Fire Flowers (7 page)

“Get yourself ready now, Primrose-san,” she instructed. “Our foreign guests will be arriving soon.”

The cubicle was tiny, barely big enough for the straw futon that lay on the floor. A grubby window was set high in the wall and a bare electric bulb hung from the ceiling. I sat on the edge of the mattress and drew my arms around my legs.

A loud cheer came from along the corridor, the jangling of uniforms and the heavy thud of boots. My stomach quivered. The Americans were shouting and laughing as they came in, all bursting with excitement.

My eyes focused on a patch of bubbly mould on the partition in front of me. I pictured Osamu, his body thin and muscular in the bedroom of the Victory Hotel. This wouldn't be like that, I suddenly realised. It wouldn't be like it at all. My heart started to pound as footsteps came along the corridor. At that moment, I promised myself that I wouldn't cry, whatever happened.

Girls were moaning in the other cubicles now, men were grunting and hollering out. Then the curtain of my room was tugged away, and the first one was standing in the doorway.

 

There were little dents in the copper of the teakettle from where it had been buried in the rubble. I'd been staring at it for hours, hunched over on the stained tatami in our cramped, silent house. The dents were dirty with grime which I just couldn't seem to clean away, no matter how much I tried to polish the metal to a dazzling gleam, as my mother had once done.

I could still smell the reek of tobacco and sweat and hair oil. They had kept on arriving all day long, in their uniforms and boots. Most hadn't even bothered to undress. They just pulled down their pants and turned me around and buttoned themselves up as they left.

After the first one finished, I was stunned. I couldn't quite believe what had just happened. But then the curtain twitched open and another one was standing there. Again, and again, and again. After a while, I just lay dumbly on the mattress and let them pull my kimono aside.

Only a few had any idea what they were doing. Most of them were no older than boys. They only lasted a moment, which was a relief. One was rough. He pulled my hair and twisted me around. I screamed, and he leaped up, clutching his trousers as he ran out of the room.

In the late afternoon, I started to get raw and jittery. The room was filthy and stinking and hot and I felt as if I was suffocating. The curtain opened again, and I let out a sob and rolled up into a tight ball.

But it wasn't an American this time. It was Mrs. Abe, who told me that my shift was over and that I should go home. I fumbled into my clothes, but when I got outside into the hallway, I very nearly did start to cry because most of the rooms didn't even have curtains anymore—the Americans had taken them all away for souvenirs.

A sound came from outside and I jerked up. The door slid open and Michiko's face appeared.

“Satsuko,” Michiko said. “Satsuko-chan!” She rushed in and put her arms around me. “Was it really that bad?”

I stifled a sob. She had been working in a different part of the building and I hadn't seen her since she'd squeezed my hand goodbye that morning.

“Did you have to go with an awful many?” she asked, stroking my arm. “Poor Satsuko!”

She unrolled our futon and made up the bed, then gently helped me into my nightclothes and tucked me in beneath the covers.

I heard her yawn as she bustled about by the hearth. She was actually humming to herself as she rummaged about in the cupboard. It was amazing. She didn't seem in the slightest bit concerned.

“Satsuko,” Michiko said. “Satsuko! Look what I've got.”

I couldn't bear to look.

“Satsuko!”

With a great effort, I twisted round. She was waggling a small square bottle full of dark liquid.

“American whiskey. One of the yankiis gave it to me.”

She unscrewed the cap.

“Yankiis,” she confided. “That's what all the other girls call them.”

She sniffed the bottle, then wrinkled up her face. “Mmm!” she murmured. “Not bad.”

She put the bottle to her lips and took a long swallow. Her throat moved once, and she sat there, eyes wide, waving her hand over her mouth.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, oh, oh.”

She recovered her breath and poured out the drink into two teacups. She handed one to me, and I sat up and gave it a cautious sniff.

“Who would have thought it?” Michiko said. “An American, giving me whiskey.”

I took a tiny sip, and retched. The taste was disgusting and made my eyes water.

“And cigarettes,” she said, taking out a packet from her purse and waving it at me. “Have a cigarette!”

She slid one out and lit it carefully, frowning at the glowing end and sucking in the smoke as if she had been doing it her whole life. I took another little sip of the whiskey. It was very pungent, but also sweet. When it reached my belly, I felt a burning, relaxing sensation that was really quite pleasant. My eyes grew heavy and I wondered if I was already drunk. I quickly tipped the rest of the liquid down my throat.

Then I really did feel dizzy. I rolled over on the bed and stared up at Michiko's swaying shape in front of me.

“He was the nicest one, anyway,” she said, puffing away on her cigarette. “The one who gave me the whiskey. Even if he was a black one.”

I sat bolt upright.

“Michiko!” I shrieked. “You didn't go with a black one?”

“So what?” she demanded. “What do I care?”

She poured more whiskey into our cups and I forced myself to drink it. I closed my eyes and lay back, hoping I would fall asleep straight away. The thought of the next day loomed in my mind. A throbbing pain pulsed in my neck and I felt a tightness in my chest. Finally, Michiko blew out the lamp and slid into bed beside me.

My mind was thick with clouds, but sleep wouldn't come. Shapes were moving about in the darkness in front of me; I could see faces of men flickering and blurring into each other. The floor was moving back and forth, as if I was on a boat, men were heaving up and down on top of me, I was suffocating and there was a filthy, cold wetness inside me . . .

I woke with a shriek and seized hold of Michiko. “Michiko!” I cried. “Michiko, help me!”

She raised herself onto one arm. “Satsuko?” she murmured. “What is it?”

I didn't know what to say. Didn't she understand? She was looking at me in the darkness and I could smell the whiskey on her breath.

“Is there really nothing we can do, Michiko?” I whispered. “Nothing at all?”

Her answer came sharply. “No, Satsuko. There's nothing we can do. So the sooner you get used to it the better. Now go to sleep.”

With that, she rolled over and pulled the covers across herself. I drew my arms around my body, shivering. A few moments later, I heard a rasping sound. She was snoring.

 

Every time I looked up, there was an American standing in the doorway. The building was hot and airless, and my room became a wretched, stinking cave. The murky bathroom where we were told to wash and disinfect ourselves after each visitor was the only refuge, but the smell in there was sickening too, and no matter how much I scrubbed myself I couldn't get rid of the stink of chemicals and men. On the train home at night, I was sure that the other people in the carriage could smell it too, and that they were looking at me in disgust, as if they knew exactly the kind of woman I had become.

At the end of the first week, a rumour went around that one of the girls had killed herself. I remembered her from the bus on the first day—she'd worn a yellow dress with a bow in her hair and had stared at the floor with her hands clasped tight. Mrs. Abe had forgotten to tell her to go home and the Americans had just kept on coming for hours on end. She was only seventeen. Later on that night she threw herself under a train at Omori.

I began to wonder if I might do the same. The rails stretched out at the station at night, glittery and smooth, and I wondered whether it would hurt much, or whether you would faint right away before the wheels went over you . . .

Michiko was already home when I got back that evening. She had a look of glee on her face as she knelt down and took my hands in hers.

“Satsuko,” she said. “You'll never guess, but I've fixed it.”

“What do you mean?” I stammered.

She clutched my hands. “I've fixed it so that we don't ever have to go back to the Palace!”

I stared at her in disbelief. “Please say it's true, Michiko,” I moaned. “Please don't say it's one of your jokes.”

“Listen,” she said. “I spoke with that fat pig of a boss and he's agreed to transfer us to another comfort station. It's a high-class place, up on the Ginza. Reserved for American officers.”

My heart sank.
Another comfort station.

“Will that really make such a difference, Michiko?” I asked. “Really?”

She stared at me. “Are you mad? Of course it will. We won't have to go with those common types any more. We'll be just like real consorts now, Satsuko.”

She squeezed my hand, and I saw the old starstruck look in her eyes.

“Modern-day Okichis!” she whispered.

 

Jeeps were driving up and down the Ginza, taxis going past with acrid smoke pouring from their charcoal-run engines.

American soldiers and sailors strode along the street in wide groups, and I flinched as one raised his cap to me. His friends all guffawed, and he held out his palms to them in offended complaint.

We hunted about for the address up near the tall, sooty shopfront of the Matsuzakaya department store. The window were shuttered now and the doors barred. I felt a stab of guilt. My mother had brought me here four years ago, on my sixteenth birthday, to buy my first real kimono. It was woven from beautiful green silk, embroidered with golden peonies. I'd had to sell the kimono to buy rice back in June.

Next door to the Matsuzakaya was a low, white building that had clearly once been a communal bomb shelter. A large sign hung outside, English words freshly painted in pink and white.

“There it is, Satsuko!”

Michiko traced the letters in the air with her finger. “Oasis—of—Ginza,” she pronounced. “We're here!”

Down a flight of dingy steps, the underground shelter had been transformed into a cheap cabaret. There was a little wooden stage and a small dance floor with chairs and tables set off to one side. Red streamers and paper lanterns adorned the cracked earthen walls, American and British flags tacked up at jaunty angles.

“Very nice,” said Michiko, nodding approvingly. A scratchy jazz record was playing on the gramophone, and a very tall and solemn-looking American man was turning slowly around in the middle of the room. A tiny girl appeared, clinging onto him—she could barely clasp her arms around his back.

Mr. Shiga's office was an old storage cupboard piled high with buckets. As we stepped inside, he looked at us haughtily over the rims of his spectacles, and told us how lucky we both were.

“Only the best kind of girls get to work here,” he said. “This place has got class.” He coughed heavily and spat into his handkerchief. “So you'd better keep all our foreign guests happy. And you're not just here to spread your legs, either.”

Aside from the usual services, he explained, we were to encourage the Americans to spend their dollars on drinks and dances and snacks.

“And don't let them palm you off with yen!”

Dabbing at his lips, he quickly went through the financial arrangements, which didn't seem quite fair to me. The Oasis would take practically half of everything we earned, even though we were still expected to pay for our own makeup and clothing and any medical treatment that might be necessary. But it was a sign of how desperate I had become that I just knelt meekly before him and bowed my head. Anything seemed better than the International Palace.

 

Later that night, we took great care making ourselves up. The dressing room was cramped, the air thick with the smell of perfume and perspiring flesh. Other girls slumped on the floor in their underclothes, fanning each other.

Michiko sprinkled powder on the back of my neck and brushed it until my skin was as smooth and white as china.

“Why, Satsuko,” she said, as she stood behind me and pulled my obi tight around my waist. “You look just like a real geisha!”

I laughed at the thought. But as we looked at ourselves in the mirror, I really did look quite pretty, even next to Michiko, who was so stunning.

Years before, I recalled, my mother and I had once dressed up together, just like this, before going out to watch the summer fireworks over the river. We'd painted our faces and glued silk petals to our combs. Then she'd helped me into my beautiful green-gold kimono, hoisting the belt and tying it around me just as Michiko had done.

After things had started to go badly for Japan, that had all changed. There'd been no makeup or jewellery any more. Skirts had been banned, and the busybodies from the National Defence Women's Association went around spying, scolding you in public if you wore the tiniest hint of rouge.
Abolish desire until victory!

One morning, just after I'd reported for war work, Mr. Ogura ordered all of us girls out into the yard. He told us that we were to unpick every colourful thread from our clothes, one by one. After that, it was nothing but shapeless khaki trousers.
No colour but National Defence Colour!

“Whatever would Mr. Ogura say if he could see us now, Michiko?” I said.

She applied a last minute dusting of powder to my nose. “I think he'd keel over, Satsuko. Just like he did when the emperor made his speech.”

We slid open the door to the cabaret. It was already busy, filled with American officers from the army and navy, with girls perched on their knees, pouring their beer and lighting their cigarettes.

As we walked out into the damp, smoky room, a thought struck me. “Michiko,” I asked. “How was it that you persuaded the boss to move us here in any case?”