darkness had fallen behind the big plate windows by the time I had finished, and the pool cast by my lamp was the only light burning in the building. I rolled out the final sheet and read the last paragraph out loud.

  “While most of the victims of ‘radiation disease’ are now dead, it seems clear now that this terrifying new weapon has a capacity to destroy even beyond that which its creators could have foretold. It has the capacity to plant the seeds of a lethal sickness in men’s bodies, to scatter poison into their very souls. Whatever moral justification may be found for the nuclear bombings of Japan, any government that believes in justice surely has a duty to help those that it has exposed to this creeping death, that still lurks in their bloodstream so many months after the smoke has cleared. The first step must be to acknowledge its existence.”

  The door creaked and I lurched in my chair. A tuneless whistle came from the corner of the room as the big overhead lights glimmered on. Eugene. He assumed the comical expression of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Hal!” he exclaimed, striding toward me. “Don’t tell me you’re working? It’s Sunday night, you chump.”

  Hastily, I rearranged the pages on the desk.

  “How about you, Eugene? Feeling guilty about something?”

  The corners of his mouth turned down.

  “Let’s just say I forgot something.” He opened the drawer of his desk and palmed a package of prophylactics into his overcoat pocket. He parked himself down on my desk with a grin.

  “Where have you been, anyway, Hal? I hardly see you anymore.”

 
I felt a wave of hopeless sympathy for my old roommate. He’d never seen any action, like all the other fresh recruits now garrisoned in Japan. The country was just a playground for him.

  Grime and dirt were ground under my fingernails; developing fluid stained my skin. As I looked up at his cheerful freckled face, the wire-rimmed glasses crooked beneath the thatch of hair, I felt a curious collision of instincts. After a moment of hesitation, I gathered the sheaf of papers on the desk and handed it to him.

  “Proof this for me, Eugene.”

  He licked his thumb and forefinger as he flipped through the pages. Surprise, astonishment, confusion progressed across his face as he read. I slumped in my chair, aware of the sour reek of my unwashed body.

  When he finally finished, he gave a low whistle.

  “Boy oh boy, Hal. Do you think Dutch’ll go for it?”

  I laughed, despairing. “You know, I wasn’t planning to file it to the Stars and Stripes, Eugene.”

  “So where are you going to file it?”

  I paused. “I’m not sure yet. One of the nationals, maybe. On an overseas line.”

  His face crinkled with distaste.

  “So you’re a Fancy Dan now, Hal?”

  I shrugged, shook my head. He adjusted his glasses.

  “I don’t get it Hal. Why are you so concerned about the Japs all of a sudden? They started it, didn’t they?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I led him downstairs to the basement and gestured at the prints. He examined each of them in turn, pausing every now and then to take a closer look. Then he became silent for a long time.

  “They’re quite something, Hal.”

  I nodded.

  “SCAP was upset enough about our rat man.”

  Dear Eugene. I pictured the old bargeman in his raincoat, looking out at the river. Dutch, in his office, accusing me of being morbid. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once.

  “So they were, Gene. So they were.”

  He looked at me with doubt.