Fireflies (22 page)

“That's real tough for them.”

He glanced at me sharply.

“You don't understand, Lynch.”

I noticed the wattle of skin beneath his jowls as he shook his head sullenly.

“Are you in some kind of trouble, Mark?” I asked.

He stared at me, mildly incredulous. “Don't you get it, Lynch? I'm next on their goddamned list!”

Sally left us, and Ward and I went out to get a snack at a low noodle place bustling with GIs and their dates. We drank lukewarm beer and slurped at our noodles in the Japanese fashion. Ward began to pluck at his plate of fried dumplings with his chopsticks.

“And how about you, Lynch?” he asked, absently. “The
Stars and Stripes
send you anywhere interesting?”

“They fired me,” I said.

The chopsticks paused in mid air. “What happened?”

“I went to Hiroshima.”

The chopsticks clattered onto the table as an incredulous expression suffused Ward's face. “You actually did it?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

The edges of his wide lips curled up.

“How did it look?”

“More or less the same. Oh, and by the way, Disease X is real.”

The jowls lowered and the inevitable cigar appeared. I told him of the long walk across the red fields, the pulverized city centre, the victims I'd met at the hospital. He clutched my hand, steam beading on his brow from the billowing stockpots.

“Did you take photographs, Hal? Please tell me you took photographs.”

I nodded.

“Where are they?”

“Safe. Most of them. The prints got lost.”

“How? By whom? Got a name?”

“SCAP. Public relations.” I realized that I hardly knew. “They raked me over the coals when I got back, anyhow.”

His eyes narrowed behind a cloud of fragrant smoke. “Who's the pigeon?”

“Does it matter?”

I'd been so tired that night. Eugene's face the next day had been grey and artless, though that could just as well have been his daily hangover. It could have been anybody in the newsroom, I thought. I couldn't even remember if I'd shut my drawer.

Ward's face was animated now, the glow of the restaurant lanterns reflecting in the wide lenses of his spectacles.

“How are you going to play it, Lynch? I can help you. We could file the story here, overseas line. But what about the pictures? They'll never make it out. And the pictures are the story.”

“I know that, Ward.”

He frowned, puffing at the cigar, releasing several big clouds of smoke. Finally he spoke again. “There's only one way I can see it, Hal. You've got to get back to the States. Take the negatives with you. Or have someone else go for you. Then pound on some doors until they're published.”

I pictured a ship, somewhere mid-Pacific, sapphire waves crashing against the hull. An editor's office in New York, overlooking the Hudson. Snowflakes touching the glass, shivering away to nothing.

“They won't let me back in, Ward.”

“Probably not.”

He considered the glowing end of his cigar. “Anything special keeping you in Japan, Hal?”

I pictured my drafty room in Nihonbashi. My mess of blankets, the typewriter on the battered desk. Mrs. Ishino leaning over the bar and pouring me another glass. The serving girl, Primrose — Satsuko — at a side table, a red plastic peony in her hair.

“I guess not.”

He suddenly grinned, shaking his head.

“My goodness, Hal. You really are a dark horse. You know that? A real dark horse.”

He rested his big paw on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye.

“Just remember me when you get your Pulitzer, okay?”

~ ~ ~

I took the long walk home along the river, past dark, ruined fields. As I ducked past the curtain, I saw the place was busy. Satsuko-san wandered over as soon as I sat down, just as if she happened to be passing. She opened up a beer and poured it into two glasses.

“
Cheers
,” she pronounced, smiling at me.

“Cheers,” I replied.

We exchanged pleasant banalities for a while, the familiar patter about food in Japan and back in America. She gave little gasps of surprise and admiration as I regaled her with the exotic dishes I had tried in her country. There was a lull in the conversation. Her lips moved, silently, as if she were phrasing a question. She looked back up at me with a very serious expression. Slowly, she asked: “Do you have pet?”

I laughed.

“Well, yes I do. Or rather, I did once . . . ” I found myself telling her about Finn, the adored, glossy red Irish setter I'd had as a boy.

“When I was young, I used to sleep with my head on his fur. Like it was a pillow. You know — pillow?”

She looked startled. “You go sleep?” she asked, mimicking slumber.

“No, no. Not yet.”

Finn had gone lame as I'd gotten older. One winter morning, just after my twelfth birthday, I was awakened by a distant noise. My breath billowed in the air as I came downstairs. The glass door of my father's gun cabinet hung open, one of the rifles missing. I creaked open the door and touched the smooth metal barrel of its twin. At that moment, my father came tramping back, holding shotgun and shovel. There was sweat on his head, a frail scent of sulphur.

“You have any pets, Satsuko-san? A dog?”

She smiled.

“Cat,” she pronounced with a look of satisfaction. “We feed —” She slithered her hand through the air.

“Eels?” I asked, in a moment of inspiration.

“
So
.” She made a snapping movement with her mouth. “Eel head.”

A great wave of warmth and sympathy coursed through me, a curious sense of privilege to have this fragmentary glimpse into her past, her life before all of this began.

I laughed and she looked at me in surprise. Then, slowly, to my delight, she began to laugh too. Not the tittering laugh of a whore, eager to please, but the genuine laugh of a live woman, a woman with a childhood and a past, who considers her reflection in the mirror, and nods with wistful acceptance.

Finally I stood up, fully intending to head upstairs.

“You sleep now?” she asked.

“I'm going to try.”

She placed her cool hand on my wrist. Her eyes were candid.

“You want take me?”

I hesitated. I felt the delicate pressure of her fingers upon my skin.

“Maybe another time.”

The corners of her lips turned down sulkily. She crossed her arms.

“Well,” I said. “Goodnight.”

I lay fully clothed on my bed, cursing myself as I pictured the inevitable events unfolding below. Men arriving, the gramophone playing, couples swaying back and forth. Satsuko leading another man to the back room. I pictured her smooth, slim body as she pulled her dress over her head, a glimmer of light in her jet black eyes. I almost got up and headed right back downstairs to ask her to come up after all. But before I knew it, I had fallen dead asleep.

25

MRS. ISHINO'S SPECIAL EATING & DRINKING SHOP

(SATSUKO TAKARA)

The water was just coming to a boil as I dropped the scrubbed potatoes into the pan. From the crates piled up in the narrow kitchen, I took cans of spiced meat for sandwiches, tins of dried egg to mix bowls of gluey omelette for the night ahead — those simple snacks that the Americans seemed to find so delicious. They kissed their fingers and applauded as I set bowls of chipped potatoes and greasy fried egg sandwiches in front of them. A far cry from eel liver soup and
unagi-don
!

As I was pouring the water into the sink, Mrs. Ishino sidled into the kitchen through a big cloud of steam.

“Well?” she asked, pinching my arm. “What did you think?”

I frowned, concentrating on the potatoes as they tumbled into the draining basket.

“What did I think of what, Mrs. Ishino?”

“What did you think of the Westerner, of course!”

The American who slept in the attic room upstairs had taken me to the cinema that afternoon.

I shrugged. “I'm sure I don't know, Mrs. Ishino,” I replied. “Does he really seem that different to the rest of them?”

Mrs. Ishino frowned as she considered the question. “Don't you think, Satsuko? More, the ‘sensitive type,' I thought.”

“Really, Mrs. Ishino?” I said, pouring oil into the pan. “Do you think any of them are sensitive?”

Mrs. Ishino let out an exasperated noise.

“Why not find out, Satsuko?” she said, stamping out of the kitchen. “It might not be such a bad idea to have a foreigner looking after you these days!”

I spluttered with laughter as she marched out. As I slid the potatoes into the spattering oil, I pictured the American sitting beside me in the cinema earlier that day, gazing up, bemused, at the screen.

Men in short sleeves had been bustling around the cinemas on the Rokku as we stepped down from the tram in Asakusa that afternoon. Several of the theatres had reopened along the wide avenue now, though their brickwork was still stained by black smoke. Banners for new shops fluttered on bamboo poles in the brisk spring wind, and cinema posters were mounted on billboards above the street, showing Western men with stern jaws and cowboy hats and women with blonde hair and large bosoms.

Just past the old Paradise Picture House, I glanced up. On the side of the wall was a big painted sign advertising a new Japanese film. I froze. Then I grasped hold of the arm of my American. Up there, larger than life, was a picture of Michiko.

My jaw fell. The resemblance was unmistakable. The American misunderstood my expression, and he walked straight up to the booth to buy two tickets. Still stunned, I tried to explain that the film would be in Japanese, that he wouldn't understand a thing. But he just shrugged and smiled, took my hand and led me inside.

There was only one row of seats left at the front of the damaged theatre, and as we took our places, the audience standing behind us seemed restless and agitated. As the light flickered onto the screen, my stomach tightened. The thought of seeing Michiko again — and in such a manner! The names of the actors blazed up on the screen. My eyes widened.
Michiko Nozaki.

The film began, and soon enough, she appeared. I almost clapped my hands in delight. She wore a white, pleated skirt and casually twirled a summer parasol. I settled back in my seat to watch the film. The American squeezed my arm and offered me a hard candy from a paper bag.

I could hardly remember the plot, afterwards; a simple love story, it was all faintly ridiculous. Michiko was the true star of the film. Her beauty simply flooded the screen. The audience jostled behind us whenever she appeared, sighing when she gave that eager, encouraging smile I knew so well.

Her leading man was very handsome, with sharp cheekbones and piercing eyes. I glanced up at the American, who was quite unaware of my emotions as he munched away on his snacks. He looked rather handsome himself, I thought. I squeezed the tiniest bit closer to him.

Toward the end of the film, there was a shock. At the height of the drama, the man accused Michiko of covering up a crime. She tore herself away from him with tears in her eyes. He rushed over and took her in his arms. She turned, half-resisting. And then, quite openly, he leaned forward and kissed her.

A gasp came from the audience. He had kissed her! Full on the lips, in public — just like that. Of course, we had never seen anything like it on the screen before. The audience started shouting and my American laughed, quite bewildered by it all.

As the crowd poured out of the cinema into the spring sunshine, he took my arm and we walked together through the streets of Asakusa. Men were going by with sandwich boards, and some of the stalls on Nakamise Arcade had reopened now, selling flimsy mirrors and trinkets to the passing soldiers.

Cherry blossom hung from the scorched trees that leaned over Asakusa Pond, though it was more like a flooded bomb crater now. We sat on a bench and gazed at the flowers for a while, and I pointed out the scorched patch that had once been Hanayashiki Park with its golden horses, and, on the other side, the mound of rubble that had once been my old high school.

“Where did you live, Satsuko?” he asked, quite suddenly.

I frowned, and waved my hand vaguely in the direction of Umamichi Street, over on the far side of the temple precinct.

He fell silent for a long time, apparently lost in thought. Perhaps he really was different from the other Westerners, I thought. Darker, more brooding. I knew so little about him. Where had he fought during the war? Had he been a pilot, up there in one of the planes?

It was the question that none of us girls ever asked. I might have seen him one night, I thought, as he flew low across Tokyo. His handsome face behind the quilted nose of the cockpit, the glass glinting with the light of the fires raging below.

A muscle tightened in his jaw. I should hate him, I thought, for what they had done. But as we sat there in silence together, he took my scarred hand and held it between his palms. For a moment, as the breeze blew the blossom onto the surface of the dark water, it felt as if the sky was exhaling, as if the earth itself were silently offering up flowers for the souls of the dead.

~ ~ ~

The potatoes hissed and sizzled in the pan as Masuko came into the bar and switched on the radio. My ears pricked up straight away.

“Who Am I?” had come on the air that month. It featured displaced persons from all over the Japanese Empire who had lost their memories during the war. Now, on their return home, they were trying to discover exactly who they were and where they had come from. The presenter interviewed them on air in the hope that someone out there might recognize their voice or recall some clue about them.

“Can you remember anything about your childhood, sir?” he was asking, as Masuko turned up the volume. “The village festivals, perhaps, or where you went to school?”

A man's voice crackled in reply. “I can't remember much of anything, sir, just that we lived in the countryside. Our teacher was Matsukawa-sensei. He was so strict! I remember he beat me once when I lost one of the buttons of my school uniform . . . ”

Masuko laughed out loud, and I took the pan from the heat and walked through to the bar in my apron. She was a short girl, as cheery as a sparrow, and had a lovely hint of the south in her voice. We'd quickly fallen into an enjoyable routine together, visiting the market for vegetables in the morning, clearing and polishing the bar in the afternoon and gossiping about Mrs. Ishino and what we referred to as her “mysterious past.”

Masuko found the show very entertaining, though for all the wrong reasons. A sly smile played on her wide lips as she listened to the next segment.

“And now for some success stories,” announced the presenter. “Last week the loyal wife of Mr. Kawachi heard her husband's voice on our programme, and boarded the train straight away from Kobe to come to our studio and collect him. They are now reunited in joy in their marital home.”

“What rubbish!” cawed Masuko. “I bet Mrs. Kawachi's just some old hag who can't find herself a husband. She heard his voice on the radio and thought that a man without a memory would do her nicely!”

I smiled politely. But the truth was that I listened very intently to every minute of the show, and my stomach quivered as the men began to speak. What would it be like, I wondered, if Osamu's voice suddenly emerged from the crackling radio? If he had been lost somewhere in the South Seas, falsely reported dead by his comrades? Would I have telephoned the radio studio, if I heard him, I wondered? Even now?

My memory of him was fading, I realized. The picture of us together in my mind was frozen in time now, like an old photograph.

I became nervous as well when the young boys began to speak, telling tales of lost mothers and fathers. Tears had welled in my eyes one afternoon, when as an Osaka boy described losing his family in the fire raids just nights after I lost my own. I'd been filled with hopeless guilt and despair. What would I do if Hiroshi's voice suddenly, miraculously emerged from the speaker?

“I lost my sister, Satsuko Takara, on the night of the Great Fire Raid, but can remember nothing more. My only wish is to see her again . . . ”

Had I given up the search too soon? Mrs. Ishino had told me I'd done more than my filial duty, that I must simply get on with my own life now. But so many of us were still lost, it seemed; so many were still struggling to find their way back home.

I sighed as Masuko switched off the radio. She began polishing ashtrays and laying them out on the tables and I went back to the kitchen to salt the fried potatoes. After a while, I heard the sound of footsteps from upstairs. As I put my head around the door, I saw the American sitting at the bar, reading his book. He glanced up in surprise. I smiled at him shyly. His face lit up and his deep blue eyes gazed directly at me. He slid a match into the pages to mark his place and placed the book down upon the counter.