Fire Flowers (24 page)

I saw stricken refugees trudging across the plains of Europe, frozen and weary as they settled down by their camp- fires, snowflakes whirling around them as they held each other's hands and haltingly began to sing. I saw solemn glasses being raised to lost fathers and brothers and sons—to the ones who had not returned—and I heard prayers of requiem and the sob of quiet mourning float up into the sky, mingling with the precious, holy notes of the chorus. I heard the great, melancholy music float out across the world, over the shattered cities and the bombed-out ruins, the fields of carnage and the tangled remains of the living and the dead, the terrible music that floated through the darkness that shrouded our silent, injured world that Christmas night, as, far below, its men and women all sat huddled together in front of their fires, staring into the flames and wondering what the future would bring.

 

When the concert ended, I applauded the orchestra for a long time, my hands numb within my gloves. I climbed down the steps to congratulate the conductor, then presented another bottle of whisky to the members of the orchestra, who smiled and bobbed their heads in thanks. I bowed back, and we all laughed and took sips, trembling with cold. The rest of the audience quietly departed.

There were few people on the streets as I headed for the station, and those who were out looked grim and unhappy. I offered another bottle to people at random, but most veered away, and I realized that I was drunk. Only one fellow took it—he unscrewed the cap, took a big swig, then grinned and gave me a thumbs-up:
Merii Kurisamasu!

I finally reached the station. The chemical truck had just passed and dashes of white powder were drifting about in the air. Time for bed, I thought.

Then, from nowhere, a group of elegant old ladies in colourful kimonos were tugging at my sleeve, their eyes twinkling, their faces as wrinkled as walnuts. They must have been freezing near to death, but their hair was styled to perfection, their kimono belts exquisitely tied, and they were bowing and smiling for all they were worth.

“Please, please,” they asked me in English, “can we
sing
with you?”

I didn't quite understand. Then one of them explained—they were Christians, she said, and this was the first Christ- mas they had been allowed to celebrate for several years. This made me pretty emotional and so I said yes, of course they could, in fact, we would all sing together, and so we took each other's arms. And then, this bold young man and these delightful, wrinkled women whose country I'd helped raze to the ground, well, we all stood there together outside of a ruined train station as flakes of DDT floated down from the sky like snow, and then, God help me, we began to sing “Silent Night.”

 

 

 

M
rs. Shimamura sang along to the radio as she washed the glasses: the inane and mournful chorus of “The Apple Song” was playing for the tenth time that day. She picked up the glasses one by one from the basin, twisting them this way and that so that drops of water flicked away from the rims, then swaddled them in the dishcloth and rubbed them vigorously, as if drying a child in a towel.

Her dimples had returned, I thought, as I watched her from my seat at the bar. I had my head in the pages of a story by the master, Jiro Tanizaki, my old idol, from his erotic, grotesque period. Once again, I revelled in his description of a lurid children's game, a leg bruising blue beneath sharp slaps. Ever since the end of the war, I had felt a jolt of excitement whenever I read the story, taken an odd pleasure in the thought of a sudden, stinging palm striking my own numb flesh.

A cold draft gusted in from the doorway and I gulped back my drink and shuddered, feeling a kind of sordid torpidity settle upon me. I studied the cover of the book. Tanizaki would still be writing, I thought, he would still be slogging away. Wasn't it at times of just such extremity and extenuation that art truly flourished? Japan eviscerated, a foreign army parading the streets—what would Tolstoy have made of it? Maupassant?

And yet here I sat, my lice-ridden overcoat draped over my shoulders, scribbling fantasies for the lost and the lonely. Hunched over my foul rotgut, tormented by constipation, a cough racking my lungs, my toes dissolving into the mouldy morass of my boots. Keening around a decent woman like Mrs. Shimamura like a camp dog, whining for scraps and sympathy. A wave of disgust washed over me, and my hand instinctively reached to my pocket for the tablets I kept there for just such moments of despondency. I popped one into my mouth, and bit down on it.

I felt a sharp crack and a shooting pain screwed all the way up the front of my face. I urgently probed my mouth with my tongue. There was a gap next to my front incisor, the rotten gum spongy like dank vegetation. I tasted rotten, metallic blood and spat the split remains of my tooth and the dissolving Philopon pill into my cupped hand: a swirl of blood and saliva, the amphetamine fizzing into tiny bubbles, the decayed tooth a black pearl.

Whatever next? I thought. Would my eyeballs dim with rheum, the last of my hair fall out? The dull ache in my liver seemed to pulse and flare. I felt utterly destroyed.

“It's all gone,” I muttered. “Everything's gone.”

Mrs. Shimamura came over. To my utter surprise, she put her tender, matronly arms around my neck. Disgusted with myself, I began to sob into her bosom.

“There, there,” she said. “Stop being such a baby.”

She turned to the bar, and poured me a glass from her private supply. Then she folded her arms and became stern.

“Now, sensei. Don't go getting yourself so upset about everything. You don't have it so bad. You're no worse off than a million others. So pull yourself together.”

She turned back to her sink of dishes and started crooning again. I shrugged meekly, and went off for a lie-down upstairs.

 

There were many things that I pined for in those days following the war. Things that I fleetingly craved with an urgency I had never known before in my life. Persimmons were one of these; as for some reason, later on, were tangerines. I had always been partial to persimmons, of course, but tangerines I had never had any particular feelings about, until, on my return to Japan, quite suddenly, their dimpled, waxy skin, their tart sweetness, and, more than anything, their bright orange colour began to exert a powerful hold on my imagination. I could spot them from a hundred yards off at the black market, amongst the covered stalls and booths, the cups cast from melted fuselages and the muddled heaps of cast-off army garments: the tangerine vendor, his vivid fruit wrapped in newspaper at the back of a handcart. Cruelly, their price shot up almost as soon as they became more widely available; they all came via the American Postal Exchange, descending to us from the gods, as it were. And so they were to remain, perpetually hoisted just beyond my reach.

What I longed for more than anything, however, was a really decent, proper pair of shoes. Since my repatriation from the green hell of New Guinea, I had worn my hobnailed army boots day and night, as did most of the other returnees from the battlefield. After countless miles of trudging, swelling and shrinking, the cowhide had welded to my feet, so much so that it was now an effort to remove them. They entirely repulsed me. They were a badge of shame, a decrepit symbol of servitude to a suicidal ideal. They were uncomfortable as well: the metal heel rims had long since worn away, the seams split, and icy water leaked in around my toes whenever I stepped into one of the freezing puddles that lurked all across the city that winter. I cursed them every time my heel poked through the worn sole, every time the sodden laces squeezed the fragile bones of my foot. I had heard that certain black market shops sold looted officers' boots—high, elegant cavalry affairs cut from soft leather or European kid. But the thought of their buttery smoothness made me nauseous: they reeked of everything I despised. Perhaps, I thought, I could revert to wearing split-toe
tabi
and wooden clogs, as some of the other writers had done. But for all their homely charm, they too seemed fundamentally feudal to me, and, after all, they were hard and uncomfortable, and so very cold in winter.

No. What I truly aspired to was a good, sturdy pair of Western shoes. Enviously, I had observed an American civilian on the tram a few weeks previously wearing precisely the style I desired. A smart pair of burnished Oxford brogues, reddish brown, aglow with heathery tints. A thick lock of coffee-coloured hair fell over the man's angular brow; a neat, moulded camera case was slung over his shoulder. He sat holding his book, chin perched on hand, elbow on knee. One leg dangled casually over the other, a neat argyle sock clasping the ankle beneath. Then there was the beautiful shoe, rocking faintly back and forth to the rhythm of the tram. I was racked by a sudden, violent desire. When he alighted near Yurakucho Station, I pressed my face to the window, picturing myself casually clipping along the street, just as he did now.
Well
, I said to myself.
There at least goes a serious man
.

Perhaps as a man with real shoes, I might feel like a human being once more, after years of being nothing but a soldier and subject. The stopped clock of my life might start ticking once again—as a man of purpose, striding boldly into the future. Rather than just another faceless nonentity in a city of pinched, weary men, our service caps pulled over our eyes, our shoulders sparring with the wind as we trudged the disconsolate streets.

I hoarded every penny like a miser, denying myself tobacco, even shochu. I avoided the temptations of Kanda, and busied myself instead with my third edition of
ERO
. To my delight and good fortune, it met with considerable success. Struck by the popularity of the feature in our last issue, “The Dish I Most Lament,” I decided this time to expand it to encompass the entire panoply of frustrated desires hidden in our citizens' souls that winter. Once more I circumnavigated the Yamanote Line, stopping passersby and asking them to describe their heart's most secret desire. They were hesitant at first, unsure of how to respond. Then, the words began to spill out like a flowing river of dreams:

“My wife.”

“My son.”

“A good, long Noh play.”

“Pickled plums.”

“The knowledge that all of us Japanese were on the same side.”

“A real coat.”

“A working watch.”

For me, though, it was always the shoes. I had taken to leaving my boots in the street at night now, plugged with newspaper to contain their rotten smell of fermenting soybeans. The cowhide was crinkled and frosty by morning, and I had to rotate the boots over the brazier to thaw them out. But even from there, they haunted my sleep. I would dream they were calling to me, that they might somehow slip back into the building, hop up the stairs and lace themselves earnestly back onto my feet while I slept.

I was in Shinjuku one afternoon when I saw a man wearing a sandwich board. When I read it, I thought that heaven must be smiling upon me at last. A shoe shop was opening that very day, not half a mile distant. I rushed over to the place, and urgently scanned the display.

There, in pride of place, was my heart's desire. A stout pair of russet Oxford brogues, stitched on each side with bronze thread. Barely worn, looking to be more or less my size. I darted in, demanding to try them on. The shopkeeper eyed me suspiciously while I wrestled them onto my feet. They were a perfect fit, snug and tight. I asked the man to tell me how much they cost.

The price was absurd. But I barely gave it a thought, and told him I would return directly. I hurried home to fetch all of my hoarded savings. Walking back to the shop, I became suddenly nervous, wracked by the thought that someone else would have purchased them in my absence. But when I arrived, they were still there. I thrust the money into the man's hands and tore my old army boots from my feet. I took the Oxfords in my hands, inhaling the cedary fragrance of the dappled leather, turning them to admire their subtle, coppery tints. I slipped them onto my feet, and firmly laced them up.

“Should I wrap these old boots in newspaper, sir?” asked the shopkeeper.

I glanced at them with loathing.

“Please dispose of them as you see fit, sir,” I said. “I have no wish to see them again.”

I turned on my heel and left the shop, feeling as if I were walking on air.

I made my way along the street, pausing every now and again to glance down. The leather pinched a little; I told myself it would take a while for my feet to become used to real shoes again. On the tram, I experimentally tried to cross one leg over the other, as I had seen the Westerner do, but it was an uncomfortable, constricting position and would take practice to perfect. Several of the passengers, I was sure, gave me sidelong glances. I casually extended my legs, rotating my feet from side to side in order to impress upon them the dazzle and flash of the shoes' superb leather.

So absorbed was I that I entirely missed my stop. I was now some distance from home. My feet were becoming quite painful, though this was only to be expected at first—this was simply how it was with proper shoes. An alley led off from the main avenue, and I was surprised, halfway along, to see the glowing lantern of a public bathhouse. This was an unexpected treat. Most of the
sentos
had been badly damaged during the bombings and those that remained had little fuel available to heat the pipes. For a people who so valued cleanliness, this was a considerable discomfort. I myself had not had a chance to bathe for several months. The thought of taking off my shoes and immersing myself in a hot pool of water filled me with exquisite pleasure.