Fat Man and Little Boy (23 page)

He takes a short drag, coughs harshly. His smoke bleeds into their smoke. Tendrils and teeth in a haze.

“Tell me,” says Masumi, “who was the tree before? It reaches out for you. It knows you, as the children do. But it isn't Japanese. It will not speak to me.” Masumi cocks the gun. “Tell me where the tree comes from.”

“Little Boy will tell you,” says Fat Man. “Point your gun at him. I'm tired of being the target.”

THE SEED

“She was a tramp that Fat Man found by the well. She said her name was Anne once, but she never answered to it after. She stayed in his secret cabin all the time, where he keeps all the Jew stuff. Not the museum but the secret museum. She was very thin. She was dying. When I was being a baby he would lay me down beside her bed. She would sprout things. Molds, blades of grass, flowers. Fat Man fed her what he could get her to swallow. He was very kind to her.

“She smelled terrible. We couldn't bathe her. One time Fat Man tried. He wrapped towels around his arms to protect her from his closeness, and tried to carry her to a big bucket full of soapy water. He had a sponge and wash cloth as well. He was saying he would take care of her. He was saying he would make the itching stop. She would scratch herself when she could find the strength, opening sores. The blood would mold if he was anywhere nearby.”

“If Little Boy was near,” says Fat Man, “it would become a stream of marching fire ants as it left her body. They would walk down the blankets, off the bed, and out the door.”

“We understood she wasn't going to get better,” says Little Boy. “I didn't ask—I still wasn't talking—but Fat Man said he wouldn't take her to a doctor because he couldn't afford to pay for the treatment. When she spent more of the day asleep than awake, when she stopped shivering, when she stopped scratching, when she no longer took any notice of the things that grew on her, we knew she would die soon. We gave her so many blankets and pillows. Well, he did. I watched him do it. I still wasn't moving.

“There was a dim spark left in her when it started. We couldn't get far enough away to stop the growth. At first it was mold. It covered her all over like a cocoon, green and white and black, the air around her thick with spores. We could see her moving a little inside it. Fat Man tried to peel it away from her, he tried to tear it open. It grew around his hands. He tore them out. It stuck to him, and grew, and grew. He scraped it off himself and backed away. It changed colors and the surface roiled with familiar shapes. They changed quickly. I thought I saw faces. So did Fat Man.

“We saw each other. We saw the police. We saw Rosie. We saw you. We saw my nurse. We sat to watch. It shed warmth on our faces.”

“She struggled then,” says Fat Man.

“As much as she could. For a moment one of her hands pierced the growth, grasping at the air, and it cast a talon shadow on the ceiling and another, paler shadow on the wall. Then it grew over. Her elbow collapsed inside the mold and her arm fell back in.”

“Her body tightened, curling inward,” says Fat Man. “A sound like a cicada, but more musical, came from inside as the body in there trembled and shook.”

“The mold gave way to maggots. She was beaded with the maggots, the same as the Japanese soldier's body, and others. They squirmed out, and writhed on her, and then there were more, and then there were more, and as their bodies piled up they tried to eat more but already there were others eating through where they had eaten, emerging underneath them, and beneath those more, so the pile rose.

“Soon the maggots were like a fire and because the maggots were alive they could not eat each other or themselves. They did though begin to wilt as they heaped up near the ceiling, turning ashen and then shriveling inward, blackening, like cigarette ends, and crumbling into themselves.

“They would crumble, and come apart, and the ashes fell on the floor and the Jew things. When they burst they made a sound like fire spitting sparks. Their ashes fell and turned around the pile, revolving. At the base of the pile, where more were always coming out, pink and white and gray, becoming grayer, there was what was left of the tramp, some skin and muscle, a lot of bones. The maggots slowed as her flesh dwindled. The pile became a small, wavering flame, and then it was nothing. The air was hung with ash. My face was very warm. We were sweating. I took off my clothes. So did Fat Man. Our sweat dripped on the floor. The drops made big, shiny circles, at first separate, and then overlapping, growing a puddle.

“The light came from in the bones, or between them, a glow, which was rich and thick inside, and thinned as it bled out on us.”

“The bones grew flowers,” says Fat Man.

“White ones, red ones, yellow, budding from the bones themselves—no stems, at first. Lilies and daisies, roses, even dandelions, only the blooms, opening all over the bones, spitting pollen up among the ashes. Then stems grew from between the blooms, and these came to flowers, and stems grew from among them, and these became flowers, and grass grew out between the blooms, and clover grew. These too took a shape like a fire, and as they rose and swelled they seemed to burn, and the warmth grew warmer. The light from inside it grew brighter.

“A smell like wet grass clippings wafted. It was also like a dog's breath. It was a hot smell as much as it was a green one. It was alive as it was dead. With everything that grew from the body we felt more calm, and as each one extinguished, calmer still. The weight came off me. My heart cooled,” says Little Boy.

“All the flowers, grass and clover, everything, twisted into one fat stem, thick as a torso, stained with all the colors of the flowers in green shapes like burns through paper. As its center twisted tightest the stem's top twisted outward, loose, and this made the bed of a very large red rose with some orange petals and some blue swirled inside it, growing and growing until it crushed the stem.”

“Thousands of little baby spiders crawled out,” says Fat Man.

“They crawled out and down the bed and over the Jew things, growing as they walked, and when they came to us they were large and bristling with hairs, which grew to inches long. They walked up on us and became fat, then died and fell away. The flowers wilted and turned brown, like a kernel or a shell. The spiders stopped coming and the shell wrinkled and closed in all around her.”

Fat Man said, “She's becoming a seed.”

Little Boy said, “We should take her outside.”

“What do you think she'll become?”

They didn't know. They decided to plant her. They laid her on the ground. The seed had a knot at its center that looked like a person. A person curled up.

Fat Man said, “You did this to her!”

“No I didn't.”

“Yes you did, you did this, you killed her.”

Little Boy punched Fat Man in his knee. Fat Man fell on him on purpose. Little Boy bit Fat Man's cheek. Fat Man barked and punched Little Boy's head. They kicked and kneed one another. Fat Man was smothering Little Boy with his bulk. Little Boy couldn't breathe. Little Boy passed out.

When Little Boy woke, the fat man was lifting him up on his shoulders. Little Boy sat still; he didn't want to hurt his brother anymore. He wanted to be good. They watched the tree grow. It came up from the ground very fast. Fat Man apologized.

He said, “Not just for this. For everything.”

Little Boy said, “I love you so much.”

Fat Man said, “I love you too.”

HIDEKI AND MASUMI

“I told you you could be a good speaker,” says Fat Man. He twists out his cigarette in an ashtray surrounded by empty liquor bottles. There are a dozen butts, some very old, lining the edge of the tray, their ash ends collapsed into a pile. The orange bits of his own cigarette burn out quickly.

Little Boy shrugs. “Throat hurts.”

“You exhausted the ghosts,” says Masumi. “I see how it was now. They were molds, then maggots, then flowers, then spiders, and so on. Most gave up on following you after that. Many of the rest helped make a tree. There are only a few left.”

“What do you think it's like being a tree?” asks Fat Man.

“I don't think it's like much of anything,” says Masumi. “Which makes it very close to nirvana.”

“They still come to us, if we wait long enough. If I touch the wick of a candle and wait, there will be fire. If I am careless in my eating, the food will rot. When I'm agitated, it can be as bad as it ever was. I want them to leave me alone,” says Fat Man. “You could still kill me. I wouldn't mind very much as long as you don't hurt Little Boy.”

Little Boy yawns and pours himself another drink. His eyes are red from the late hour, the cigarettes and booze. “Can we go home soon?”

“I would sooner kill him than you,” says Masumi. “At least you know what you've done. You've got to live with it. What's he got to live with?”

“Self-imposed stupidity,” says Fat Man.

“What?”

“Shoot me,” says Fat Man. “Right between the eyes. Make me look like that door.”

“If I kill you you'll probably come back. Somewhere, some way. You're not ready to leave yet. You'll make a body from more Japanese. Perhaps a very ugly one.”

“Uglier than this?” says Fat Man, hefting his tits. “Uglier than this?” tugging at the mounds of his cheeks and his jowls. “And this?” holding out his arm and batting at the dough that hangs from his bones.

“You never know. You might become a brand new thing. You've been one before. Imagine the monster you could build for a body.”

Little Boy yawns loudly.

“If you won't kill me, then I'll kill you.”

“That would be okay,” says Masumi. “That would be fine.”

“Who are you?” says Fat Man. “Tell me or I'll kill you.”

“You're forgetting I have the gun.” She puts it to her own head, up against the ear.

Fat Man imagines the bullet going in one side and out the other unscathed, the medium grinning stupidly as it passes through her.

“Tell them your story,” says the medium, “or I'll kill you.”

“When is your husband due home?”

“Masumi was a student,” says Masumi.

Masumi was a student.

Masumi studied English and French, with some necessary excursions into German, the three being so closely related. He was also capable of reading simple Spanish texts with the help of a dictionary.

Like most students at his school he read at least one book each day. Not simple books either. Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Bentham, Kant, Heidegger, Darwin, Nietzsche, and so on, all in their original languages. He kept a journal on every book he read and all the thoughts that came while he read them.

His older brother Hideki was a student as well, who focused on German and English, with some excursions to French. Because Hideki was in the next year, he and Masumi did not see each other often, and did not speak extensively. Hideki would sometimes give Masumi an envelope of the sort you might use to deliver a personal message. Inside there would be a typed partial list of books Hideki had recently read, and that Masumi must therefore read as well. There might be a brief note after the author's name, a single word or a short phrase—“Spirit”; “Patriotism”; “Fear & Agony”; “The individual's loneliness”; “The necessity of injustice”; “Horror”; “Need.” More often there was nothing.

Sometimes there were poems, haiku or other traditional forms, in which Hideki compared himself to the cherry blossom, the hummingbird, or the crane. There were frequent errors and unnecessary spaces in his typing. He crossed out the things he didn't mean to write but they were still plainly visible.

Hideki was handsome. Hideki had large, broad hands and a strong face. He kept his hair cropped close to his head. He was popular and athletic. Masumi loved him and hated him as younger brothers do. He was aloof to Masumi. Masumi respected the distance he maintained.

Then there was the war. As soon as it began all the young men and the older boys knew they would die by American guns. The question was when. The emperor reminded the people of the cherry blossom. They reminded each other of the cherry blossom, and they reminded themselves.

One night Masumi went to Hideki's room and knocked on the door very loudly. Hideki let Masumi in without question, closing his books and stacking them neatly. Masumi shouted how wonderful it would be to die in service of their country. Hideki said, “We should not have to die. We are the future of Japan. The nature of war is that it allows the fathers to wash their hands of their sons, and therefore the future.”

Masumi said it was the nature of war that it should lead to the Japanese future. Only once the Americans were humbled would history advance.

Hideki argued, with reference to Kant, that war was wrong.

Masumi said he would be proud to die for his country and become a cherry blossom.

“Even dignity,” Hideki said, “evades the strongest man in death.”

Masumi said a blazing death in war is not like a slow death in one's bed.

Hideki agreed with this. He said, “It's true that there are far fewer opportunities for pleasure in a gunfight. Our grandfather could still read as he was dying.”

Masumi argued reading was not the sole purpose of life, with reference to Nietzsche. Hideki interrupted him and said, “Why did you learn three languages and much of a fourth?”

“It allows me to better understand the ideas of others.”

“It doesn't help you fire a gun?”

“It doesn't.”

Hideki said, “Then why did you bother? You should quit the study of language and begin the study of guns. Then you can die more quickly, and therefore, more gloriously, with reference to the idiotic argument you are trying to advance.”

Masumi said he would leave the study of languages, then.

Hideki said he was a fool. He struck Masumi on his cheek. Masumi's vision flared. Soon they were on the floor. Hideki's knee was crushing the air from Masumi. Masumi pulled his brother's hair. It went on like this for a long time. The fight ended when Hideki took a letter opener from his desk and pressed down Masumi's head on the floor as if holding down a chicken for butchering. His eyes were narrow and cruel, his hand was very strong. The letter opener was textured on its surface by his fingerprints and palm prints, dots and ridges of human oils, and this made it seem heavy.

Hideki breathed in deeply. He considered the letter opener. He considered the neck of his brother, who flailed and pushed ineffectually at Hideki's jaw and chest, trying to shove him off.

“No,” Hideki said. “I will let you do it your way.” He laid down the letter opener. He climbed off Masumi and pulled him up with both hands. Masumi never considered that he might want to kill Hideki for what he had almost done. He only loved Hideki in that moment, the hatred was gone from him, and he knew that there would be much to learn from this moment in future reflection.

He did not, however, apologize for what he'd said. Neither did Hideki.

After the fight they were cold to each other. They were not only aloof, but cruel, making themselves absent from each other's lives whenever possible. When Masumi went home to visit their parents, Hideki refused, deciding instead to stay at school and study. He was reading the complete written works of Marx. It was, he said, more important than family.

Masumi's father drank sake with him late into the night, and they talked of war, of when it would be Masumi's turn to fight. Masumi did not tell his father how his brother felt because he knew that it would bring his father shame. Instead he agreed that it was good there were two sons in the family, as it increased the chances that one would survive. Masumi said, “I hope it is Hideki. He will make a good father.”

His father agreed. “You, though, might make a better husband.”

Hideki and Masumi were allowed to continue their studies for a longer time than they expected. They were being preserved, Masumi thought, because the military agreed with Hideki that the educated sons of Japan would be her future. They would be civic leaders, city planners, engineers, philosophers, and writers.

Hideki was making plans for a literary magazine. He was writing letters to a girl. No one knew her name, though some claimed to. He was, in short, beginning his life, rather than preparing to end it.

The other students behaved and thought very differently. Some took up risky behaviors, fighting with knives, espousing illicit or practically-illicit belief systems, or, in one case, beginning an affair. It was only a rumor that two boys were sleeping together but the rumor didn't die until one left for the war, where later he did die. Others settled for cigarettes and alcohol.

It was common to study the aircraft and other military assets of Japanese and foreign armies alike. Masumi read descriptions of the sounds the planes made as they flew overhead. He was especially interested in the “screamers,” German fighters with noisemakers in their noses that shrilled, striking horror in their victims. He was also fascinated by missiles, and the German super-guns, the former exceedingly practical, the latter gaudy and terrifying, wasteful in a way that made them seem somehow more immoral than other weapons.

Firebombing held no mystery for him. It was a stupid way to kill another person. No risk, no romance, only a city become an oven.

Masumi was taught it was shameful to surrender. It was beyond the pale. One of the first things the military taught him was how to shoot himself with his own rifle, planting its butt in the earth, putting the barrel in his mouth, and pulling the trigger with his foot. It was preferable to charge the enemy in a way that gave them no choice but to kill you. If they could not be persuaded to kill you, then you would have to do it yourself. Under no circumstances could a Japanese soldier be taken prisoner. There was nothing worse. When soldiers questioned these rules, they were savagely beaten. Most did not question the rules.

When it was becoming clear the U.S. would win, the Japanese began the kamikaze.

Masumi's class was given a presentation on the necessity of victory and the power of the Japanese spirit. A plan was laid out before them, without euphemism but somehow still indirect, circular. The words were true but their tone was not true. It held hope. The plan was to take planes and fly them into American ships. This would make the pilots heroes. It would also, it was hoped, inflame the Japanese spirit, bringing courage to the surviving soldiers and fear into the Americans.

It would be strictly on a volunteer basis.

The students were lined up side to side, single-file, and blind-folded, so no one would be ashamed to raise his hand if he did not want to die or if he was afraid. Of course they could hear their fellows raise their hands when the call to service came. Masumi raised his hand not out of cowardice but because it was what he believed.

They took him to an air base and they trained him in flight. No one pilot got his own plane; they shared, swapping freely. It was therefore inaccurate to say Masumi was learning to fly his own coffin. This was, however, how he felt. It took the thrill out. And there was always the possibility he would die prematurely, whether from his superior officers' regular beatings, or from crashing his plane during training. Some students did that.

Masumi lost weight. He took an interest in Communism, not as a movement but as an explanation of what had already gone wrong. From this high moral vantage he could see that history moved in its chosen direction at its own speed, and that there was little one could do about it one way or the other, with the possible exception of those lucky few who sped its progress. If he was very lucky then he might be one of those. It was his hope that his death would not only benefit Japan but hasten its becoming a Socialist state. Otherwise, if it did no good, then at least he knew his death could do very little harm. A superior officer found one of his Communist books among his things and put a knife to his throat. Masumi was prepared for this experience by his fight with Hideki, and also by the beatings, and also by his belief that he no longer cared if he lived or died. When the officer saw surrender in his eyes he spat on Masumi, saying he should put the knife into his own body if he loved his country.

Masumi did not see the point in dying if he could not kill an American or sink an American ship. The army had invested time and food and other resources in preparing him to do these things. It would be a waste to kill himself otherwise. He explained this in a calm, even tone. The officer let him live. He took the book, however, cutting out the pages with his knife, stomping them, and emptying his canteen on their ruins.

He came back to Masumi and broke several of his fingers.

Masumi's parents wrote to him. They said they had learned where he was. They said they wished they had heard it from him. They asked had he heard from his brother. There were rules meant to keep a family from losing all its sons but sometimes the rules might not be followed closely, or there might be a mistake, especially as the military grew desperate. They asked him was he eating well. They asked him was he beaten often.

He wrote back to say he was fine. He was proud to die for their safety. He was not beaten excessively. He did not know where Hideki was.

The kamikaze were mostly ineffective. Many were shot down before they could reach their targets. Others hit their targets but did little damage. Some did sink their ships. There were announcements. The Americans were disturbed. That was something. Although sometimes it seemed they were laughing. Not frightened so much as amused.