And of course I came to dwell on that eternal question I have been asked so often over the past 60 years: was I blessed, or cursed? And in fewer than 30 minutes, I had already made my decision. I was blessed, blessed beyond belief, to be given not a second, but a third chance.
My second chance, in Hiroshima, I had completely wasted. Yet now, through fate’s ineffable grace, I had been given a third opportunity. And what surprises me most of all is that I had the wisdom to see it.
I would make amends. I would make amends for my wastrel life. And I would start with my wife Mako, the woman whom I had treated so abysmally over the years. First I would find her and then I would do everything in my powers to save her. When that was done, I would find more work to do – and there would be no shortage of that in Nagasaki. My arm might be injured, but for as long as I was capable, I would embrace every last flicker of life that was left in Nagasaki.
My left arm was already beginning to throb. It must have been protected a little from the blast by my grubby white shirt, but it was already lobster red and swollen. Every so often I might cuff it against a piece of rubble, and the jarring shock would wring through my whole body. I did my best to ignore it. I did what I have been doing ever since when my arm causes me pain: I gave thanks for the very fact that I was alive at all; and gave thanks that my injuries were not considerably worse.
It had started to rain, that oily black rain that I had first encountered in Hiroshima, leaving cold ink stains on my skin and clothes. Although I didn’t then know anything about radiation sickness, I had already conceived the infernal origins of that black rain. But I ignored it and continued to shift the debris. I did not have any option – for there were many more pressing matters. Now that I was in the smouldering ruins of my second atomic bomb, I already had a fair idea of what was coming next.
The firestorm.
The wind was blowing hard in from the sea and the whole of downtown Nagasaki was already a sea of flame – and the Urakami valley, with its high hills on either side, was the perfect wind-tunnel. The firestorm was coming at us like a runaway train and nothing in that Godforsaken city was going to stop it.
Amidst the clatter of the tiles and debris that I was shifting, I noticed some whimpering behind me. The girl had come out from the shrine and was standing a few metres away, cradling Toshiaki in her arms. The poor boy was all shrieked out and all he could do was whimper this unending sob.
I nodded at the girl as I tossed another piece of wood into the garden.
“Can I help?” she asked.
I was about to tell her that there was no room; that I could do the job twice as quickly without her in the way.
But as I looked over at her one more time, I saw she was desperate to join me. “Very well,” I said. “Clear a space for Toshiaki and put him on the ground.”
Toshiaki, for all his pain, was not going to be any worse off for being left by himself for a few minutes. The girl smiled as she joined me.
“She must be close,” I said. “I can hear her knocking.”
The girl took a turn down in the hole, worrying at the tiles that were trapped beneath her before passing up bits of wreckage to me.
And it was she who found Mako and that pleased me.”Here is an arm!” she shouted.
I swapped places with her. The arm was bare and covered with dust and flecks of stone. It was deeply charred. I cleared away a couple more tiles and found her hand. Very delicately, I took her clawed, burnt fingers in my own and gave them a gentle squeeze. She pulsed back. It was the first time in two years that my feelings had ever been reciprocated.
Little by little, we unearthed more of Mako’s body. Her other hand still clutched the pebble that she had been blindly tapping against a piece of wooden beam. Then a shoulder, before finally we came to her face. And thank God she could not see me, as I winced at the sight of her and had to turn my head away.
Her hair, that wonderful black shock of hair, was frazzled and coming out in clumps. Skin was peeling off in strips to reveal raw flesh underneath. Her face was flecked white with plaster, but was so puffed up it was unrecognisable. Her eyesockets were swollen shut while a thin dribble of mucous oozed between the lashes. There is no pleasant way to describe what had happened. Her eyeballs had melted.
As gently as we could, the girl and I cleared the rest of the wreckage from Mako’s body. I could have saved a few minutes by grabbing hold of her shoulders and dragging her out, but I was quite certain that her skin would have torn off in my hands.
Eventually, there she lay before us, as weak and vulnerable as a new-born; she did not even have the strength to cry out, but could only lie there immobile on her side, head nuzzled on her shoulder. The bomb had clean stripped away her black top and the whole of her front from head to waist had been flashfried like a piece of steak on the griddle. Oh, but she was savagely injured, with black blood already oozing through the strips of burnt skin. Some wisps of her mompei trousers still adhered to her hips and thighs, though her legs had also been severely burned.
Was there a moment, perhaps, when I thought that Mako had got her just desserts? When I thought that it was a fitting end for the woman who had not believed me about the bomb that had dropped on Hiroshima?
Not for one second did I think that. I swear it. At that time, there was not a drop of anger in my body – no, that would take a full hour to manifest itself in all its glory, and most timely it was too. All I could feel as I took in the enormity of Mako’s injuries was this overwhelming sense of pity.
The girl gaped at Mako’s ravaged body. She had coped well with tending those strangers at the Hijiyama school just two nights previously. But it was difficult to equate this shrivelled, burned piece of humanity with the beautiful woman who had made her tea only a few minutes before.
I clasped the girl on both shoulders and her eyes falteringly met mine. “It’s down to the two of us now,” I said. “Can you stay here? I will find some way to get them to the hospital.”
“A handcart?” she suggested.
“A handcart would be perfect. Look after them both – you’re in charge now!”
“I always was in charge!” she called after me, and it did my heart good to know that, even after this second bomb, the imp was back.
The devastation was every bit as bad as Hiroshima. How can I find fresh words to describe this second wasteland? A wasteland is a wasteland. There are no neat little gradations to describe the varying degrees of destruction. All about me was exactly the wholesale carnage that I had witnessed three days earlier: the smeared houses; the charred telegraph poles tumbled like kindling; the pall of smoke and dust that hung heavy in the air; and just the overall sense that everything in sight had been smashed by a single swing of some gigantic wrecker’s ball.
Through the sea of flame, I could just make out some of the factory chimneys, black and clawing at the sky. The great red brick cathedral, the focal point of so many million Christian prayers over the years, was in its death throes. It was already nothing but a decapitated corpse, with its bell-tower and twin domes swept away by the bomb, and now the firestorm was finishing off the job.
Out on the rubble-strewn street, dead neighbours were locked in all manner of ghastly contortions, all of them in the exact place where they had been snatched away by the bomb. An old woman who had used to look after me as a child still had the spade in her hand which she had been wielding in the garden. A teenager whom I had known since he was a baby, now nothing but a carbonized husk, hands fused over his face, thumbs covering his eyes just as he had been taught; I only recognise him because of his distinctive brown shoes. And a couple sprawled in front of an ornamental pond, their heads immersed in the water, as if they had used their last drop of energy to crawl there and then expired at the first sip.
All of this I had seen before in Hiroshima. It was just an unending picture of death in all its grotesque variety – but these people were not strangers, but neighbours whom I had known all my life.
There was no time even for shock. I would look and perhaps recognise the charred body of an old school friend – and I would move on. My grieving would have to wait. The dead I could do nothing about; as for the living – well I would do my best.
I took a few seconds to work out which one of my neighbours might have possessed a handcart, or some sort of barrow. Then it came to me, a picture of a smiling, sun-wizened man, pushing a handcart that was piled high with garden produce. I screwed up my eyes in concentration as I tried to remember where he lived; it was not quite that street, but close by. Was it a parallel street?
I loped as fast as I could over the smouldering rubble, picking my way to the end of the road before taking a left. I was sure it was down this street, followed by a left turn, but the roads were now nothing but lines of demolished houses. The further I went, the more I was beset with fears that I was wasting my time; how could a wooden handcart have survived this butchery? Would it not be better just to pick Mako up and try to carry her over my shoulder?
I paused on the street-corner, mind tick-tocking over whether to go straight back, when I heard a voice call out to me.
“Hi!” came the cry. “Got the time to talk to an old sailor?”
At first I could hardly make the man out from all the rubble he was propped against. It was Yoshito, one of my father’s old friends; he had used to dandle me on his knee when I was a small boy. He was covered in dust and seemed to have dug his way out from the ruins of his house. One of his legs had been broken, his foot kicked out to the side at a crazy angle, and for a moment I was struck with how he looked like a puppet with its strings cut.
I stopped and gawked at him. He was lying on the ground with his head pillowed on a broken piece of timber, from where he had a grandstand view of the approaching firestorm.
He nodded at the solid wall of flame, which stretched right across the valley and up to the first of the terraced fields. “There’s not going to be much left of Urakami after that.”
I looked from Yoshito to the fire and back again – and made a decision. “I’m getting a handcart,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, and I do believe that he had a trace of a smile on his face. “I’m sure it will be quick. We all have to die some time.”
“Not if I can help it,” I called out, tearing off down yet another street of ruined houses; already my mood was lifting – because, even if I did not find the handcart, I would still save them. If needs be, I would carry them both, Yoshito and my wife, one on each shoulder; I would carry them till I dropped; I would find a way. I would do it.
It was still a relief to recognise not the house but the large garden at the back of it – and there, sheltered behind an old brick wall, was the handcart, black and decades old, and with a couple of spokes missing from one of its wheels. I could have kissed the cart I was so pleased to see it.
The wood was hot as I grabbed the two handles, sending a volt of pain up my burned arm. I gritted my teeth and only held tighter onto the cart. It was nothing, I kept telling myself, nothing at all; my very pain was an affirmation that I was still alive.
The return journey was much slower going. I bumped the handcart down the pathway and onto the street. There was rubble everywhere. A couple of times, I had to clear a path before dragging the cart through – and all the time aware of this wild firestorm, like a ravening beast that was breathing flames down the back of my neck.
Yoshito was still lying awkwardly on the ground, with his hands now calmly clasped on his stomach. “You got the handcart?”
“Of course – and you’re getting on it.”
“I said not to bother. Save yourself and your pretty wife.”
I dragged the handcart up alongside him, before squatting down and picking him up in my arms. “Save your breath. You’re coming whether you like it or not.” I gasped. His legs were now draped over my burnt arm and the pain was agonizing. From what had been just a mild throb, it was like my skin was being played over with a blowtorch. I flopped Yoshito onto the handcart. I did not even like to see what my arm looked like.
“Devil!” I screeched, more in annoyance at my own frailty. If I’d had a piece of leather, I would have stuffed it into my mouth to bite on. As it was, I took out all my pain and rage on the handles of that handcart, digging my fingers deep into the wood.
What a strange sight I must have made, as I alternately cursed and kicked at all the debris that blocked my way. I think the girl must have heard my mad raging screams even before she saw me. She was twitching with nerves, terrified that, true to past form, I had abandoned her, Mako and little Toshiaki; and once upon a time, I well might have.
“Bring Toshiaki over!” I called out, my voice only just carrying over the roar of the firestorm. I pulled the handcart up as close as I could to the ruins of my old home and, as I stepped back over the rubble, I tried to shake some life into my screaming left arm. Was there any way that I could pick Mako up with my right arm alone?
I tried, but I could not even begin to lift her. I slapped myself twice, hard, on the cheek, working myself into a perfect fury, before bending down and picking her up in one smooth movement. My arm sizzled with pain as it was abraded on the jagged ground beneath her. I held her close to my chest, carrying her back over the ruins, and the memory that came back to me was so absurd that I almost smiled. I had remembered how, on the day we had married, I had carried Mako over the threshold of the very house that I was walking on now; what more appropriate way to say goodbye to my old family home than to be carrying Mako out of it?
As tenderly as I could, I placed her on the handcart next to Yoshito. I winced at the sight of her chest. She had been skinned from practically her hips to her collar-bone; her flesh looked like raw whale-meat dusted with grime. The front of my shirt was covered with the flaccid grey ribbons of her skin.