A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding (13 page)

We stood next to widows dressed in black, hair scraped back, eyes damp with tears. In front of them were sombre children, summer-fresh in white cotton dresses, shorts and straw hats. Surrounded by one-storey wooden buildings that had risen from the rubble, we watched a procession of women as they danced in peach and coral kimonos. Next came a black-and-gold silk dancing dragon, its writhing body held aloft on poles by men. Buddhist monks followed covered head to toe in white, and then toward the end of the parade, survivors held aloft canvas placards, painted with the word ‘Peace'. Later we walked down to the river, its surface shattered by sunlight. We followed the tramlines to Tsukimachi and I found myself only a short distance away from the place where we began. I could not help myself; I had to go and look; I had to see the building once more.

I told Natsu and Hideo I knew a short cut to avoid the crowds and traffic. We headed past the rows of champon and sara udon restaurants, their red lanterns still in the heat of the afternoon. Women hid from the sun under parasols. They gossiped as they walked under sheets dripping wet from the lines that stretched across the street from balconies. Housewives bartered for live eels wriggling in wooden buckets; they smelled the wart skin of bitter melons for ripeness, picked among the baskets of lime-green silk squashes and swollen purple eggplants. Rotten fruit abandoned in the dirt soured the air as men in aprons strung plucked ducks on hooks and greeted passers-by with the trading prices of the day. Remember that scene, Yuko? Remember what it meant
to us? I searched for our apartment, but it is gone. A pachinko parlour stands in its place. Even if the building is no more the memory of what happened there taunts me. I think back to that last afternoon we spent together in that room, your father standing there, telling me to go. I hate myself for not staying, not fighting, not telling him what we meant to one another. The family left to me, Natsu and Hideo, walked on ahead. I felt unworthy of this second chance. I do not deserve to have the burden of your loss eased by Hideo's presence. But he allows me to create new memories. He is the living wreckage I pull from the flames of August 9.

I was glad that blackened facade of rooms to rent by the hour was gone. For that hovel to have survived and Yuko to have not would have been too cruel. Hideo had soothed the sorrow of Sato's past. Kenzo and I had been denied such a gift.We had left Nagasaki so that the city might not torment us but, even in my American sanctuary, Sato was making me do what I had tried to avoid for so long: look back. I had mostly managed to keep my mind's eye on only the good from the life we had abandoned, the days spent drawing with Yuko when she was a child, the mornings passed watching her try to play the shamisen as her teacher quietly despaired at her clumsiness, the trips shared with her to the markets to choose Kenzo a gift, the joy of hearing her singing to herself in the garden, her voice trembling at the high notes. These recollections were sweetly, desperately bearable if I tried not to think on them too long. Harder memories sometimes pushed their way through, but if they dared, I trained my mind to
fight back. Go to the shops, clean that cupboard, and if all else failed, pour that drink.

Sato's letters were dragging me back, forcing me to unearth all that I had kept hidden, but I couldn't tear myself away from his version of the past we shared. I wanted to hold these letters up to the dark light of my own memory. He had asked the same question that haunted me. Why was I still here when Yuko was gone? Why should we survive? I could not answer for him but if I believed in a god, my deity would have been a vengeful one. He would have ruled my death alongside my daughter too easy an outcome. My punishment must never stop being dispensed. My life was my sackcloth and my ashes. Sato must have reached a different conclusion. Maybe he thought he had been kept alive to save that boy. In turn this Ko, or Hideo, or whoever he was, would save him. Yes, I could see the reasons why Sato had needed the boy to be Yuko's son, but I felt the opposite: my grandson was too pure for any world that would keep Sato and me alive but claim my daughter. Only scavengers and liars and cheats survived. The best of us died young back then.

Kenkyo: Modesty is one of the most important concepts of virtue in Japan. People are expected to be humble and modest regardless of their social position. They are supposed to modulate the display of their ability, talent, knowledge or wealth in an appropriate manner. Self-assertiveness, aggressiveness and ambitiousness are all more or less discouraged, and consideration for others encouraged.

The knock was timid, unsure, as if he expected me to ignore him. I opened the door and we said cautious hellos to one another, shy without the whiskey. He stepped inside and removed his shoes and padded through to the kitchen in his socks. By the time I joined him, he was sitting in Kenzo's seat.

‘I've made tea, and there are doughnuts, or I can make you a sandwich. You must be hungry.'

‘Please, don't rush around for me.' He seemed exhausted.

‘How did the conference go?'

He undid the knot of his tie. ‘Speaking in America can be a challenge. You don't want to be seen as lecturing or hectoring about the evils of the atomic bomb but also you have a duty to speak up, to say, this is what happened, not what you think happened.' He gestured at his face. ‘And people find this too much, sometimes.'

I did not know how to respond so I set the cups and
saucers on the table, brought over a knife for the doughnuts and two napkins. I realised I had no side plates and looked for them in the cupboard nearest the door. Even these small chores flustered me, the simplest task of preparing refreshments for two people, not one, a trial. I sat opposite him, his face so close, the red lids with no eyelashes, the mottled yellow and pink ridges, the scars from surgeons' incisions. Despite the lack of expression, his face was fascinating. If beauty was uniformity, he should have seemed abhorrent but the blasted skin around his eyes just made them seem brighter, more inquisitive. ‘Have the contents of the package been helpful?'

I answered as honestly as I could. ‘They're letters from Jomei. He mentions your orphanage and the adoption of a boy called Ko. That's you, yes? And a girl called Miki.'

‘Ko is me, yes, and Miki, well, how to explain her?'

He told me the story of when he arrived at the orphanage, how the doctor who worked at the centre before Sato made him sleep in the ward, in isolation. They were worried about infections and they didn't want him to alarm the other children. His injuries were thought to be too shocking. He didn't like being left in the basement on his own at night. He became convinced there was a demon stalking the corridors when everyone else had gone to bed. He believed this creature wanted to return him to the day of pikadon, or at least carry him off into the mountains. One night, he heard the creak of floorboards and he thought, this is it, this is the end, and he said he felt relieved. He was so lonely. At least the demon would be company. Who would miss him apart from his favourite nun, Sister Abe? The children would
not care. They would not know. At that point in his treatment, his burns could not be exposed to sunlight. He was little more than a rumour to them. He watched the door handle shake and then move down as it released on the catch, and he thought, here he comes, I'm ready. But it wasn't a monster, it was a little girl. This was Miki. She was a little younger than him, with short hair and scabby knees. She visited him most nights, even when he was allowed to sleep with the other children. She would climb into his bed and they would whisper, dream and plan adventures. Sometimes they sneaked outside and ran through the woods, or swam in the pond, or lay under the tree of dolls and Miki told him stories. She had no fear; she did not believe in demons; pikadon had killed them all. Her own parents had been too close to the light, but they were not dead, only lost. They were coming for her. She told him to be patient, his family would return as well. When Miki drowned in the pond, no one believed she had existed, but he kept telling them that Miki had gone in the water. He finished talking, and looked at the floor, maybe embarrassed.

‘Was she real?'

‘Oh, I suspect she was only imagined, but she seemed so real at the time.'

‘She was a comfort.'

‘It's silly, but I still think she's going to come back one day. Like it was a game of hide-and-seek that just got out of hand.' We looked at one another, his blasted flesh, my soured spirit, and I felt an impulse to hold his hand but I did not. ‘So how am I to convince you that I am your grandson, eh?'

‘It is true that I had a grandson and his name was Hideo Watanabe. He would be forty-six years old, but . . .' How could I tell him that Sato appeared to have intertwined a missing boy and an injured one, melded them to ease his conscience, soothe his own loss. ‘Can I ask, when were you told that you might have a grandmother alive?'

‘In my teens. Father told me how he had been close with Grandfather when they were young, how he had worked with Yuko during the war. He learned you had moved abroad. In the chaos of the occupation, a search for you proved impossible.'

‘We moved a couple of times when we came here, yes, in 1947 and 1956, but wouldn't there have been some trail to follow?'

‘Maybe my parents thought you would find us?'

‘And Sato gave Natsu the letters?'

‘She didn't say.'

‘Has she read the letters?'

‘I don't know. Mother gave me the package shortly before she died. She told me the letters were for you and, should I find you, to tell you they were sent in good faith.'

Natsu had burdened me with this final duty: to seal her adopted son's identity or destroy it. Everything he believed himself to be, everything he had imagined his life to be, rested with me and those letters. He was looking to me to join the pieces together and make him whole – the irony of the request. How could he expect me to fill in all those years? The Hideo I had known was not this man. He never would be.

Shinju: The most usual case is that of a man and a woman committing suicide when they believe that their love for each other cannot be fulfilled in this world. Other cases may involve a family suicide as the result of the parents' financial failure in business. Some people might also resort to a family suicide to protect their honour.

Kenzo's office was little more than a cupboard crammed with shelves of books and a writing desk, a chair and a chaise longue. One window looked out on to the trunk of a pine and bushes, black with lack of sunlight. Mrs Goto led Shige into the room. She asked if he would like tea or coffee. He shook his head and sat down on the chaise longue, then got up and walked to the window. Yuko stood hidden in the shadows upstairs. She watched her father come from the direction of the kitchen and close the door behind him. Yuko went to a dark recess beside the office and listened through the wall. The alcove had been a place where she liked to hide as a child.

Shige said he had come that day to ask an important question. He spoke with humble intonation. He wondered if Kenzo would pay him the honour of listening to his request. There was a scrape and a cough, and a ‘certainly'. Next Yuko heard a squeak of leather, and she imagined Shige leaning forward. He said he had enjoyed the
privilege of spending time with Yuko over the past few weeks. He said he realised Kenzo might have hoped for a suitor more equal in status to him, but he was ‘very fond of Yuko'. Kenzo's voice grew bigger as he told Shige, welcoming to hear as this was, fondness got them nowhere. It was a start, but not an end. There was another squeak of leather. ‘Mr Takahashi, please do not think me presumptuous, but I come here today to ask whether you would have any objections if I asked Yuko to marry me?'

Yuko knew this question had been coming, for weeks now, but still its arrival left her breathless.
‘I feel an actor in my own life story
.' There was a sound of a drawer opening and the thud of an object on the desk and then something lighter, followed by the glug of liquid. Yuko pictured her father passing a glass to Shige as he said such rites of passage must be marked with good malt. They toasted each other's health. ‘So, let me understand. You want to marry my daughter?' Silence followed, which perhaps was some gesture of agreement. ‘And how does she feel about you, I wonder?'

Kenzo's voice grew smaller as if he were looking away from Shige. ‘You seem a good man. You have a brain, I can see that. I will not embarrass you and ask about love. I was very much in love with Yuko's mother. That young love, as if the world would end if we weren't together, you know?' Shige said nothing. ‘The question I must ask, as her father, is this: is there more to this declaration of yours than love? We are practical men, you and I. As employees of Mitsubishi we find ourselves at the forefront of our nation's imperial and domestic ambitions. The years ahead will be busy ones with much opportunity for both of us.'

‘I do understand a union with Yuko offers more than just her beauty and kindness, but sir, I assure you, if you will forgive my frankness, it is her love not my own advancement that I seek.'

‘As I said, you are a practical man. I would only hope you had considered the other benefits of marriage to my daughter. But, of course, romantic fool that I fear I am, I'm glad it is not your priority. So, how should we advance this personal matter of yours? Should I ask her to join us here?'

Shige said he'd like permission to take Yuko out, just the two of them. A clink of glasses and Kenzo told him to wait in the hall. She fell back into the darkness as the door opened. Kenzo wished Shige luck and told him he would bring his daughter to the front door.

‘I waited for Shige to leave the study. The grandfather clock ticked away the seconds as I walked from my hiding spot to the kitchen corridor, turned and then headed back toward the hall, pacing myself against those metronomic clicks. Shige looked around and I said hello. I sounded shy, an uncertain child's voice in an adult's body.'

A noise of footfall came from upstairs and Kenzo came halfway down the stairs. ‘Ah, Yuko, Watanabe is here. I understand you have an excursion. Is that not right, Watanabe?'

‘Father retreated back upstairs and Shige managed to look at me. “I thought we might visit Inasa Cemetery.” He knew it was one of my favourite places to sketch. How could I say no?'

They took a taxi, sitting in silence. Yuko watched Shige fidget. His expression hovered somewhere between unease and despair. She tried to smile to reassure him but her dry lips formed more of a grimace. ‘
We must have looked
unlikely lovers.'
They arrived at the entrance and Shige paid the driver. He walked in front of Yuko through the wet mud and grass toward the gravestones inscribed in Dutch. They stopped by a tomb cut into a slab of hillside with an iron railing across the entrance. He touched one of the metal posts and his fingers came away stained with rust. He apologised, called the place morbid, but Yuko told him she found it fascinating. Shige rubbed his forehead and said with a weak smile that they were walking in the oldest foreigner cemetery in Japan, but she probably knew this.

‘I'm not sure whether practicality or kindness made me ask if he had brought me here for a reason. We had been circling the only question that mattered between us since our first meeting on the Dutch Slope. Maybe when I heard the question, I would know the answer. He cleared his throat and moved toward me. We stood face-to-face. “I wanted to bring you here because I knew you liked it, but it seems wrong somehow. All these dead people.” I said it was a fine spot and he seemed to consider this for a while. When he spoke he addressed his feet. “We have spent these past weeks together. They have been most enjoyable. And you know, of course, how I feel about you.” I told him I did not. He seemed confused. “You must know that I admire you.” We were friends, yes, I assured him. He stared at me. “Well, yes, friends, but I see you as, well, more than a friend.”

‘“A sister?” I was not teasing him. I had to be sure. This time I needed a guarantee that I was more than a convenience. How could I know I had his heart as Jomei had captured mine? False words were no good to me.

‘He glanced away, appalled. “No, no. You need me to say it? That I love you? I'm no poet, Yuko. My words are clumsy.” He took hold of my hand. “I am happy when I see you, I miss you when
you are gone. You make me see my own failings but also how I might better myself. Is that not love?”'

Yuko could not say. Her understanding of love had been something different, more brutal and demanding and cruel in the way that one day it was there, the next gone. She thought of those doomed lovers who chose to leave this world rather than one another. Could she? No, she loved life too much to reject it. She had spent her young years capturing the beauty of living: the tensed muscle of a horse, a bird in flight, a mother and child walking hand in hand. Small moments of a glorious whole. She could not turn away from existence however much pain it caused her. And she told herself this: if Jomei was turmoil, Shige was calm. His presence soothed her as did his words. He spoke plainly and in good faith
. ‘I trust him. I am lucky to have found Shige. He will give me freedom that I cannot imagine with my parents. I can see how life can be: a home, a job, a family. Could Jomei have given me any of these? Besides, if he had cared for me, he would have found me again. Shige is a precious gift when I thought my heart dead. Move forward, Mother says, and so I will. It is too painful to live in the past.

‘I looked into Shige's eyes, still so physically shy with him. I pressed his fingers as encouragement and the world drew closer. Everything is in focus, even now, hours later. The shadow of a leaf falls across his face, a robin calls somewhere behind him, the damp fungus and soil scent the air. Shige lifts my hand up. He unfolds my fingers until my palm is open in his own. He lowers his mouth until his lips brush the surface of my life line and love line. He stands back up and I see the pulse of blood beat in a vein in his neck. So much life, just there. I raise my head and with one more beat of our hearts his mouth is upon mine. We stay that way until I am breathless and
must pull away. His question talks around the proposal but I know what he is asking. “Do you want to live in the same grave as me?” I answer yes, and we smile and kiss again and I think, at that moment, in Inasa Cemetery, we are both happy with all that the future might bring. And the truth must be faced: Jomei is gone.'