Awethology Light

by The Awethors

*Author’s Note: the following is the prequel to the forthcoming ‘

  ‘Sweet Dreams Series’ This story is seen through the eyes of a mother, who will one day pass on her family’s destiny.

  Remember

  “Yes. I remember the bomb.”

  The girl looked up into the eyes of the elderly woman seated beside her at the low table.

  Age and glaucoma had obscured her grandmother’s vision, transformed her black hair to gray and turned her skin into a river of wrinkles. Her mind, however, remained sharp. “Why do you wish to know, Hiro-chan?”

  Hiroko Nakajima paused before speaking. Her grandmother’s given name was Chihiro, but all Hiroko’s short life she had affectionately called her Obaasan. The woman spoke with quiet authority, but also kindness. That never changed, but now her voice was one that foretold a need for caution.

  “I have heard Mama and Papa-san speak of it,” Hiroko said. “They told me you lived near Hiroshima during the war.”

  Obaasan gave an ominous nod. “Yes,” she slowly replied, “I lived outside of the city, in the suburbs. That is why I was spared, but not so for so many others. There is more to your question, is there not, Hiro-chan?”

  Hiroko thought before she spoke again; Obaasan understood, and waited. Her grandmother and others often commented on how Hiroko was so mindful for a little girl. She could ask the most honest and mature of questions.

  “It has to do,” Hiroko replied, “with what I have seen, and what I’ve heard at night. Mama-san says you would know.”

  Obaasan’s head rose. Straightening, a painful effort, she adjusted the folds of her yukata. Hiroko stood up and helped Obaasan to her feet.

  The grandmother smiled gratefully as she rested her right hand on Hiroko’s shoulder and took up her thick wooden cane. “Let us take a walk, my inquisitive grandchild,” she said. “There is much to discuss, and to show you.” Hiroko was at the perfect height for her shoulder to steady her grandmother, and they passed slowly through the living room. They paused to step into their sandals, then passed out the sliding glass door and out to the back garden.

  The small, traditional garden was carefully maintained by Hiroko’s grandfather, Hiroshi. The narrow path, a mere six steps, was laid with flat stones and lined with larger rocks taken from various expeditions to the nearby mountains. A small lantern rested in the center, suspended above a statue of Tara, the Goddess of Compassion. Around her, the remnants of recently lit candles and incense remained from the earlier observance of the holiday. Hiroshi would clear these away after the guests had departed.

  Their destination in the garden was the ornate wooden bench before the statue. As they approached, Obaasan said, “I am so glad you can come visit us, Hiro-chan. At my age, getting out is hard to do, and I would miss seeing you.”

  Hiroko smiled. “I like being here,” she replied, “It’s peaceful. I love being around you both.”

  “And we’re happy that you’re around,” affirmed Obaasan as they walked. “I wonder… has your mother told you why you should ask me about the bomb?”

  “No, Obaasan.” They reached the bench, and Hiroko helped her grandmother sit comfortably. With her cane between her gnarled hands, Obaasan looked over her glasses at her granddaughter. Hiroko gazed steadily back; intensely curious. She hoped Obaasan would not be offended by her questioning.

  “You’re much like your mother,” Obaasan replied, and smiled, a relief to Hiroko. “It’s a good thing. Esumi is a seeker who wishes to know more than what is perceived on the surface. I have of course told her the story,” she continued, “but never have I fully explained certain things, Hiro-chan.”

  “What things?” Hiroko asked.

  Obaasan paused. “How I was spared from the blast,” she replied with gravity, and removed her glasses. Obaasan looked hard at Hiroko, and the girl thought she saw the old woman’s eyes change. The irises were a dark, almond brown, but they now opened like the shutter of a camera, an eye within an eye.

  The withered hand that gently took hers made Hiroko relax again. “Look carefully into these eyes, child,” the lady coaxed, “and you will see the universe.”

  Obaasan’s voice echoed. Hiroko looked, there was a reflection in Obaasan’s eyes, and Hiroko could now see herself. She could see her face, and her own eyes began to widen. Hiroko could see and feel them follow her grandmother’s suit.

  She was being drawn right into Obaasan. Then she saw it: darkness, and then millions, no, billions of stars, intermittent flashes of light which reached out for her…

  The hand that held Hiroko’s kept a firm grip. “It is all right, Hiro-chan,” Obaasan said. “You are safe. You must see this with your own eyes. Open them now.”

  Though she hadn’t felt them close, Hiroko opened her eyes as instructed. They stood together on a hill, or perhaps a small mountain. It had to be the latter, Hiroko guessed, because the air seemed thin. They were looking down over a city — or rather, where a city had once stood.

  As far as Hiroko’s eyes could see, the landscape was gray and deserted, a dead zone. Where there once were buildings, there was rubble. Here and there, a sturdier structure had survived the onslaught, but these too were damaged beyond repair. She could see where the roads and streets were, and how they’d been laid out, the borders and squares of a checkerboard. There were no trees, no vehicles, and no people.

  What struck Hiroko was the silence. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “This,” Obaasan said as she gestured with her hand, “was Hiroshima. It is one day after the bomb fell. There were, and are, people here on this day, but they shall not see us. There is no need for us to see them, either. You recognize this place, Hiroko.”

  Obaasan did not ask. Hiroko nodded; she held to Obaasan’s hand as it rested on her shoulder. “I have seen this place,” she said, “and these people.”

  “They are our people, Hiroko-chan. I remember them as well,” Obaasan replied, “for I saw them. I was a nurse attached to one of the hospitals. A terrible time, the end of this war,” she went on. “We were short of doctors and nurses, and also essential medicines, bandages, all manner of supplies. Then the bomb came. What I saw, and what I experienced, shall never leave me.”

  Obaasan sat (this time without difficulty) on a rock outcropping, and Hiroko sat beside her. “What happened?” She asked.

  The woman continued to look down on the city, her face impassive. “I was to have been at the hospital that morning,” Obaasan explained. She spoke as if Hiroko was further down the hill rather than beside her. “Your grandfather had already left for work that morning, and I sent your mother off to school. Esumi was about your age at the time; she does not remember much about it. I suppose that’s just as well.”

  “You said you were spared,” Hiroko ventured. “How?”

  Obaasan turned and looked at her, her expression the same. “The reason for that is why we are here, Hiro-chan. This is not a dream, nor is it imagination. We have traveled back in time to this place because you and I share a special power. It is the power that saved my life.”

  “What is this power?” Hiroko wanted to go back now, but she knew Obaasan would never harm her. They had a reason to be here; Hiroko knew she must listen.

  “It is called the Amida.” Obaasan turned her body to face Hiroko on the rock. “Recently, Esumi and I had a long talk about you,” she explained. “Your mother recognized the signs in you; to those with experience they are confirmation that you have acquired this power. I have passed it down to you. The Amida is why we can sit here and observe this place I lived in so many years ago. That, however, is only one part of the story. I must tell you why I am still alive.”

  Hiroko nodded.

  “The train was late,” Obaasan said, “and crowded. Eventually, we made it to the station. I alighted and made my way out to the street.”

  “Yes,” Hiroko asked, “and then?”

  “I saw the bomb,” Obaasan told her as she looked up and motioned with her hand. Hir
oko’s eyes followed.

  “People were pointing to the sky and saying, ‘look, look at the parachute.’ There was a large one floating down from above,” Obaasan said. “We thought someone was jumping into the city. I thought how strange a thing that was.” She continued without gravity or change of emotion, “Then I saw the explosion.”

  The blue sky disappeared, blotted out by a ball of fire. The ground trembled, and Hiroko felt the heat as from a furnace. She watched the world vanish as if watching a cartoon on television, only this was actually happening. Then Hiroko heard the screams, the same ones from her nightmares…

  “The blast occurred above-ground,” Obaasan carried on. Her voice changed not at all, even as she took Hiroko’s quaking body into her arms. “The rush of energy that came down is what destroyed the city, Hiro-chan. I saw it happen, even as I escaped.”

  Hiroko turned into the folds of Obaasan’s robe and tried to hide from the fire, the intense heat, and the deafening roar. “All I saw was fire,” Obaasan said, her calm voice above the maelstrom, “as everything around me was consumed. I thought the entire world was being torn asunder before my eyes, and I with it. I knew I had only one chance to survive: I traveled away from the blast, back to where I had started my commute.”

  The elements of the nightmare died away, and deathly calm again took over. “You went home?” Hiroko looked up in surprise. “But how?”

  “The power of the Amida. I used it for myself,” Obaasan replied, “in an act of self-preservation. No one outside the family knew of my powers then. As quickly as we arrived here, I returned home. I survived the explosion, the firestorm, and the initial radiation.”

  “Then you did what anyone else would have done, Obaasan. A bird would fly away, or a squirrel would run if you threw a stone at it.”

  “That is so.” Obaasan sighed and continued, “Still, I had a duty to perform. I knew the hospital would need me. I got a ride from a friend who was headed into Hiroshima, but it was a long trip. Panic was setting in, and as we got closer to the city roads became impassable. I ended up walking the last five kilometers to the hospital.”

  She paused, and Hiroko saw the expression. “It was then,” Obaasan breathed, “that I saw what I had avoided.”

  The lady lowered her head. “I saw the destruction of the city,” she said, “and of Japan. I believed I had seen all before: bombed and burned buildings, the war wounds, the shattered limbs, the dismembered bodies, the dead — even worse, the men driven mad by war and what they’d done in service of it.”

  Obaasan sighed. “We did not know what kind of bomb we were dealing with,” she went on. “Burn victims, so many of them were there when I arrived, and more and more were brought in. The doctors at first thought it was a fire bomb, but the burns were different.”

  Hiroko turned to look up at Obaasan. She had removed her glasses, and let them hang by her gold pince-nez. She hid her eyes with one hand and said quietly, “The victims,” she whispered, “were in such agony. Their skin fell from their bodies in strips, and yet they still lived. We did not know about nuclear radiation; I don’t think even the Americans knew what they had unleashed on the world.”

  She returned her hand to her cane and sucked in a deep breath. “The world changed for us Hiro-chan,” she said. “We were adrift; we heard the Emperor speak on the radio and say publicly that errors were made. He had agreed to end the war, to surrender. The divine right which we believed to be ours, to pull the corners of the blanket together, was not so. We as a people had to submit ourselves to the invaders, and as the Emperor said, endure the unendurable, for we had caused much of the suffering. In turn, we too suffered, and I suffer.”

  Hiroko hid her face in her small hands. She wept for some time, and she felt Obaasan’s arm pull her closer. “Why do you weep?” Obaasan asked at length. “Not for me, I hope.”

  “For you,” Hiroko sobbed, “and for all of them. Now I understand why this scared me so. Obaasan, why did we fight?”

  “This is a question we asked ourselves,” Obaasan replied, and her voice took on an embittered tone. “We were lied to, Hiro-chan. We trusted our divine leader, all of our leaders, really. It is something each of us has had to consider and come to terms with. I know now that war equals only one thing, and that is futility. The world knows the madness of war, but future generations always repeat history. They never learn from it.”

  Hiroko looked through her tears as Obaasan gazed down at her. The lady’s smile returned, along with her gentle voice. “I bring you here,” she said, “not to frighten you, Hiro-chan. I have done this so you can see the Amida’s power for yourself. In my life I have seen much. Often I have felt ashamed that I survived this when so many of my friends did not.”

  “Why would you feel ashamed?” Hiroko asked as she wiped her eyes.

  “Part of me,” Obaasan replied, “was thankful to survive, for Hiroshi and Esumi would not be deprived of me. Yet I felt a painful guilt: I feared I abused the Amida for a selfish reason. Over time, I was able to understand my reaction, as you so smartly pointed out. My conscience cleared, I was able to take solace in my husband and daughter. I also saw our nation rise again, but as a different country. My hope is that we stay that country.”

  Hiroko felt Obaasan’s fingers brush along her hairline. “In the end, I did what I had to do. My family still had me, and I could be the person I chose to be.”

  Obaasan’s last words echoed out, and Hiroko opened her eyes. They were seated once again on the bench in the garden. Hiroko wiped her wet face and eyes; she did not want her grandfather or her parents to see them.

  She looked up. Obaasan was still there. “I am sorry if that was too strong,” Obaasan said with a nod, “but you and I share something very special, Hiro-chan. You have seen the worst, but one day,” she declared, “you shall see the best.”

  “I hope so.” Hiroko felt dizzy, and she leaned against her grandmother again. “So I can do these things?” she asked. “I can go back in time?”

  “Yes,” Obaasan replied, “but you should not use it unless you must. You are very young, Hiro-chan, and you have a long life ahead of you. You will be able to live, to work and raise a family. The world is a beautiful place, and we must each take steps to keep it that way.”

  Obaasan slowly got to her feet, again with Hiroko’s help. As they retraced their steps through the garden, Obaasan said, “The reason I took you to that place was to show you what I saw, and what I remembered. Secondly, I needed to show the potential of man, both good and bad. From this, Hiro-chan, you will go forth. I will teach you what I can in what time is granted me. You shall see that what we share is indeed a gift, a most incredible gift.”

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