Fireflies (15 page)

“We own this ward,” she said, staring at me with startled eyes. “You'll pay your share like anyone else.”

The point jabbed into my flesh and I screamed. She suddenly drew it away, and I fell sobbing to the ground. The girls were pulling my things from my bag now, pocketing what they wanted and flinging the rest away like foxes devouring a chicken. The stout girl was stroking my stole as if it were a cat.

The woman in the crimson frock squatted beside me. The knife blade glistened in her hand.

“I've seen you before,” she said, in an empty voice. “I've seen how you look at us.”

I shook my head desperately.

“Do you really think you're better than us?” she asked. She raised the knife and drew the blade around my neck. My entire skin crawled. A humiliating seepage came from between my legs. She smiled as drops spattered against the ground. “See? You're no different.”

I fainted dead away.

When I came to, the women were disappearing underneath the iron struts of the railway bridge, curses and animal shrieks echoing behind them. My blouse was torn and my stockings were shredded. When I touched one side of my face, my mouth was swollen, and my fingers came away smeared with dark blood.

As I struggled to my feet, I squinted at a card that lay on the ground in front of me. It was ornate, emblazoned with a red satin peony, and inscribed with hand-brushed words. The symbols spelled out a name.
Ketsueki Sakura Gumi
, I read.

The Blood Cherry Gang.

~ ~ ~

So it seemed we really were to have equal rights in Japan now. Women would be able to vote and the men could no longer divorce us whenever they chose, and now we even had our own lady gangsters to terrorize us, just as the men had had the yakuza all this time.

The Blood Cherry girls were already infamous at the Oasis, I discovered. The rumour went that they had all made a blood pact. Their leader, Junko — the woman in the crimson frock -— had once been the famous geisha “Willow Tree” and the mistress of Akamatsu, the ace fighter pilot. They were witches in human form; they were
kitsune,
fox-spirits, who could bewitch men and even shift shape when they chose to. It was all nonsense, of course, but, when I recalled my nightmarish meeting with them, it was still enough to send a shiver down my spine.

In any case, the gang was composed of the very worst kind of pan-pan who worked the area between Yurakucho and the Kachidoki Bridge, which they now claimed as their own territory. Dressed in lurid clothes, their faces garishly painted, they claimed the right to organize all the girls in the surrounding streets, which meant harassing them, bullying them, and stealing from them as much as they could. And it was the Blood Cherry girls who, for some unfortunate reason, had decided that I needed to be punished.

~ ~ ~

I was squatting in the filthy lavatory shed outside the Oasis when I felt a sharp pain, as if hot needles were passing through me. I knew straight away what it was. The other girls had talked about it often enough.

The doctor confirmed my suspicions when he made his rounds the following week. I was distraught. Mr. Shiga would be informed and I would be obliged now to take several weeks off work, in which time I wouldn't earn a sen. I'd have to find the money for medicine to treat the condition, which was only available through the black market, and which, of course, was extremely expensive.

I approached Mr. Shiga on my hands and knees, begging him to advance me a loan. To my horror, he dismissed me, right on the spot.

“You've been an embarrassment for months now,” he said. “Just look at yourself, Takara-san. This is the last straw.”

Stunned, I packed up my makeup and my collection of trinkets. I said goodbye to some of the other girls, and walked out of the old bomb shelter for the last time. When I got home, I filled the pail from the standpipe in the street, then went inside and sponged myself slowly down. Afterward, I studied myself for a long time in the mirror. Hollow sockets stared back at me, and my hair was lank and brittle. My belly was swollen, and my arms and legs looked like sticks. A red sore had formed at the side of my mouth and my ribs showed under my shrunken breasts. I looked like a ghost.

Wearily, I wrapped up my beautiful green kimono, and took it back down to the Shimbashi market.

“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 railway 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.