Fireflies (16 page)

“Michiko!” I screamed. “Michiko!”

I thought for a moment that she had heard me. She cocked her head to one side, then stood on tiptoe and kissed the man on the cheek. His hand slid down her back as he guided her up the red carpet toward the foyer. The truck pulled away, their figures shrinking as we accelerated up the avenue.

We crossed the Kanda River and turned onto the Edo Road. Very soon we would pass through Asakusa. I pictured the Sumida Park to one side of the road, the charred remains of my neighbourhood on the other. As we passed the Kototoi Bridge, I had a sudden, sharp premonition of where we were being taken.

The Yoshiwara canal was dark, the water low, and as we crossed over the bridge, I had a vivid memory of Hiroshi, standing on the high bank opposite as I floundered there, the fire pelting from the sky.

Thank heaven he couldn't see me now, I thought. Thank heaven he was dead. I groaned and pulled my hair over my face.

The truck crunched to a halt. The canvas flaps were pulled aside to show a huge, solitary building with flat grey walls lit by floodlights. Women were shouting and screaming as policemen hauled them from the trucks. I climbed down, shivering in the freezing night, and blinked. American soldiers and Japanese doctors in white coats were herding women toward a gatehouse. From high above us there came eerie shrieking. I gazed up at the towering building, shielding my eyes. Women were leaning out the windows on each level, waving and howling. As we swarmed toward the building, more trucks rolled up to deliver yet more girls. The women called down in a dreadful chorus, their hair falling wild about their shoulders, their tattered white gowns swaying in the wind. It was as if they were a horde of screaming souls, welcoming us all to hell.

18

PUBLIC RELATIONS

(HAL LYNCH)

The corridors of the Continental were quiet and the peace of the Sabbath reigned throughout the building. A smell of roasting chicken drifted from the basement dining room and from somewhere came the regular report of an endless game of ping-pong. I locked my door and heaved my knapsack onto the bed and retrieved my rolls of film. Jittery and exhausted, I needed to sleep, but felt a deep and anxious need to develop my photographs straight away.

I figured I could use the darkroom in the basement of the newspaper office without being disturbed, so I took a taxi without changing my clothes. As I'd hoped, the newsroom was empty, the building silent. I went downstairs and unpacked my kit.

I felt a tightening in my stomach as I drew the first spool of glistening negatives from the reel. I'd had an irrational fear on the train that something would have gone wrong with the exposure, that the radioactivity in the city would somehow have damaged the film, that all I would be left with was blank prints and the uncertainty of memory. But now I could identify the scenes in miniature, as they threaded out under the red glow of the safety lamp, mute testament to the fact that all had truly occurred.

Once the negatives were dry, I lined up the paper beneath the enlarger head, and fed the strip through. I exposed the paper to the light, ticking off the seconds until they were done. One by one, I shook the sheets in the developing fluid. Slowly, the mysterious images welled back into existence.

As the pictures hung there, dripping on the drying line, a sensation of almost unbearable loneliness washed over me. The mangled pile of bicycles in the riverbed. The curving ribs of the ruined dome. The silent Buddha smiling enigmatically as snowflakes settled upon his head. I recalled the strange story the ambulance driver told me of how people's shadows had been burned into the bridges at the moment of the flash, and as I looked into the ancient eyes of the dance instructor, at the frail smile of the withered railwayman, I had a sudden comprehension of the deep, lingering malaise the victims had complained of, the terrible void that had developed within them, as if a cancer had devoured some vital part of their souls.

While the prints dried, I went upstairs to the empty newsroom. I sat at a desk and fed a sheet of carbon paper into the drum of a Smith-Remington. I stared at the blank page for what seemed like an eternity, lost in thought. Then, almost without thinking, I began to press my fingers down on the keys and a confusion of words and letters slowly clicked out onto the page.

“The Aftermath of the Atom,” I titled the piece. I described the day as clearly and as simply as I could, from the moment that I had arrived at the station to the second my train back to Tokyo had passed into the tunnel. Darkness had fallen behind the big plate windows by the time I had finished, and the pool cast by my lamp was the only light burning in the building. I rolled out the final sheet and read the last paragraph out loud.

“While most of the victims of ‘radiation disease' are now dead, it seems clear now that this terrifying new weapon has a capacity to destroy even beyond that which its creators could have foretold. It has the capacity to plant the seeds of a lethal sickness in men's bodies, to scatter poison into their very souls. Whatever moral justification may be found for the nuclear bombings of Japan, any government that believes in justice surely has a duty to help those that it has exposed to this creeping death, that still lurks in their bloodstream so many months after the smoke has cleared. The first step must be to acknowledge its existence.”

The door creaked and I lurched in my chair. A tuneless whistle came from the corner of the room as the big overhead lights glimmered on. Eugene. He assumed the comical expression of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Hal!” he exclaimed, striding toward me. “Don't tell me you're working? It's Sunday night, you chump.”

Hastily, I rearranged the pages on the desk.

“How about you, Eugene? Feeling guilty about something?”

The corners of his mouth turned down.

“Let's just say I forgot something.” He opened the drawer of his desk and palmed a package of prophylactics into his overcoat pocket. He parked himself down on my desk with a grin.

“Where have you been, anyway, Hal? I hardly see you anymore.”

I felt a wave of hopeless sympathy for my old roommate. He'd never seen any action, like all the other fresh recruits now garrisoned in Japan. The country was just a playground for him.

Grime and dirt were ground under my fingernails; developing fluid stained my skin. As I looked up at his cheerful freckled face, the wire-rimmed glasses crooked beneath the thatch of hair, I felt a curious collision of instincts. After a moment of hesitation, I gathered the sheaf of papers on the desk and handed it to him.

“Proof this for me, Eugene.”

He licked his thumb and forefinger as he flipped through the pages. Surprise, astonishment, confusion progressed across his face as he read. I slumped in my chair, aware of the sour reek of my unwashed body.

When he finally finished, he gave a low whistle.

“Boy oh boy, Hal. Do you think Dutch'll go for it?”

I laughed, despairing. “You know, I wasn't planning to file it to the
Stars and Stripes
, Eugene.”

“So where are you going to file it?”

I paused. “I'm not sure yet. One of the nationals, maybe. On an overseas line.”

His face crinkled with distaste.

“So you're a Fancy Dan now, Hal?”

I shrugged, shook my head. He adjusted his glasses.

“I don't get it Hal. Why are you so concerned about the Japs all of a sudden? They started it, didn't they?”

I didn't know what to say. I led him downstairs to the basement and gestured at the prints. He examined each of them in turn, pausing every now and then to take a closer look. Then he became silent for a long time.

“They're quite something, Hal.”

I nodded.

“SCAP was upset enough about our rat man.”

Dear Eugene. I pictured the old bargeman in his raincoat, looking out at the river. Dutch, in his office, accusing me of being morbid. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once.

“So they were, Gene. So they were.”

He looked at me with doubt.

“You're sure you want to do this, Hal? You know you could get in trouble.”

I nodded again.

He frowned.

“Come for a drink?” he asked, hopefully.

I shook my head, my eyes heavy.

“Okay, Hal. You get some rest, do you hear me? I'll see you tomorrow.”

He patted me on the shoulder before climbing back up the stairs. There was a vague sound of whistling and the heavy office door closed with a thud. I was hopelessly fatigued. I took down the prints from the line, peeled the carbon from the typewriter, and slid the photos and the story into my drawer.

~ ~ ~

The next day at noon, freshly showered and shaved, I walked back into the newsroom. Faces glanced up at me, then dropped swiftly back down to their typewriters.

“Did the emperor die?” I asked.

No one replied. I approached my desk with a sharp pang of trepidation. A scribbled memorandum in Dutch's fine handwriting lay upon it: “ASAP.”

My scalp prickled as I casually slid open my drawer.

It was empty. I looked over at Dutch's office. Figures were silhouetted against the glass, and the muffled sound of argument came from within.

Watching the door, I hurried downstairs to the darkroom. I switched on the lights. The developing tins were neatly stacked in the corner of the room. Even the drops of fluid on the floor beneath the drying line had been mopped clean. I hurried back up the stairs just in time to see Eugene arriving at his desk. He glanced at me, the sudden look of a whipped dog passing over his face.

The door to the office swung open and two military policemen stepped out, followed by an extremely anxious-looking Dutch.

“Ah, our roving reporter!” he called when he spotted me.

As the MPs loped over, Dutch stood by his door and rubbed his head.

“Mr. Lynch?” one asked, squaring up to me. He was puffy faced, his skin as soft as a boy's. I realized, absurdly, that I recognized him: the petty officer I'd sat next to on the gun turret of the
Missouri
, on the day of the surrender signing, months before. He frowned in vague recollection.

“We've been asked to fetch you, sir.”

His friendly southern drawl was incongruously loud in the silent newsroom. Everyone was still staring down at their typewriters in studious concentration.

“By whom?”

“Just come along with us, would you, Mr. Lynch?” he said, placing an encouraging hand on my forearm. “There's some folks who want to talk to you.”

~ ~ ~

The Public Relations office was located in a sinister-looking building that had once housed Radio Tokyo, the voice of the Japanese Empire. From here bulletins of lightning victories had rung across the Pacific, the shortwave siren song of Tokyo Rose. The concrete box was painted jet black for camouflage against night attack.

Flanked by the MPs, I walked up the stairs to the wide doorway as a man I somewhat knew emerged. George LeGrand was a photographer from
LIFE
magazine who'd approached me a few weeks earlier to ask my advice on aerial photography.

“Hello, Lynch,” he said pleasantly, nodding toward the MPs. “Everything in order?”

“Hello, LeGrand,” I said. “It seems the brigadier general wants to speak to me about something.”

“Baker?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Who did you shoot?”

“Might just have been myself.”

Brigadier General Frayne Baker was MacArthur's new head of Public Relations — a stony, white-haired North Dakotan, as mean and surly, by all accounts, as his predecessor.

“I wish you luck. In any case, you'll find him in good cheer.”

“Is that so?”

“I've come from him just this moment. We've all been on an exciting duck hunt.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, sure. The Imperial Palace invited him to the Imperial Wild Duck Preserve to try his hand. They give you these big nets, you see . . . ”

The southern boy cleared his throat.

“I'd best be on my way, LeGrand.”

“Okay, Lynch. See you around.” He glanced at the MPs, then gave me a quick wink. In a stage whisper he said: “Don't worry too much about Baker. He's had a damn good lunch.”

When I opened the door to the office, Baker was sitting behind his desk, cap askew, eyes closed, and hands clasped across his chest. A trio of ducks lay on one side of the desk, necks tied together with twine, beaks hanging disconsolately open. A musty smell came from his person, and I had a sudden recollection of my father's den when I was a boy, a bottle on his desk as he slept off a lunchtime load.

I spotted my missing piece on the desk, heavily scored with blue pencil, thick initials circled in the margins. Two photographs lay beside it. I recognized the picture of the schoolteacher. Next to it — strangely, I thought — was the photo of the Buddha statues. Both of the prints had been torn precisely in half.

Baker's eyes flickered open. He spent a second staring at me, attempting to focus on my face.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he snapped.

“I was told to come, sir. Obliged.”

He gave a sullen growl and rubbed the stubble on his chin.

“Who the hell's your editor?”

“Dutch. That is, John Van Buren, sir.”

“
Stars and Stripes
?”

“That's correct.”

He placed his big, liver-spotted hands down on the table.

“You do him a great disservice. As you do your paper. You call yourself a reporter?”

“With the greatest respect, sir —”

“Respect?” His eyes flashed. “Respect? What does a
Stars and Stripes
man know about respect? Do you respect military interdict? What in the hell is a
Stars and Stripes
reporter doing in a restricted area in any case?”

“With the greatest respect, sir, the
Stars and Stripes
has a tradition —”

“Damn the
Stars and Stripes
, sir!” The fist slammed down upon the table with such violence that the beaks of the ducks rattled faintly together. “Damn you. Don't you know I could have you court-martialled right here and now? Do you understand that?”

My mouth was dry. “The public has a right to know what is happening in Hiroshima —”

“The public has all the information they need about Hiroshima, son!” A vein bulged in his forehead, and I recoiled, picturing my father at the height of a fit. “Don't you worry about that. This —” He gestured at the table. “This — horseshit? You think you know better than our best medical men?

“I want to report what I saw, sir —”

“What you saw? What you were shown. And who showed it to you? The Japs.”

He stood up behind his desk. As he leaned forward, I could smell the boozy cave of his mouth.

“Did it ever strike you as convenient, what you saw, sir? Gave you a guided tour, did they? Your own private freak show. Ever consider why they were so keen to show you around?”

He was panting slightly, perspiration on his forehead. I felt a faint stab of doubt. In my mind's eye, I saw the police chief as he scowled at me:
Now — show America what it has done.
Dr. Hiyashida's familiar wave, his gleeful pride as he showed me his most pathetic victims.
Take more pictures!
For your newspaper!

I swallowed. Baker's eyes twitched. “Played you for a fool, you damned idiot. Don't you see? You're a sap. A first-class sap.” He picked up my article and slapped it with one hand. He snorted, as if faintly amused. “Radiation disease.”