Above the East China Sea: A Novel (32 page)

He looks over, gives me a slow smile, and asks, “Now, why would I want to do that?”

I don’t know whether Jake truly believes that his ancestors have ordered him to help me, or if he does want to sleep with me. The only thing that comes across for certain is that he actually wants to be with
me. The instant I accept that, a remembered scent of Pond’s cold cream, green tea, and a not unpleasant, vinegary body odor overwhelms me, and I recall that, of course, the person who used to comfort me as I sat in her lap and she whispered, “
Shi, shi, shi.
No cry,” was Grandma Setsuko.

THIRTY-ONE

Most of the month of May blurred into a never-ending round of too much work and too little sleep and food. And far, far too little water. An instant after the rain stopped, the moisture all disappeared, sucked away by the coral and limestone of our rocky island. And although every surface in the cave was damp, all the moisture, contaminated by salt or human waste, was undrinkable. Though it seemed futile in the face of the round-the-clock bombing, we continued to set out whatever container we could lay our hands on to collect rainwater. Invariably, we found them either filled with dirt or completely overturned by the constant explosions. Or, worst of all, smashed to bits. So we lived with constant thirst and hunger.

One thing did happen near the end of the month, however, to brighten the drudgery: Hatsuko and I received a letter. All mail from overseas had ceased long ago, when the enemy cut off our shipping lanes. Even within the island, it was impossible to communicate with our families left behind. This letter, however, was delivered directly to us by Kenta Higa, our oldest living brother’s best friend. Kenta, a handsome boy with fine, long limbs and hair that shone as if it were lacquered, had been sent home from the Philippines when the leprosy he’d contracted there had worn his fingers and toes to nubs. After he delivered the letter to our cave, he left us and continued on, making his way to the Airakuen leper colony where he would live out what remained of his days. We waved good-bye from the safety of the cave opening as Kenta walked away in broad daylight, his stride still strong and straight, with no apparent concern for the planes buzzing through the sky above his head.

Her hands trembling, Hatsuko carefully unfolded the tissue-thin paper that doubled as an envelope. “It’s from Takashi.” We both had always idolized our second brother. Where Ichirō had been the most handsome of the boys, Takashi was always the smartest. I pressed my fingers against my lips to silence the little yips of joy breaking forth, and Hatsuko read.

“ ‘Dear Sisters, Since I am certain that nothing could have stopped my hardheaded little Tamiko from joining First Sister, I know that wherever this letter finds you that you will be together. So I send you both greetings from a spot on the Pacific Ocean that I am not allowed to divulge. I am in the top level of the “silkworm shelves,” what we call our bunks because we are stacked in here so tightly. We are suffocating with the heat and sick as dogs from the waves batting us about. Yet I couldn’t be happier, for guess who occupies the two shelves beneath mine? Your brothers Mori and Hiroyuki.’ ”

We gasped with delight. Not only were our brothers alive, they were together. We both covered our mouths then, and tears spilled down over our fingers.

“Go on! Go on!” I finally urged Hatsuko.

“ ‘Mori has stopped vomiting long enough to send his greetings.’ ”

Hatsuko and I laughed. Mori was even more squeamish than Hatsuko. As a boy he threw up at the smell of a rotten papaya.

“ ‘Hiroyuki has stopped singing now long enough to do the same.’ ”

We shook our heads. That was our Hiroyuki, always ready with a song or a joke. He had the carefree temperament of our mother’s family. Hatsuko’s and Mori’s nervous stomachs came from our father’s.

“ ‘Our Okinawan good luck has continued to hold, and all three of us have been transferred back to the headquarters of the 2nd Army at a city on the mainland, the name of which I am not permitted to divulge. There we will be part of the defense of all of southern Japan.’ ”

Hatsuko gently pressed the letter to her chest. “They’ve done it, Tami-chan,” she exulted. “They’ve been accepted as real Japanese, sent to defend the mainland. Father must be so proud. It is all he’s ever wanted.”

“And Mother must be happy, because they are together and will be safe on the mainland.”

“Yes, no enemy has ever invaded the homeland.”

“Read the rest! Read the rest!”

“There isn’t much more. He asks, ‘How are Mother and Father? We
have sent several letters but have received no reply. I know that conditions don’t allow you and Tamiko to write, but we three brothers are so hungry for news from home.’ ” Hatsuko looked up at me, stricken. “But we have written. All those letters before the mail stopped. Did they not receive any of them?”

I shook my head and she continued. “ ‘In closing I will leave you both with a selection from the Imperial Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors that always heartens me: “Obligation is heavier than the mountains but death is lighter than a feather. Do not disgrace yourself by being captured alive, but kill yourself first.” Mori, Horuyuki, and I send you our best wishes and ask for a letter in return as soon as your duties allow. From Second Brother, Takashi.’ ”

“They’re safe,” Hatsuko exulted.

“They’re safe and Mother and Father are safe,” I added. “I just know it.”

Hatsuko didn’t break her vow never to speak of our parents, but she did blink away tears and nod her head.

We read and reread Takashi’s letter so many times that the thin paper became limp from the dampness of the cave and spotted with black where flakes of soot landed on it.

THIRTY-TWO

The next morning when I reported for duty, Head Nurse Tanaka informed me that the surgery ward was swamped and she had assigned me to assist with operations.

“But I’ve had no surgical training,” I objected. “Really, I’ve had no training of any kind.”

“Do your best. Show true Japanese spirit, and don’t disappoint the emperor.” With those words, she retreated to join the other nurses in the supply cave.

I had avoided the surgery ward because it frightened me with its glaring horror-movie lighting. Weeks had passed since the hospital had had any supplies of aspirin, much less morphine or ether. As I made my
way through the maze of tunnels that led to the surgery ward, shrieks of agony echoed out. They grew even more piercing when I entered and saw that where there had been just three operating tables before, now six were crammed into the same space. All of them were being used. The shadows of the doctors and nurses bent over patients danced across the cave walls as if they were demons capering before a fire.

“You!” A nurse with a face like a dried gourd and a smock splattered with blood yelled at me. “Come help us here! Hold his leg down!”

A soldier, naked except for his loincloth, thrashed on the table. It had grown unusual to see a patient move. Their rations had been reduced to two servings a day of gruel so thin it was little more than cloudy water, and most of them had only enough energy to lie on their bunks, hollow-eyed and filled with despair. The patient thrashing on the table was as handsome as Ichirō, my first brother, who had been drowned by a vengeful spirit on the third day of Obon. A strap around the patient’s waist held the young man’s torso in place, but he still flailed his limbs. Feeling as if my hands belonged to someone else, I clutched the soldier’s ankle. He screamed as the doctor poked his gloved fingers into a gaping wound so deep that the femur showed through the blood.

“We can’t save it,” the doctor barked. “Prepare to amputate.”

“No! No! No!” the young soldier screamed. “No. Please let me die! Let me die!”

“Stop disgracing yourself, your family, and our emperor,” the doctor ordered.

“Yes, yes, yes,” the soldier muttered, weeping uncontrollably.

For a moment, as the doctor began, I could hear the bone being cut into; then that sound was drowned out as the soldier’s whimpers rose to the howling shrieks of a beast that faded away until a sharp pain in my upper arm brought them back. I returned to my senses to find the nurse with the gourd face pinching me as hard as she could.

“Don’t you dare faint,” she commanded me.

I gripped the soldier’s leg and he writhed beneath my hands like a python. Time seemed to derail like a film that had unlocked from its sprocket. The soldier’s mouth still gaped open, but his screams no longer reached my ears. In fact, all sounds fell away and a blessed silence blanketed me, until an insistent voice ordered, “Take the leg away.”

The nurse jabbed a sharp elbow into my side and repeated her command. “Stop your daydreaming! Take the leg away.”

She laughed when I looked from her to the leg and found that the soldier was no longer attached to it. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you notice that he’d stopped struggling? Come on! Come on! Get it out of here. That leg’s of no use to anyone anymore.”

I staggered out of the cave, not able to understand how a limb could feel as if it weighed more than an entire body.

“Dump it there,” a soldier with a shovel barked at me from the safety of a shallow cave, where he was digging graves for the bodies piled next to the opening. I laid the leg down carefully, but when I straightened back up nothing around me made sense. I wondered why
Anmā
had allowed the pigs’ pens to become so filthy that their rank odor made me gag. And why hadn’t this muddy field that surrounded me been planted? At this time of year, it should be lined with neat rows of sugarcane and sweet potatoes poking chartreuse buds out of the dark earth.

“Idiot!” A harsh voice exploded the word in my ear as strong arms closed around me and dragged me into the cave. A bomb detonated only a few meters from where I had been standing. The grave digger threw his body over mine to shield me from the spray of rocks and gravel that pelted us.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked when the debris stopped falling. “Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear me yelling at you?”

I almost asked him where my mother was. But abruptly, the film that had come unspooled began running at its proper speed again, and I was in a cave filled with graves, and
Anmā
and our green fields of sweet potatoes were far, far away.