Fireflies

by Ben Byrne

  There was only one row of seats left at the front of the damaged theatre, and as we took our places, the audience standing behind us seemed restless and agitated. As the light flickered onto the screen, my stomach tightened. The thought of seeing Michiko again — and in such a manner! The names of the actors blazed up on the screen. My eyes widened. Michiko Nozaki.

  The film began, and soon enough, she appeared. I almost clapped my hands in delight. She wore a white, pleated skirt and casually twirled a summer parasol. I settled back in my seat to watch the film. The American squeezed my arm and offered me a hard candy from a paper bag.

  I could hardly remember the plot, afterwards; a simple love story, it was all faintly ridiculous. Michiko was the true star of the film. Her beauty simply flooded the screen. The audience jostled behind us whenever she appeared, sighing when she gave that eager, encouraging smile I knew so well.

  Her leading man was very handsome, with sharp cheekbones and piercing eyes. I glanced up at the American, who was quite unaware of my emotions as he munched away on his snacks. He looked rather handsome himself, I thought. I squeezed the tiniest bit closer to him.

  Toward the end of the film, there was a shock. At the height of the drama, the man accused Michiko of covering up a crime. She tore herself away from him with tears in her eyes. He rushed over and took her in his arms. She turned, half-resisting. And then, quite openly, he leaned forward and kissed her.

  A gasp came from the audience. He had kissed her! Full on the lips, in public — just like that. Of course, we had never seen anything like it on the screen before. The audience started shouting and my American laughed, quite bewildered by it all.

  As the crowd poured out of the cinema into the spring sunshine, he took my arm and we walked together through the streets of Asakusa. Men were going by with sandwich boards, and some of the stalls on Nakamise Arcade had reopened now, selling flimsy mirrors and trinkets to the passing soldiers.

  Cherry blossom hung from the scorched trees that leaned over Asakusa Pond, though it was more like a flooded bomb crater now. We sat on a bench and gazed at the flowers for a while, and I pointed out the scorched patch that had once been Hanayashiki Park with its golden horses, and, on the other side, the mound of rubble that had once been my old high school.

  “Where did you live, Satsuko?” he asked, quite suddenly.

  I frowned, and waved my hand vaguely in the direction of Umamichi Street, over on the far side of the temple precinct.

  He fell silent for a long time, apparently lost in thought. Perhaps he really was different from the other Westerners, I thought. Darker, more brooding. I knew so little about him. Where had he fought during the war? Had he been a pilot, up there in one of the planes?

  It was the question that none of us girls ever asked. I might have seen him one night, I thought, as he flew low across Tokyo. His handsome face behind the quilted nose of the cockpit, the glass glinting with the light of the fires raging below.

  A muscle tightened in his jaw. I should hate him, I thought, for what they had done. But as we sat there in silence together, he took my scarred hand and held it between his palms. For a moment, as the breeze blew the blossom onto the surface of the dark water, it felt as if the sky was exhaling, as if the earth itself were silently offering up flowers for the souls of the dead.

  ~ ~ ~

  The potatoes hissed and sizzled in the pan as Masuko came into the bar and switched on the radio. My ears pricked up straight away.

  “Who Am I?” had come on the air that month. It featured displaced persons from all over the Japanese Empire who had lost their memories during the war. Now, on their return home, they were trying to discover exactly who they were and where they had come from. The presenter interviewed them on air in the hope that someone out there might recognize their voice or recall some clue about them.

  “Can you remember anything about your childhood, sir?” he was asking, as Masuko turned up the volume. “The village festivals, perhaps, or where you went to school?”

  A man’s voice crackled in reply. “I can’t remember much of anything, sir, just that we lived in the countryside. Our teacher was Matsukawa-sensei. He was so strict! I remember he beat me once when I lost one of the buttons of my school uniform . . . ”

  Masuko laughed out loud, and I took the pan from the heat and walked through to the bar in my apron. She was a short girl, as cheery as a sparrow, and had a lovely hint of the south in her voice. We’d quickly fallen into an enjoyable routine together, visiting the market for vegetables in the morning, clearing and polishing the bar in the afternoon and gossiping about Mrs. Ishino and what we referred to as her “mysterious past.”

  Masuko found the show very entertaining, though for all the wrong reasons. A sly smile played on her wide lips as she listened to the next segment.

  “And now for some success stories,” announced the presenter. “Last week the loyal wife of Mr. Kawachi heard her husband’s voice on our programme, and boarded the train straight away from Kobe to come to our studio and collect him. They are now reunited in joy in their marital home.”

  “What rubbish!” cawed Masuko. “I bet Mrs. Kawachi’s just some old hag who can’t find herself a husband. She heard his voice on the radio and thought that a man without a memory would do her nicely!”

  I smiled politely. But the truth was that I listened very intently to every minute of the show, and my stomach quivered as the men began to speak. What would it be like, I wondered, if Osamu’s voice suddenly emerged from the crackling radio? If he had been lost somewhere in the South Seas, falsely reported dead by his comrades? Would I have telephoned the radio studio, if I heard him, I wondered? Even now?

  My memory of him was fading, I realized. The picture of us together in my mind was frozen in time now, like an old photograph.

  I became nervous as well when the young boys began to speak, telling tales of lost mothers and fathers. Tears had welled in my eyes one afternoon, when as an Osaka boy described losing his family in the fire raids just nights after I lost my own. I’d been filled with hopeless guilt and despair. What would I do if Hiroshi’s voice suddenly, miraculously emerged from the speaker?

  “I lost my sister, Satsuko Takara, on the night of the Great Fire Raid, but can remember nothing more. My only wish is to see her again . . . ”

  Had I given up the search too soon? Mrs. Ishino had told me I’d done more than my filial duty, that I must simply get on with my own life now. But so many of us were still lost, it seemed; so many were still struggling to find their way back home.

  I sighed as Masuko switched off the radio. She began polishing ashtrays and laying them out on the tables and I went back to the kitchen to salt the fried potatoes. After a while, I heard the sound of footsteps from upstairs. As I put my head around the door, I saw the American sitting at the bar, reading his book. He glanced up in surprise. I smiled at him shyly. His face lit up and his deep blue eyes gazed directly at me. He slid a match into the pages to mark his place and placed the book down upon the counter.

  26

  LA BOHÈME

  (OSAMU MARUKI)

  I spent much of spring in a state of dissolution, my vow to seek out Satsuko Takara blurring steadily away to transparency in countless glasses of kasutori shochu. I relapsed into torpor, a paralysis, as if the natural cords between motivation and action had been entirely severed.

  Then, I was seized with a bout of the stunning, virulent malaria that had tortured me in New Guinea, and while the cherry blossoms blushed along the canals, I spun in and out of high fever, harrowed by visions of green chasms and purple corpses.

  Thus it was not until the end of April that I had the energy, or the application, to take up my pen once more. I dedicated my convalescence to writing a novella, which, I was convinced, would capture the elusive spirit of our times. It followed the transmission, in excruciating stages, of a virus fro
m an American soldier to a young Japanese artist. I felt it was by far my most compelling work to date, and I confidently submitted it to several of the leading literary reviews of the day, entitled simply, “The Germ.”

  It proved too avant-garde to be published. “Obtuse,” the responses noted. “Incoherent.” But this was just further proof, I realized, of something I was coming increasingly to understand.

  Men were starving to death in the Tokyo streets, our nation knelt grovelling before an army of occupation. This was no time for deep examinations of the human condition. What was needed now was diversion and distraction: American pin-ups and bare-knuckle wrestlers; baseball games and “The Apple Song” piped through countless speakers. It was an age for fairy tales, I thought, for the rabbit in the moon.

  I received the last of my rejection notes in the morning, and was slumped drunk by midday, the manuscript of “The Germ” in cinders in the stove. When I awoke later that evening, I felt maudlin and out of sorts, and I reached in my drawer for a faithful tablet of courage. As it dissolved beneath my tongue, a cheery chemical abandon erupted into my bloodstream. The room seemed suddenly claustrophobic, and so I slipped downstairs to immerse myself in the comforting waters of the demi-monde.

  The bar was busy. A haze of acrid smoke lapped the walls, the revelries already in full swing. Two editors from a leading review of the day were sitting in an advanced state of disrepair at the counter, dribbling over their glasses.

  In the centre of the room was a clique I didn’t recognize. They were celebrating, and I hovered nearby on the off chance they might offer me something to drink. At the centre of the party was a man with a goat beard, wearing dark, round glasses and a wine red beret. The young people at his table refilled his glass each time he took a sip, laughing uproariously at every word he said.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Nakamura, who had appeared by my side. He was grinning drunkenly, and seemed very pleased with himself.

  “You’re behind the times, sensei,” he said. “That’s Kano, the famous film director.”

  “Oh,” I murmured. “Well, the cinema . . . ”

  I had heard of the man of course — his “kiss” film had been the talk of Tokyo for weeks. One could hardly enter a room without overhearing allusions to his genius, his “distillation of the modern spirit.”

  “Why don’t you come and meet him?” Nakamura suggested.

  “You’re acquainted with him, I suppose?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, grinning. “He wants me to work on his next film. Just some sketches for scenery, you understand . . . ”

  That wily old raccoon. Taking advantage of my illness to cozy up to film directors . . . Several of Nakamura’s new cartoons had been published in the Asahi Shimbun that month. He had even started to ramble about founding a new magazine devoted entirely to manga.

  “Well,” I said, “perhaps I’ll drop over later. Though I haven’t much time for cinema people.”

  “Come on, Maruki,” he said, gripping my arm. “Don’t be such a snob.”

  “Nakamura, not now, please . . . ”

  “Come on,” he said bluntly, and I smelled the booze on his breath. “It’s his birthday. And he’s buying.”

  With a sigh, I let Nakamura draw me over to the table, sharply aware of the Philopon now off on its gleeful spirals around my bloodstream. Most of the men at the table were young, with slick hair and gaudy shirts, shrieking with laughter as theatrical types so often do. None looked up as we approached, and I found myself considering them resentfully.

  To my embarrassment, Nakamura suddenly shoved me forward and I banged against the table.

  “Maruki-sensei!” he announced, sniggering, “The famous, talented writer!”

  The group looked up at me askance. I tried to back away, cursing Nakamura for his boorishness, but Kano held up his hand. He took off his dark glasses and turned to me with a twinkle in his eye.

  “We were just discussing our traditional Japanese culture, Maruki-san. Whether it still has any place at all in a modern nation. What is your view?”

  I wondered if it was a trap, as I looked around at the shining eyes, the arch smiles. Someone pushed a glass of shochu toward me and I drained it. As I looked at the smug faces, I felt a sudden wave of recklessness — inspired, no doubt by the combination of shochu and amphetamine now pulsing through me. I’d throw their superiority right back in their faces, I thought.

  “I think our ‘magnificent culture’ has all turned to piss, sensei,” I said, turning on my heel, deciding that I would march straight out to another, less condescending watering hole.

  To my surprise, a peal of high laughter came from Kano. Quickly, the rest of his disciples followed suit.

  I turned. Kano was smiling at me.

  “Thank you, Maruki-san,” he said. “You see, we’ve just returned from the theatre.”

  I felt a tinge of doubt. “Well, the kabuki, of course —”

  He cut me off. “Actually, I was thoroughly bored by it all.”

  A smile played on his lips. The heads of the others swivelled toward him, like acolytes waiting for a sutra to drop from the mouth of the Buddha.

  “Is that so?”

  He smiled. “Don’t misunderstand me, Maruki-san. I have always been a great fan of the theatre, ever since I was a boy. But so much else has been lost that it seemed somehow meaningless to me. Hence my boredom.”

  “I see,” I muttered, not quite following.

  “It was as if one was attending a birthday party, surrounded by all sorts of delightful guests, and treated to all manner of delicacies, only to be told that the host had just died.”

  The acolytes chuckled, though I knew that none of them had a clue what he was talking about either. He took a cigarette from a packet in his side pocket — French, I noticed, they must have cost a fortune — lit it, then blew out the smoke in a tangled ring.

  “And just then. Just think. I visited the urinal.”

  There were snorts of laughter. Kano was smiling dreamily. “I thought to myself — how many thousands must have pissed here on this same spot in the past? How many generations have passed water here over the decades, the centuries, even. How many gallons of saké and shochu have drained away; how many fathers and sons have stood here, aiming, shivering with the same primordial satisfaction? That most universal, absent-minded moment of pleasure, when even the most sophisticated man approaches the divine simplicity of the Buddha . . . The smell was overwhelming, and yet I stood, inhaling the fumes, thinking to myself — how wonderful! How delightful! And then — do you know what I thought? I thought, This is it. This is the true smell of culture. This is where the soul of a nation truly resides.”

  The disciples shook their heads at such erudition. Mrs. Shimamura approached the table carrying two large bottles of saké.

  Kano looked at me directly. “Culture’s a pretty sorry thing if it lives in a few temples and monuments, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “But it’s always still there, you see? In the habits, the manners, the customs of the people. They can’t be destroyed, Maruki-san. The way people talk. They way they laugh. And yes — the way they piss. And so thank you, sensei, you are indeed correct. Our magnificent culture has indeed all been turned to piss. And that, if I may say so, is where it’s always been. When everything else has been stripped away — that is where any culture finds its true essence.”

  Loud and enthusiastic applause burst from all sides of the table and there was a hammering of feet upon the wooden floor. I hardly knew where to look. Kano raised his glass, and proposed a toast: “To a true scholar of the modern age!” Another large glass appeared in front of me. With an unsteady grin, I raised it to the assembled company and tipped it down my throat.

  Room was made for me at the table. As Mrs. Shimamura set down bottles and snacks, she glanced at me in amusement. Soon
enough, I felt relaxed and cheerful. Every so often, someone would bang the table and stand up and declare that they were “off to analyze our true culture” and everyone would laugh as the man went outside to urinate in the alley.

  I found myself sitting next to Kano. He pushed his cigarettes toward me in an encouraging manner. The tobacco was delicious, and he talked to me in a conspiratorial way, as if we were both men of the world.

  “And how are you surviving these morbid times, Maruki?” he asked politely.

  “Well,” I said, hesitantly. “I print a small journal. Nothing of any great consequence, you understand.”

  Mrs. Shimamura was leaning over the table, wiping away a spillage.

  “Oh?” Kano inquired.

  “It’s been a great success, sensei!” Mrs. Shimamura piped up. “Better than half the other rubbish out there at the moment.”

  My face flushed. Hastily, I insisted: “It’s just popular entertainment of course, sensei. Nothing of any artistic merit.”

  He frowned. “What’s it called?” he asked.

  “It’s called ERO, sensei,” interjected Mrs. Shimamura, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “It’s really very popular. I was just thinking, perhaps, that sensei might like to take a look at it himself. In fact, I think we have a few spare issues behind the bar.”

  I jumped up from my seat. “Thank you Mrs. Shimamura! That won’t be necessary! Now, if you’ll excuse us . . . ”

  But Kano was looking at her. “There’s no need, obasan,” he said. “I’ve read every copy.”

  I was stunned. Kano, I thought, reading my rag?

  “Not so much for the erotic pieces, you understand,” he went on. “But for the ‘man-in-the-street’ interviews. I think they are are an act of genius.”

  I was speechless.

  “Yes, they’re quite remarkable. I look to them for inspiration. You truly have the ‘human touch,’ Maruki-sensei. You are a true pioneer.”