Fire Flowers (16 page)

“Unless you chaps took any snaps for posterity. Or the Japs did. Even so, I doubt we'll be seeing any of those at the flicks any time soon.”

Wild thoughts swirled around my head.

“Anyway. Need to pack up now, old chap. Getting shipped back to the mother country in the morning. Oh, for London in the winter.”

He gave a theatrical shudder and I wished him luck.

“Good luck yourself, mate,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “Believe me, you're going to bloody well need it.”

 

My dreams that night were relentless and harrowing. Standing on a desolate plain, the wind howling around me. An inferno swept from the horizon, fireballs pelting down from the sky. A ruined schoolhouse, a stench of rotting meat. The assembly hall piled with skeletal bodies. The little girl from Ueno, her mouth agape, her body covered in welts.

Endless corridors, men in pursuit. A door to an office. Behind the desk, a chair. My father. A shotgun barrel in his mouth, still open in a ghastly smile. His brains thickly smeared on the wall behind.

*

Two days later, I woke early. In the pale light of dawn, I sliced off the
Stars and Stripes
blazon from my jacket and sewed back on my lieutenant's epaulettes. My knapsack was bulging from a visit to the PX the night before, packed with chocolate, tins of Spam, a bottle of Crow, and two cartons of Old Golds, along with ten fresh rolls of 35mm Kodak film.

I travelled in the Japanese section of the train, despite the insufferable crush. People blankly made way for me and my uniform, and I squeezed myself into a cramped seat by the cracked window. Babies hoisted on women's backs swung perilously close to my head. The carriage was filled with the tang of unwashed bodies and wet wool. The windows were mostly gone and cold blustered through the carriage.

The inspector looked at me in mortification after examining the ticket I'd had a Japanese boy buy for me at the station. Brow furrowed, he rubbed his hat back and forth over his bald head. I held my fingers to my lips in question, and his eyes lit up. I handed him the first of my packets of cigarettes, a five-dollar bill folded inside. After a moment of shameful deliberation, he gave a sickly grin, slid both into his pocket, and politely clipped my ticket.

The train stopped often throughout the night, halting in lonely tunnels, shunting into sidings for what seemed like an eternity. Snow whirled outside and there were clangs and shouts as men tried to restart the engines. The passengers pressed their faces to the windows to watch, their breath freezing against the broken glass. There was the lonely sound of metal being hammered in the darkness as handcarts of coal were hauled up to the locomotive.

Later, we passed through Kyoto, where most of the passengers disembarked. A few hours later, I recognized the white alabaster of Himeji Castle up on its hill, pale in the light of a bright full moon. I fell into a troubled sleep against the comforting bulk of a large, warm woman who sat beside me, my pack drawn close against my knees.

I was awoken by the woman jabbing me in the ribs, repeating Japanese words in a loud, obstinate voice. I tried to crawl back into the drowsy shelter of my dreams, but she poked me again, hard, and I sat up, rubbing my eyes.

The carriage was almost empty now, and, outside, the first light of dawn lent a rose-grey tint to the horizon. We were passing down onto an immense, bleak plain, rugged mountains looming in the distance. The wheels screamed on the rails as we slowed on our approach to a shattered station. The train shuddered to a halt. The platforms were gone, and there was a sharp drop from the train to the compacted dirt below. A solitary wooden sign was nailed to the wall of a battered brick building and I struggled to identify the ideograms as the woman, still jabbing her finger into my side, began to intone the syllables, over and over, in a strange, mellifluous voice:

“
Hiroshima, desu, Yankii. Yankii—Hiroshima desu
.”

F
rom where Koji and I sat on the stone bank of the canal, Fuji-san was just visible beyond the ruins of the city, its peak sprinkled with snow. We had set off that morning with our bamboo fishing rods, crossed the Kototoi Bridge and made our way up to the lock with its little castle keep. Our lines were hooked with chicken gizzards, dangling now in the black depths of the water, the slick surface glistening with rainbow whirls of oil. We were fishing for eels.

My father's shop had sold eel, of course. The rich, sweet aroma had infused my childhood. The shop had been popular with the patrons of the theatres and cabarets that lined the streets of Asakusa, a regular haunt of the stagehands, theatre managers and actors who came in at odd times of the day for snacks and a glass of sake between shows. My father was a true fan of the kabuki himself—the rough-and-tumble style popular in Tokyo back then, and prints of the Danjuros, the famous dynasty of actors, were plastered all over the walls. He liked nothing better than to banter with the customers about famous performances of the past, cracking jokes in that gruff, smart way that Tokyo people liked, steaming and grilling the strips of eel all the while. He brushed them with a thick secret sauce from his famous pot—an earthenware thing he'd inherited from his own father, bound with wire, sticky and smeared from generations of service. As he stood there, surrounded by smoke and fire, he looked almost like a character from a kabuki play himself. One of the wilier, earthier types.

Ours was an old-fashioned shop in that the live eels were kept in a big glass tank at the front by the street. My mother skinned them on a block: she pinned them through the head and tore away the slimy skin with a swift movement, pulling out the backbone and slicing the fillet into strips in an instant. Sometimes I pressed my face up against the glass and watched the animals flap their fins and slip around each other, glistening like they'd been freshly coated with lacquer. My father once told me that every eel in the world was born in the same place, out in the middle of a distant ocean. I dreamed about the place sometimes, the sea crashing as the glassy elvers drifted away, to be tugged apart from each other by the ocean currents.

The first day my father took me to the Kabuki Theatre was the day after the Pacific War had broken out. Our headmaster had gathered us in the assembly hall of my school, and we'd nudged each other, trying not to laugh, because Sensei had tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Children,” he said, his voice wavering. “Japan has entered the great war against America and Britain at last!”

Banzai!

We were thrilled, of course—we could hardly believe that Japan had actually gone and done it. Our country was going to annihilate the enemy. That afternoon, our teacher unrolled a huge map of the Pacific Ocean and we pinned it up on the classroom wall. We spent the lesson searching for Honolulu, and stuck on a little rising sun flag when we finally found it.

The next morning, my mother was washing my father with warm water from the cedar tub. She passed the cloth over his muscly back, then toweled him down and helped him dress in his yukata. She arranged my clothes and brushed my hair as the radio burbled away with another excited report of the glorious attack. I noticed that she and Satsuko were still dressed in their normal work coats and aprons.

“Why aren't you getting ready, mum?” I asked.

“Your mother and sister aren't coming,” my father said, with a wink. “It's just us men today.”

Us men! I was beside myself with excitement as we made our way into the theatre, blazing with lanterns and filled with smells. His big hand gripped mine as the patrons called out to him, sprawling in their boxes with
bentos
and bottles of sake laid out in preparation for a good long afternoon's entertainment ahead. When my father told them I was his son, they studied me with approval, remarking on my dark eyes and declaring that I had the ferocious glower of a Danjuro myself, which made my father's face crinkle with pleasure.

We took our place in the centre of the hall and he set out some rice crackers to nibble on. The national anthem played at a deafening volume, then there was a loud bang and the lights went out. I seized my father by the arm and he laughed uproariously as a cloud of smoke billowed on the stage. I smiled at him in bashful excitement and we settled back to watch the play.

There were flashing lights, sudden explosions, the wail of horns and voices and clouds of colourful smoke. As the actors came onto the stage, men cried out
Banzai!
and the audience all roared with approval. At the climax, the clappers rang out and the audience exploded, pounding the sides of their boxes as the actors pulled their faces into ferocious, cross-eyed tableaux. Afterward, everyone spilled out into the light of the bustling evening to eat and drink amongst the stalls and shops, and I rubbed my eyes as if emerging from a dream.

Later, somehow, it all went wrong. A few years after that, rice was being rationed and the fishmonger had gone out of business, and, finally, my father was forced to close the restaurant. The women from the neighbourhood association came round the next day, and asked him to donate his grills to the military as they were made from such good iron.
Let's send just one more plane to the front!

Then the real tragedy occurred. The fire raids began, and the theatres were shut down and my father's last pleasure in life was taken away. His call-up papers arrived soon after that. On the evening of his purification ceremony, we ate a solemn meal of sea bream and red rice. Afterward, my father put a lid on his ancient pot of sauce and sealed it with wax. He wrapped it up in oilcloth and placed it in a cedar box, which he stood in the alcove underneath the family altar. As we stood before it, he put his hands on my shoulders, rubbing them over and over.

“Take care of that until I get back, Hiroshi-kun, do you hear me?” he said.

I nodded. He pointed at the box.

“That's our only family treasure.”

My father heaved his kit bag onto the train at Ueno Station the next day. He was going to report at the Yokosuka air-naval base. He squatted down on the platform and embraced me tightly as the platform guard blew his whistle.

“Remember what I told you,” he whispered.

I nodded.

“I promise, Father,” I said.

“I'm counting on you, Hiroshi-kun!”

There was a shriek from the locomotive as the wheels began to turn. The train pulled away from the platform. He leaned out of the carriage window for a moment, and waved his fighting cap.

And then he was gone.

 

Koji shrieked as something writhed violently on the end of his fishing line. I leaped up and quickly wound the string around my arm as it veered from side to side. The taut line angled up, and I prayed that it wouldn't snap as I staggered backward, heaving as hard as I could. There was a sudden splash, and then, there it was! A dark, shining eel, coiling and writhing on the bank. Koji hollered in triumph as we dangled the spiraling creature into our bucket, spluttering with delighted revulsion as slimy water flicked in our faces. We dropped it into the pail, where it whumped away with a dull clanging noise. We covered it up with a plank of wood, and together we hoisted it up. We triumphantly carried it down the canal toward the river as the water sloshed back and forth.

The light was just fading as we met the other children at Ueno Station. They crowded around us excitedly when they saw that we had actually caught something. When I slid the plank away, they gasped. The eel was curled up like an evil black snake in the bottom of the pail. Aiko leaned over, very warily. Suddenly, the thing wriggled and flicked water into the air, and she screamed and fell onto her backside. The children cackled with laughter as Tomoko helped her up. Aiko began to wail as Tomoko brushed her down.

“Cheer up, Aiko-chan! You won't be bellyaching when Hiroshi's cooked the eel for our dinner.”

Tomoko glanced at me, amused.

The lights of the market glowed, and spattering flecks of black on the brickwork of the railway embankment marked the start of rain. GIs went to and fro in their rain capes amongst the stalls to haggle for stockings and trinkets for the night ahead. Shin was showing off now, dipping the tip of his finger into the water to goad the eel while Koji and Nobu watched warily over his shoulder.

Aiko's high voice piped up. She pointed over toward the far railway arches. Two GIs were walking along in the shadows. We had four last cigarettes left—should she go and ask if they would buy them?

“I'll go!” Tomoko said, brightly.

Aiko handed her the remaining cigarettes and Tomoko sprinted off. I sat down on the gritty bank. The children were daring each other to touch the eel, jerking back whenever it moved. A train rumbled up on the tracks as I closed my eyes, smiling to myself.

Some instinct made me look up. Through the drizzle, one of the distant soldiers was looming over Tomoko, pulling her toward him. I leaped up. Tomoko ducked away, but then, with a quick movement, the soldier grabbed her. There was a scuffle, and then, somehow, her monpe were around her knees. The man pulled her toward the iron struts of the railway bridge and she cried out as he pushed her up against the column.

The world melted as I tore toward them, a sharp stone in my hand, my mind filled with a piercing roar. Tomoko stood pinioned to the wall, the soldier pressing one hand beneath her chin as the other pulled at his open trousers. He suddenly turned and saw me. Tomoko dropped just as I leaped into the air and swept the stone down hard toward his forehead. His brawny arm shot up and struck me in the jaw and I crashed down into a heap of charred, wet timber. I looked around desperately for a weapon. My fingers fell upon a piece of rusted pipe and I started to swing it as the man hovered in front of me. His shirt was billowing from his fly, and he was breathing heavily.

A sudden wave of fear came over me as the man came closer. I swung wildly with the pipe, but to my horror, he caught it with one fist and ripped it from my hand. He grabbed me by the scruff, and I screamed and flailed at him as he slapped me with his hand, swearing. His companion grabbed his shoulder, but the man bellowed and he shrank away. I was hoisted slowly upward. The veins in his neck bulged and I could smell his beery breath. Sweat and blood and rain were dripping from his brow—I'd caught him, I thought, with a glancing satisfaction. I kicked out wildly. He slammed his left fist into my eye—there was an explosion of pain and I collapsed onto the ground. A boot stood by my head, smeared with mud, the laces looped and tangled around the ankle. I was deaf except for a far-off ringing in my ears.