Fire Flowers (27 page)

Shin rotated his shoulders and I slid backward.

A horrible feeling of shame dawned on me and my cheeks began to throb. Could it truly be that he missed his violent, drunken brute of a father, as much as I missed my own? Wasn't a boy like him from Sengen Alley too stupid, too vulgar to feel pain and hurt like I did, a clever, sensitive boy from Senso High School—

Shin edged closer, his face twisted in animal rage. The children stared at me tearfully from behind him.

All those times when they'd cried out at night, and I'd forced them to be quiet. Every time they'd started to snivel, and I'd made the others sit on top of them, as if they were sacks of potatoes! Forcing them to work the streets day and night, to pick up spit-stained cigarette butts, to root about in filth and night soil when all the time they'd all just wanted nothing but their mums and dads—and I was supposed to be their big brother! What kind of big brother would act like I had? Forcing them to work as if they were nothing but animals, locking them up at night in this collapsing ruin, which was really nothing more than a filthy old whorehouse, and where we would all probably die together—

“We're sick of you, you bastard,” Shin hissed.

They would have been better off without me
, I thought.

Shin curled his fingers into a fist, and I backed away, suddenly scared.

Tomoko would still be alive—

Shin's fist slammed into my face. I sprawled backward, my ears ringing, stunned by its force.

He loomed over me and the other children gathered behind his legs, as if for protection.

“We're going away, big brother,” he said, waving a thick finger. “There's nothing you can do to stop us. We're tired of being your slaves.”

My slaves!
Tears began to spill down my cheeks. I spoke through wrenching sobs.

“Go on then. Do whatever you want. See if I care.”

I grabbed my satchel with the camera inside and raced outside through the long grass of the garden. I sank to my knees, and pounded the earth with my fists, howling and whimpering with bitter tears.

 

Up in Ueno Plaza, the signs for lost relations were peeling in soggy strips from the bronze statue of Saigo Takamori. Last year they'd been everywhere, covering every inch of space. I'd sometimes stopped and gazed at them, imagining what it would be like if, by some miracle, I read my own name there. One night in winter, a bunch of kids had gone around tearing them down from the walls and telegraph poles. They'd made a big bonfire up here in the Plaza, dancing around the flames and whooping as the names and addresses and hopeless messages all went up in smoke.

The shoeshine kids were playing a game of baseball down below. Maybe I could join them—I'd somehow grown taller over winter and could probably hold my own against them now. I could get a wooden shoeshine box, wait outside the hotels and government buildings at dawn with my brushes and tins of blacking. Polish the shoes of the Americans stiff shoes until I could see my ugly face in the leather.

I glanced up. For some reason, the shoeshine boys had abandoned their game—they were slinging their boxes over their shoulders and racing off down the steep banks of the Plaza. There was a flash of blue and for a split second, I saw the policemen coming up behind me, just before they pounced. A bamboo stave struck my spine and I sprawled forward in agony. A boot pressed against my head, pressing my face into the ground, and my arms were jerked up behind my back, tears springing into my eyes.

My head was lifted up by the hair. An inspector with round glasses and a straggly loach moustache started bawling at me, spraying my face with saliva.

“You filthy shit!” he hollered, banging me on the head with his fist. “What kind of impression do you think you feral dogs are giving us?”

A feral dog—that's what he called me. Down in the Plaza, policemen were swarming up the steps, holding out their hands, attempting to corral the remaining kids as they tried to escape.

With a twist, I managed to slip out of the inspector's grip. But then his hobnailed boot swung up and caught me right in the balls. I collapsed, unable even to make a sound.

“You little shit,” he snarled, kicking my behind, knocking me all the way to the steps. Down on the road, there was a truck with a wide canvas awning, its engine rumbling. Policemen were standing at the back, hoisting children in, counting them off on their fingers as if they were a herd of animals. My camera satchel was around my neck, and I clutched it against my chest, desperate to protect it, as I half fell, half rolled down the steps, my head cracking against the stone. I landed at the bottom, stunned senseless. The inspector grabbed me between the legs and hoisted me into the truck. The tailgate slammed up behind me.

There were about a dozen other kids in the truck, and as the truck lurched forward, they started panicking and crying as we were thrown about the floor. Liquid was trickling from the trousers of the smaller ones—most of them had already wet themselves. A few of the older ones were familiar—shoeshine boys from the market, mostly—but there was an another boy too that I'd never seen before, who sat on the flat metal truck bed with his head between his legs. His thin arms were covered in purple and yellow bruises and a gash across his forehead was crusted with dried blood.

“Let us out!” I shouted, hammering the tailgate with my fist.

“Where are they taking us?” one boy asked.

“Prison, maybe,” whimpered another.

“No,” one of the older boys said. “They're taking us out to the Arakawa River,” he said. “They're going to shoot us one by one and shove us in, that's what I heard. They don't want kids like us around anymore.”

“You're all wrong.”

The boy on the floor had lifted his head. His face was like a skeleton and his eyes bloodshot. We all stared at him. Fresh blood glistened as he scratched the wound on his head.

“They're taking us to an orphanage.”

The word sent a chill down my spine.

“How would you know?”

“Because I only just got out of one.” He spat on the floor.

Something started to nag at my mind. In a terrified voice, one of the little kids asked him what it had been like.

“Worse than hell. They feed you less than on the streets and keep you cooped up in shitty cells and half the time they take your clothes away and leave you naked so you can't even run away.”

My skin crawled.
The holiday camps.

I took a running leap at the tailgate of the truck and just managed to get my fingertips over the lip. I scrabbled my feet against the metal, and hoisted myself up. We were driving down a dirt road between suburban houses. The truck was moving fast as I swung my leg over the side. Terrified, my head started to swim as the ground raced away below me. Suddenly, I leaped.

The sky and ground were spinning, then my bones were cracking as I rolled over and over in the dirt. My satchel strap was strangling me, the metal of the camera smashing against my rib cage. A horn blared violently, and I twisted into the tall grass at the side of the road, a split second before the massive wheels of another truck crunched past my head. One after the other went past in convoy, dark green and anonymous, their cabs covered in dust.

When the last one had disappeared up the road, I crawled out and stood up. An agonizing bolt went through my ankle and I collapsed back down again. For a few minutes, I lay there, my heart fluttering, trying to steady my breath. I took hold of my ankle, squeezing the flesh and bone. It was broken, I thought, or at least completely sprained.

The holiday camps.
How had it all got so horribly tangled up? We must have really been desperate—if we'd believed that, we would have believed anything at all.

I struggled to stand up, wincing with pain as I started to hobble back down the road. An hour or so later, I crossed a bridge and came across the overground train track. My ankle was white and swollen now, twice its normal size. My forehead was clammy and I felt sick and I had to lean against a wall to rest. The children's faces flashed into my mind. I needed to hurry.

The sky was darkening to grey and drops of rain started to speckle the road. Almost crying with pain, I pushed myself up straight. Grasping my satchel, feeling the shape of the camera inside, I started to hobble, agonizingly slowly, up the hill toward the inn.

 

The wooden gates to the courtyard were wide open and the broken locks dangled in the scrubby weeds. Heavy juddering came from inside, and there were shouts and unfamiliar voices. I hid behind the gatepost. A long Fuso bus was parked in the yard, big white headlights glowing in the rain. A driver in cap and spectacles sat behind the wheel, staring out through the windshield. Toward the back of the bus stood a policeman, facing the front door of the inn.

Nobu and Koji came out first, carrying little bundles tied with string, and I struggled not to cry out as they hopped up the steps into the vehicle. Aiko came next, smiling at the policeman: she was carrying a little metal suitcase I'd found for her one day in the rubble, with the scratched face of a cat painted upon it. Shin emerged, finally, in his torn khaki trousers, instinctively dropping his head to the policeman. The man said something, and he grinned. Shin glanced back at the inn for a second, before turning and hurrying up the steps of the bus. The officer slammed the door, and banged his palm on the side. The faces of the children appeared, struggling to open the windows and poke out their heads. The engine throbbed loudly. As the officer clambered into the front, the heavy wheels of the bus lurched forward.

“Bye-bye!” Aiko yelled, leaning out of the window and waving toward the inn, and the others all joined in chorus. “Bye-bye!”

I pressed my back against the stone gatepost. The nose of the bus edged through, and the driver glanced up the road before heaving the wheel around. The heavy wheels crunched into the gravel, and the bus drove past.

“Bye-bye! Bye-bye!”

Aiko and Koji were leaning all the way out of the windows, still waving desperately at the inn.

“No!” I shouted, as I tried to stumble after them.

Aiko suddenly spotted me and her mouth fell open.

“Hiroshi!” she screamed. “It's Hiroshi! Hiroshi-kun!”

Nobu's face appeared and he started to wave urgently.

“Come on, Hiro! Come on! We're going to the holiday camp!”

I hobbled along for a few paces, but then, in searing pain, my ankle gave way beneath me.

“No!” I shouted. I staggered to my feet again, and somehow made it another few steps as a sob clutched at my throat. “Please! Come back!”

My ankle was burning as I stumbled forward. The children's faces were screwed up with excitement and they started banging on the side of the bus with their fists.

“Run, Hiro! You can do it!”

I was crying so hard I could hardly speak. “It's an orphanage!” I shouted in a strangled voice. “An orphanage!”

I tripped, the gravel tearing my knees open. My satchel flew to the ground and the camera spilled out. As the bus reached the brow of the hill, I grasped for it, and held the camera up, waving it desperately in the air.

“What about your portraits?” I shouted, tears streaming down my face. “I wanted to take your portraits!”

The bus reached the brow of the hill, the children still waving at me from the windows. I collapsed into the mud, clutching the camera to my chest. The rain poured down as the bus rolled away. As it drove into the distance, I could still hear their faint voices, calling out my name.

M
y new home was the guest room on the second floor of the press club. I had a lumpy mattress and a coarse woollen blanket that reached either my neck or my toes, depending on my preference, and a part share in an electric lamp along with three other men. I'd hunted around for Mark Ward, anxious to talk to him, to show him my negatives and ask his advice. But he was travelling in the north now, up in the Snow Country, working on some piece about unions and sharecroppers, and wouldn't be back for weeks.

One afternoon I found myself walking along the riverbank, near the Nihonbashi Bridge, not far away from where I'd first encountered my bargeman all those months ago. I paused for a while as I looked out at the grey river. Dusk was falling, and I became seized with a powerful urge to drink a whisky—perhaps several whiskies—in the warmth and comfort of some homely saloon. I ventured into a warren of low shops and rundown tenement houses. Halfway down an alley, a red lantern was glowing like a votive candle. I hurried toward it, already feeling the drink warm and radiant inside my belly.

I ducked under the blue half-curtain. A hefty woman was polishing glasses behind the bar and called out to me in welcome, waving to a line of stools set up at the empty counter. The place was neat and snug—exactly what I'd had in mind—and I took my seat with a pleasurable sense of anticipation. The woman was taller than any of the others I'd seen in Japan, and deep dimples appeared in her cheeks as I requested whisky. She poured me a glass of Suntory, which I sipped with intense satisfaction.

“American?” she asked.

I tipped my glass toward her in a rueful gesture of acknowledgement.

She placed her elbows on the counter, supporting her chin with her hands. She gazed at me with a frankness that I found somewhat disconcerting.

“GI-san?” she asked, and I braced myself for the inevitable offer of a girl. But then she frowned, shaking her head.

“No, you not GI type, I think.”


I was amused. “Oh no? What type am I then?”

She squinted. “You artist type, I think.”

I grinned. “Is that so?”

She nodded, apparently sure of herself. “Yes. I think.”

I liked the woman already. She was burly and maternal all at once, with a dash of sultry sexuality lurking somewhere beneath it all.