“It’s not me making things difficult,” said the girl, and already she had started doing a little jig. “Life would be much easier, Beast, if you just agreed with me.”
“Yes,” I said sarcastically. “Life would be so much easier if I always agreed with you.”
“That is so,” she said, now dancing in front of Yoshito. “Especially if it’s dangerous.”
“Keep you out of mischief!” crowed Yoshito, as he cracked a gummy grin.
“Thank you,” I said, nodding at him.
“Anyway, how are you going to drive with your bad arm?” said the girl. “You will need me to change gear.”
“Of course – and you know just how to do that.”
“Yes I do – we learned in class.”
“You are so annoying!”
And at that, Yoshito that cackling old devil, piped up, “I think it is just you who is easily annoyed.”
If I have learned anything over the years, it is that I know when I am beaten; even when I have been licked by a precocious seven-year-old.
I filled up a water-bottle and with a brief wave at Yoshito, the girl and I were on our way. The doctor had given me a scrap of paper on which he had scrawled a note of authority, which – or so he had written – entitled me to commandeer such medicines and food as I saw fit. Neither of us had any idea if it would have any clout; but then neither of us had any idea if the depot even still existed. For all we knew, the entire city had been destroyed.
As we climbed the hill, we could see a broad sheet of smoke hanging over the Urakami valley like morning mist. A few fires still sputtered through the haze, finishing off the last of the cathedral, the factories and the bigger buildings. But, for the rest, Nagasaki was a grey desert of rubble. A few sticklike figures could be seen wandering down what once had been streets. What struck me most, though, and what kept me turning again and again for a fresh view, was how my once beautiful city had been transformed into such an ugly grey blot.
We walked steadily, traversing Mt Konpira from side to side rather than attempting the much steeper ascent straight up. All the way up, half the leaves on every tree, shrub and plant had been turned from green to black – while the other half hidden from the bomb still remained a dusty green; like so many of the victims, the plants were half-dead, half-alive.
I do not know why I had thought the hill would be too much for the girl. She was like a mountain-goat, bounding ahead of me, and then pirouetting on some boulder as I trudged up behind her. My arm ached. It always ached. I do not think I will even bother to mention it again. If in this story you ever catch yourself wondering about my arm, and think that, as I have not mentioned it for a while, it is therefore no longer causing me hurt, well... that is not the case. As with all pain, you make a conscious decision as to how you wish to deal with it. And as for me, I did my best to ignore it. Though if you caught me on the raw, if, say, you grabbed my arm, that was a different matter altogether. No, whenever that happened, I was off like a rocket.
It took 40 minutes to climb the hill, and it was only when I reached the peak that I could properly survey the bomb’s aftermath; it was an astonishing sight, absolutely nothing like I had expected. For the hill that I had climbed, that beautiful Mt Konpira, had saved half the city. On the one side, all trace of human habitation was gone; yet in the adjoining valley, the city did not appear to have been touched. I could see well-ordered avenues, street-cars trundling up the roads, and people who had been not three kilometres from the epicenter, yet who appeared completely unharmed.
The hillside was in stunning contrast to the smouldering ash that I had left behind. Half the city was untouched and the other half destroyed.
“What a pity,” said the girl. “It must have been very beautiful.”
“It was,” I said. “I have been up this hill many times. It always looked lovely from up here. But I suppose it could have been a lot worse.”
“It could have been like Hiroshima.”
“At least we have half a city left.”
“And at least we still have a depot to go to.”
As we walked down the hill, we entered this fragrant new world, where the crickets still chirruped, the plants smelled of more than just smoke and ashes, and where, for all the effect that Fat Man had had on their lives, the bomb might have been dropped over 100 kilometres away. It was so very different from Hiroshima, where the drift from carnage to civilisation had been much more gradual – but in Nagasaki, there was this brutal dividing line at the top of the hill which marked the difference between life and death.
After just 100 metres, Urakami was already long behind us; the girl had even started singing a little ditty to herself, a sure sign of contentment. We picked our way down a path and every flower and every perfect house made it seem like a flawless paradise. Gardens that continued to grow pumpkins and vegetables; cicadas that still chirruped; streets that were not blocked with rubble; and houses, hundreds of houses, which did not seem to have lost even so much as a roof-tile.
“Just imagine,” said the girl, as we walked down a broad tree-lined street. “If you had lived here.”
“If we go down that route, why not ask me why I had to be in Nagasaki in the first place? Perhaps I might have been living safely in Kokura.”
“Perhaps. But then you would not have met me.”
“And then my life would be very different.”
“You wouldn’t be having half as much fun.” She was snickering as she skipped, hands prettily behind her back.
“You would not be having half as much fun either.”
“I always have fun – even with Beasts like you.”
This bickering was to be a constant theme with the girl – and was all the more remarkable because she was only seven years old. But she was the sharpest seven-year-old you have ever met. “Whatever I say, you always hurl it straight back in my face.”
“It’s good for you,” she said.
“Tell me, are you ever lost for words?”
“With you? Never!” She laughed, skipping off down the street with her hair bouncing on her shoulders. But she was certainly right. I would not have had half as much fun without her.
In this fashion, we squabbled our way to the depot. They even had a guard manning the gate. He was a callow youth, barely out of school, but had been put into an army uniform and given a gun so that he too could play his part in the war effort. I do not know what he thought he was doing there because he did not even attempt to stop us from entering the compound, instead pointing us to a small office-block on the other side of the dusty brown quad.
People in uniforms were ambling to and fro, but it was all done at a most leisurely pace. The quad was bounded by two long warehouses, each of which had a fresh coat of camouflage paint, in the vain hope it would elude the Yankee bombers. The depot looked trim and in good order, with not a weed in sight.
The office block was made of concrete in the Western style and built to last. I went up two steps, knocked on the black steel door, and there was only the briefest of pauses before I heard the single word, “Come.”
I gestured for the girl to wait outside, but of course she ignored me and came straight in behind me.
We walked into a secretary’s office, but as no-one was there we went straight on through to the next room, which bristled with all the tools of the quartermaster’s trade: pencils, pens, rulers, rubbers, and reams of paper. One entire wall was lined with files. The quarter master himself was sat behind his desk, like a spider at the centre of this great logistical web.
“Yes?” he said, briefly looking up from his papers. On first inspection, he looked like all the other close-cropped, bulletheaded officers that I had dealt with over the previous four years. Yet his appearance was softened by gold-rimmed glasses, not so dissimilar from those the Emperor wore; all that I registered before I even noticed that he had lost an arm and that his empty sleeve was pinned across his chest.
I was about to speak, when the quartermaster spoke for me. “You have come from Urakami? How bad is it?”
“It’s a disaster,” I said, fishing in my pocket for the note that Dr Kinoshita had given me. “After the bomb there was a firestorm and... and there’s very little left.”
He tapped his pen on the desk. “It must have been the new bomb that they dropped on Hiroshima. So... ” He trailed off, and before my eyes I was witnessing an army officer realise that the war must now inevitably be at an end. His gaze wandered over my shoulder to stare out of the room. “A single bomb that can wipe out a city? Well, then it is over. The war is over. I always thought it was an ill-judged act to have started it in the first place.”
“Perhaps.”
Again, that tapping of the pen and then the quartermaster shrugged, screwed up his nose, and with those few simple actions had digested the fact that our four-year war effort was at an end. If only his fellow officers had been able to accept our surrender with such equanimity.
“It is the beginning of a new era. We have had four years of destruction and now it’s a time to rebuild.” A little smile seemed to pass over his face, as another thought came to him. “Though I fear that it might take considerably longer than four years. It is so much more time-consuming to create than it is to destroy. Take your Urakami Valley – hundreds of years in the making, and now gone in the twinkling of an eye.”
His eyes moved to the piece of paper that I was holding. “What’s in your hand?”
“It is a note from Dr Kinoshita at the Urakami First Hospital. We have no food or medicine. We have nothing. The hospital burnt down last night. Hundreds of people are having to sleep outside.”
The quartermaster perused the note, before opening a drawer and pulling out two form-books. He started to write rapidly. “If I am judging this correctly, the army will have little need for any more supplies,” he said in almost a conversational tone. “And if I am wrong, then they will probably take me out and shoot me.”
He looked up and smiled at the girl. “But that is why I have this job – because I don’t need to be given orders. I’m in charge because I make the correct decisions.” He signed one form with a flourish and then started writing in the second book.
“So what are you doing?” asked the girl.
“My decision is to give Dr Kinoshita everything that he requests, though we’re light on medicines. You also need blankets, so you may take those as well. There’s no point in keeping it for an army that’s not going to fight.”
“But... ” I almost burst into tears. I had been expecting such a struggle; everything over the past four days had been nonstop struggle, and out of nowhere I had found wisdom and compassion – from a man who might just as easily have been a hidebound martinet.
“There’s one small problem,” the quartermaster said as he continued to write. “But for a pair of your resources, it should not be difficult. We have no trucks. We have no cars. We have enough rice to feed an army. But we have no means of transporting it.”
“We will find a lorry then,” said the girl.
“I’m sure you will. I will write you the names of two places that might still have a vehicle. But one more thing before you go.” He opened up a drawer and took out a bag that I had not seen in a long time. “Boiled sweets,” he said. “My grandchildren like them.”
“Thank you,” said the girl. “I will take two.”
He laughed as he proffered the paper bag to me. “And you?”
I could not even remember the last time that I had tasted a sweet. “Thank you.”
“That is good,” said the quartermaster. “And now I can join you. It’s not just my grandchildren who enjoy boiled sweets.”
For a few golden moments, the three of us were united in that simple delight of sucking a boiled sweet. It is sometimes worth foregoing life’s little pleasures, just for the untold thrill of becoming reacquainted with them.
We were still sucking our sweets as we walked out of that office into the brilliant summer sunshine and at that moment, with everything so neat and ordered about us, it was almost impossible to believe what was waiting for us on the other side of a hill.
We did not have far to walk – and our welcome could not have been more different. The quartermaster had sent us to what had been a one-time training centre for truck drivers. It was where, presumably, teenagers learned how to drive before being sent off to the front to provide more cannon-fodder. But, with fuel in such short supply, the training of rookie drivers had been put on indefinite hold.
Some scrubby vegetables were growing on what had once been a lawn. A rusty gate had fallen off its hinges and was propped against a wall. The remains of some cannibalised cars were littered by a garage. But over in a shed, I could see the outlines of two old trucks.
The girl raced over to them and by the time I had wandered over, she had already swung herself up into a cab and was sitting behind the steering wheel. She beeped the horn a few times and rolled down the window. “Can I drive?”
“Certainly not,” I said, as I walked round the truck. It was one of those classic army lorries with a canvas top, and well battered from being mauled about by novice drivers. It had a flat tyre, but the engine looked sound enough when I lifted the bonnet.
“Is the key in the ignition?” I called up to the girl.
“It’s not here,” she said.
“Try underneath the visor or one of the side-boxes.”
I went to inspect the other truck, but the back wheels were off and it was propped up on a pile of bricks.
The place had the still quiet of a ghost-town. The silence was shattered by a shrill barking voice.
“What the devil are you doing?”
I loped round to see an officer, no more than my age, scuffling with the girl as he tried to haul her out of the cab.
“Get off me!” she screamed, lashing out with her feet. “You’re hurting me.” She twisted out of his grip and slunk to the far side of the cab.
“Get out of there this instant!” roared the officer. “You’re not allowed in there.”
I walked over to him and said, silky soft, “Please calm down.”
The officer, quite tall but just a clone for all the other thousands of soldiers churned out by the Army sausage-machine, turned on me. “Are you responsible for this girl?”