The Electrical Field (17 page)

Eiji knew my secrets. Even the things I hid from him, he knew, though he said nothing. Things Stum would never easily comprehend. One morning we were there early on the beach at Port Dover; the air hung heavy and grey as curtains. The moon dangled above us, more and more a shadow as the sky lightened. Eiji ran ahead, his feet tearing up wet brown clumps of sand. My little legs stretched to step into each dark hole he left. He slammed into the water—I heard the slap of his legs against the wall of it—then dived under. His head bobbed to the surface, slick and black on the colourless water, out where it was smooth. The giant saw in the mill started up then, razor sharp, searing the air; so sharp it made me grit my teeth.

I suppose that as I grew up, the happier I was with Eiji,
the more I trusted in him, and the greater my fear of losing him was. It was my dark nature that Mama and others saw in the large brooding adult face I wore as a child. But that was not what Eiji saw when he looked at me.

He was waving to me, calling. I slid into the water, paddled out calm as could be. Then a wave crested in front of me, high as a cliff, it seemed. It broke and sent me tumbling, water churning through my nose and mouth; my hair whipped my face and blackened the water. Even then, in those seconds of panic when I could not breathe, could not see, a part of me was serene and waited for him. Then his fingers gripped me, pulled me up; when I broke the surface to sky, everything was keen and still except for the lashing of my own breath, in the air where Eiji held me like a ball or a trophy. The sun was rising, barely brighter than the fading moon.

Eiji swung me on his back to play seahorse, the way we did in bed, only now the covers were waves. I was crying and I was laughing, hysterical thing that I was then; each time he dipped down, I saw my feet disappear into the water and screeched. It was like a ride: each time knowing in your heart that you would come back up, but not knowing when. But when I felt Eiji’s body separate from me once more on the ride, it seemed to drift down farther than before, limp. I tried to pull him up but I was slipping, the water cuffed my neck; I arched my back to keep my head up. Suddenly I was frantic, climbing him like a tree in a flood; under my feet, his body went down the slightest bit more, and still I held him tight, trying to save us both, I told myself, but I was the dead weight. At last he surfaced violently, head thrust back. “Let go! Let go!” he sputtered, wrenching my fingers from his
neck. I did what he said, and as I let go I could only stare at my hands in shock. All along, I’d been holding too tight, making him go down.

Eiji laid me on my back and let me go with the waves. “I was playing, Asa,” he said, “just playing.” I struggled at first, then surrendered. “Now look at the sky,” he said as we both floated face-up, and that was all there was. Sky. Everything that held your body in this world, and nothing.

I lay in my bed countless mornings after, trying to regain that feeling. The way he let me on his back again and swam to shore slowly, carried by the waves. I held his shoulders gently, as he showed me. “That’s what drowning people do, they can’t help it, Asa,” he told me, because I’d gone quiet, sheepish. Ashamed. Underwater my hands looked like sea creatures that latch on to feed themselves.

We played seahorse on the beach, Eiji running with me and dropping me on the sand, making me forget my shame, and we rolled in the sand, our whole bodies growing dark and furry. “You couldn’t help it, Asa,” Eiji whispered to me again on the road back. “I shouldn’t have taken you out so deep.” I must have lapsed into my brooding silence; that horror at myself and what I’d almost done returned. My hands seemed to have grown large and heavy, the fingers thick and swollen. They hung like anchors as we walked, and my thighs chafed one another with the sand between them.

It was that very morning, when I went to my room to change for school, that I saw it: a trickle of blood in the sand on my thigh. I was ten or eleven then; it was two years before we’d have to leave for the camps. What did I know? Mama barely came near me. She pushed me away with the repulsion
you can only have for one you are obligated to love and care for. I searched for a cut, a scrape, but I knew it came from my chin chin, though it was not sore down there. Eiji knew too but never said; his eyes, I remembered, had lingered there for a second as we walked. Knowing he knew, I didn’t panic. He was not like other boys. He knew, simply from instinct. Outside my door there were rags and pins left for me, and I felt safe then, with the dark cloth blotting me up like diapers. Eiji kept my secrets for me, for ever.

The last time I bled was just after he died. It didn’t surprise me that it stopped. It didn’t worry me because I knew right then what my life was to be. It was startling, really, when I think back. For a girl of fourteen to know this, accept it. Wiping the steamed mirror now, I half expected to see that young face of an old soul.

At that moment, downstairs, there was a knock at the door; I recognized it as Sachi’s, her tentative rhythm. I pulled myself together as best I could and slowly made my way down, rehearsing in my mind what I would say to her; how I would smooth over that night when I had heard her little voice on the telephone and not responded. It now seemed light-years ago. I put on a smile as I opened the door.

There she stood, agitated as ever, bobbing up and down in that way that set me off immediately. I lost my smile. Her hair still hadn’t been washed, but she wore a little clip that pulled it to the side severely. Her braces were still clogged with food bits. How could Keiko let her out like this? Not that she could be stopped. I watched her through the screen, hesitant to open the door.

“Aren’t you going to let me in?” She pulled the handle,
shaking the door, which remained locked as it usually was at night until I opened it to take my morning walk. Something I hadn’t done since I’d heard about Chisako.

“Let go,” I ordered, my tone perhaps a little too clipped. Sachi stepped back. She didn’t lunge for the door as I expected once I released the lock; instead she stood there meekly, waiting for me to invite her in. I had barely opened it an inch when she slipped her scrawny body inside.

“So,” I stammered. “What have you been doing with yourself?” Instantly I chided myself for such a question.

“Nothing,” she answered, listless. “I wait for the newspaper every morning. The delivery boy thinks I’m crazy.” Before I knew it, she’d propped herself up in my chair in front of the window, staring out at the Yanos’ house. “You can see everything from here, can’t you?” She turned to me. “Everything.”

“I suppose,” I replied. “I have nothing else to do.”

“You should,” she said, rather loudly; then, not without kindness, she added: “Don’t you have friends, Miss Saito?”

It took me aback, this question. She knew me; she knew my life. Was she playing tit for tat, paying me back for the phone call?

“I did,” I finally replied. “I did have a friend.” I nodded towards the Yano house. With that she was silenced. When she turned back from the window, she seemed pierced by deep pain, hunched over by it. How petty of me to suspect her of vengefulness; I felt remorseful seeing her in the light of day. How selfishly I’d behaved that night on the phone. Thinking only of myself. When she was a mere child, really. In such pain.

“Sachi, about the other night—” I began, faltering.

She bopped to her feet. “Miss Saito,” she interrupted, eyes blank, expressionless. “I was wondering.” The words drifting down like snow. I understood then that there was to be no mention of the call. She could be like this: lose her memory of a thing when it suited her; expect the same of me. I eyed her warily. She wanted something from me, I saw that. She stepped close and a concerned look came over her face. “Are you all right, Miss Saito?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look …”

“What?”

“You don’t look like yourself.”

I patted my hair self-consciously, smoothed my skirt. “You caught me at a bad moment. I just came out of the bath,” I explained. “I suppose my hair is a mess.”

“I guess that’s it,” she replied.

Just then there was a scratching at the door, but no one was there. A blur of white and a black nose appeared, sniffing, barely visible through the screen. It was Yano’s dog. Before I could stop her, Sachi had opened the door to let it in and, at the same time, picked up the morning newspaper from the porch. “Nothing there,” she said, handing it to me. “She’s been following me,” she added, shrugging her shoulders innocently. Though the dog had always appeared docile under Yano’s strict hand, I was more than a little afraid, unused to such creatures as I was. It seemed bigger and whiter than when I’d seen it with Yano; it panted fretfully, quivered and yawned; bared its teeth menacingly. I felt unusually faint and weak, an after-effect of my bath, no doubt.

“Don’t worry, Miss Saito,” Sachi said. “She’s gentle.”

I nodded but stepped back to a safe distance. “Shouldn’t you have a leash for it?”

Sachi shrugged. “The lady next door didn’t have one.” She ordered it to sit and it shrank under her outstretched finger, then yawned and settled on its haunches. Sachi was observing it closely. “Dogs yawn when they’re scared,” she said. “It’s not because they’re tired. It’s just a cover.” She scratched it gently at the neck. It was, I had to admit, a beautiful dog, almost feminine in its skittishness, and though it belonged to Yano, it reminded me tragically, absurdly, of Chisako. It wasn’t only the animal’s beauty: the stark whiteness of its fur and its dark eyes and nose. It was its nature, both timid and surly. Mercurial, you might say; changing from moment to moment. For I’d seen the creature many times with Yano, cowering under his broad, threatening hand; then growling, baring its fine, even teeth at me, its plumish tail high in the air; then whimpering with an almost coy piteousness. It peed under my rose-bushes with embarrassed modesty.

Sachi sank to her knees beside the dog and clung to its neck, burying her face in its fur. I couldn’t tell if she was weeping. “She must’ve seen what happened,” she said, her voice muffled by the dog’s fur. “She knows. Don’t you, girl?” The dog squirmed at first, then sat oddly still, its dark eyes glistening with a feral knowingness. Already it seemed to cower less than it had with Yano. “Don’t you, girl?” Sachi cooed gently; more gently, lovingly than I’d ever heard her, even when she was with Tam, alone. “Don’t you?” she repeated, looking into its eyes.

“Now, Sachi,” I started to say. I was about to tell her to pull herself together; a stern hand was needed. But before I could, she’d bounced to her feet again, dry-eyed, frenetic as ever.

“Miss Saito, the dog could pick up their trail. You know. Sniff them out.” She looked ridiculously hopeful.

“Now, Sachi,” I repeated. “It’s not that kind of dog.”

“All dogs follow a scent. Their sense of smell is the strongest of all.”

“I hardly think—”

“Let’s take her to Mackenzie Hill. Please, Miss Saito. Please. To that place. She can catch the scent there. We’ll see where she leads us.” She pleaded like a child, growing excited and demanding as a child does. She couldn’t keep still, fidgeting, jumping on the spot.

I was shaking my head, trying to resist her. Slow and even. “No, no, no,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Leave it to the police,” I said, seizing on that idea. “Tell that nice detective—”

“I already did!” she shouted, rocking back and forth. “He won’t listen.” She hugged the dog once again. “He’s like you,” she wept into its fur. “He doesn’t care.”

“That’s not true—”

“This dog should’ve been Tam’s,” she cried fiercely. “It should’ve! Yano is so selfish!” She was clinging tightly to the dog when it began to whimper hoarsely, then made a high and hysterical noise, struggling with itself to stay sitting as it had been told.

“Sachi!” I said, as gently as I could, taking firm hold
of her arm that held the animal too tightly. “Let go.” The dog reared up and bared its teeth, barking and snapping at us both. I raised my hand over its head and it cowered and sank. I felt a small horror at myself; I’d done just what I’d seen Yano do hundreds of times as he passed by my window.

I felt sorry for the animal as it sat before us, obedient as ever, its ladylike paws neatly lined up; those dark wet eyes that glistened, almost human. Lost without its master, hard as he’d been. It went on whimpering quietly, as much as it would allow itself, as Sachi held me tight, her fingers digging in where they wrapped around my back, her face burrowed in my lap. “She’s waiting, Miss Saito,” Sachi said ominously, like one of those psychics. “Just like us.” I stroked her hair, greasy as it was. I felt her rise with me the tiniest bit as I inhaled, and that made me give in, I suppose; it seemed the most wondrous sensation I’d felt in a long time.

It was a long walk to Mackenzie Hill; Stum had taken his car the night before, and even if he hadn’t, I would never have let the dog inside it. We walked along the gravel shoulder, facing traffic, with Sachi holding the dog on a length of clothesline I’d given her. It amused me to think what an odd threesome we made, but I suppose I enjoyed the charade of appearing as a family, appearing as someone with a life different from my own. The hill loomed ahead, familiar and grey. I lapsed into my very old habit, a whimsical one I had as a girl, of walking with my eyes closed.

“You know who they named that for, don’t you?” Yano would ask, testing me. “You know who that Mackenzie is,
don’t you?” Each time I refused to answer, refused his little history lesson, but he kept at me.

“It’s not the same Mackenzie,” I said.

“There’s only one,” he said. “It’s him all right.”

I shook my head, then scurried ahead, but he caught up with me. “He put us in the camps, Saito-san. He’s the one.”

It was so like Yano to be obsessed in that way. Living in sight of the hill made his wounds fester. It was an ugly hill anyway, a mound of garbage that had filled in a green field. They said the garbage would make a natural fertilizer, but the grasses and trees they’d planted on it years ago were still patchy, ashen, and frail.

“What’s the matter, Miss Saito?”