Where the river widens into an estuary, the valley is steep and narrow. Wheatie and the Anbo old people call it the Neck. It is the most haunted place, but I’m not afraid. I half-fear and half-hope Anju will ambush me. The faces between the pine trees are not really there. Where the water floods the track in the rainy season, a tori gate marks the beginning of the path that winds up the hill to the shrine of the thunder god. Wheatie warns us not to play there. She says that apart from the Jomon cedars themselves, the thunder god is the oldest living thing on Yakushima. Show any disrespect to him, and the next time you cross water a tsunami will come and drown you. Anju wanted to ask if that was what happened to our grandfather, our mother’s father, but I made her promise not to. Mrs Oki told a kid in our class that he drowned face down in a ditch, drunk. Anyway, the villagers never bother the thunder god with small-fry favours like exams, money or weddings – they go to Father Kakimoto’s new temple next to the bank for that. But for babies, and blessings for fishing boats, solace for dead relatives, they climb the steps to the shrine of the thunder god. Always alone.
I check my Zax Omega watch. Plenty of time. The road to the World Cup starts today in Kagoshima, and I will need all the help I can get. Finding our father is big fry. No fry is bigger for Anju and me. Without another thought I sling my sports bag behind a mossy rock and, fuelled by energy from my awesome brainwave, start running up the muddy steps.
I replace the receiver. Weird guy, the way he kept apologizing. Maybe the telephone call will break the insomnia spell. Maybe my body will realize how tired it is, and finally shut down. I lie on my back and stare upwards doing chess knight-moves on the ceiling tiles until I forget which ones I’ve already landed on. Then I begin again. On the third attempt I am overwhelmed by the pointlessness of the exercise. If I can’t sleep I may as well think about the letter. The Other Letter. The Big Letter. It came – when? – Thursday. Yesterday. Well, the day before yesterday. I get back to Shooting Star utterly exhausted. Thirty-six bowling balls were left on platform nine, the farthest platform from the lost property office. Suga had performed his disappearing act so I had to lug them over one by one. They were claimed later by a team who were waiting for them at Tokyo Central station. I am learning that laws of probability work differently in the field of lost property. Mrs Sasaki once had a human skeleton wind up on her trolley, stuffed inside a backpack. A medical student left it on the train after his professor’s leaving party. Anyway, I get back to Shooting Star, dripping sweat, and Buntaro is perched on his stool behind the counter spooning down green tea ice cream, studying a sheet of paper with a magnifying glass. ‘Hey, lad,’ he says. ‘Want to see my son?’ This is weird because Buntaro told me that he hasn’t got any kids. Then he shows me a page of inky fuzz. I frown at my proud landlord. ‘The miracles of ultrasound scans!’ he says. ‘Inside the womb!’ I look at Buntaro’s belly, and he glares. ‘Very funny. We decided on his name. Actually, my wife decided. But I agree. Want to know what name we decided?’
‘Sure,’ I say.
‘“Kodai”. “Ko” as in “voyage”, “dai” as in great. Great Voyage.’
‘That is a really cool name,’ I tell him, meaning it.
Buntaro admires Kodai from various angles. ‘See his nose? This is his foot. Cute, huh?’
‘The cutest. What’s this shrimpy thing?’
‘How do you think we know he’s a he, genius?’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘Another letter arrived for you. I would rig up a special mailbox for you, but then I’d miss out on the fun of steaming open my tenants’ private letters. Here you go.’ He hands me a plain white envelope, originally postmarked in Miyazaki, and forwarded by Uncle Money in Kagoshima. I slit it open and unfold three sheets of crumpled paper. On the video screen helicopters collide and buildings explode. Bruce Willis takes off his sunglasses and squints at the inferno. I read the first line and realize who the letter is from. I shove it into my jacket pocket and climb the stairs – I don’t want Buntaro to see the shock on my face.
On the steps to the thunder god shrine, spider webs tug, tear and stick to my face. Boiled-candy spiders. I trip and muddy up my knees. I try to forget the ghost stories I’ve heard about how dead children live on these steps, but once you try to forget something you already remember it. Colossal ferns tower over me. Freshwater crabs skitter into rooty cracks. A deer thuds and disappears into thicket. I focus on the ultimate reunion with our father once my ultimate plan bears fruit, and run, and run, and suddenly I am standing in the shrine clearing right at the top. I can see for miles. Inland mountains heave and lurch towards the breaking sky. Light smooths the sea over. I can see the windows on the Yakushima ferry. I approach the bell nervously and look around for an adult to ask permission. I’ve never woken a god up before. Wheatie takes Anju and me to the harbour shrine every New Year’s Day to change our zodiac amulet, but that is a jolly affair of relatives, neighbours and having our heads patted. This is the real thing. This is sober magic. Only me and the god of all thunder in his mildewed drowse. I grip the rope that swings the bell-hammer—
The first gong is to slosh through the forest, scaring pheasants.
The second gong is to make swing-wing fighters wobble in turbulence.
The third gong is to slam shut for ever the iron doors.
I wonder if Anju heard the bell in her sulking-place. When I get back tomorrow I’ll tell her it was me. She’ll never admit to it, but she’ll be impressed by my daring. This is like something she normally dreams up. I approach the shrine itself. The thunder god scowls. His face is hatred, typhoon and nightmare all knotted up. I can’t back out now. He’s awake. My coin clatters into the donation box, I clap three times and close my eyes. ‘Good morning, uh, God of Thunder. My name is Eiji Miyake. I live with Anju and Wheatie in the last house up the valley track, past the big Kawakami farmhouse. But you probably know that. I woke you up to ask for your help. I want to become the greatest soccer player in Japan. This is a big, big thing, so please don’t give me piles like you did the taxi driver.’
‘And in return?’ asks the silence.
‘When I’m a famous soccer player I’ll, uh, come back and rebuild your shrine and stuff. Until then, anything that I can give you, you can have. Take it. You don’t have to ask me, just take it.’
The silence sighs. ‘Anything?’
‘Anything.’
‘Anything? Are you sure?’
‘I said “anything”, and I mean it.’
The silence lasts nine days and nine nights. ‘Done.’
I open my eyes. The fin of an airliner trails rose and gold. Doves spin predictions. Down in Anbo harbour the Kagoshima ferry sounds a solitary horn, and I can see cars arriving. The million and one clocks of the forest flutter, dart, shriek and howl into life. I rush off, flying down the muddy steps where the ghosts of the dead children are dissolving in the first sunlight.
Miyazaki Mountain Clinic
25th August
Hello Eiji,
How do I begin this? I already wrote a stroppy letter, then a moaning one, then a witty one that began, ‘Hello, I am your mother, nice to meet you.’ Then one that began with ‘Sorry’. They are scrunched up, near the bin on the other side of my room. I am a lousy shot.
Hot summer, isn’t it? I knew it would be when the rainy season didn’t happen. (I suppose it is still raining in Yakushima, though. When doesn’t it?) So, you’re nearly twenty now. Twenty. Where do all the years go? Want to know how old I’ll be next month? Too old to tell anyone. I’m at this place receiving treatment for nerves/drinking. I never wanted to come back to Kyushu, but at least the mountain air here is cool. My therapist has advised that I write to you. I didn’t want to at first, but she is even more persistent than me. That looks wrong – I want to write to you, but after all this time it’s so, so much easier not to. But I have this story (more a serial memory). My therapist says I can only stop it hurting me by telling you about it. So if you like, I’m writing out of selfishness. But here goes.
Once upon a time I was a young mother living in Tokyo with infant you and infant Anju. The apartment was paid for by your father, but this story isn’t about him, or even Anju. This is about you and me. In those days, it looked like I was on to a good thing – a ninth-floor split-level apartment in a fashionable quarter of the big city, flower boxes on the balcony, a very rich lover with his own wife to wash his shirts. You and Anju, I have to admit, were not part of the plan when I left Yakushima, but it seemed that the life I led twenty years ago was better than the life of orange farming and island gossip that my mother (your grandmother) had arranged (behind my back, as usual) with Shintaro Baba’s people to marry me into. Believe me, he was every bit as much a slob and a yob a quarter of a century ago as I’m quite sure he is now.
This isn’t easy to write.
I was miserable. I was twenty-three, and everyone told me I was beautiful. The only company young mothers have is other young mothers. Young mothers are the most vicious tribe in the world if you don’t fit in. When they found out I was a ‘second wife’ they decided I was an immoral influence and petitioned the building manager to have me removed. Your father was powerful enough to block that, but none of them ever spoke to me afterwards. As you know, nobody on Yakushima knew about you (yet), and the thought of living with all the knowing glances was too much.
Around that time your father began seeing a newer-model mistress. A baby is not a sexy accessory on a woman. Twins are twice as unsexy. It was an ugly ending – you don’t want the details, believe me. (Maybe you do, but I don’t want to remember them.) When I was pregnant, he swore he’d take care of everything. Naïve young petal that I was, I didn’t realize he was only talking about money. Like all weak men, he acted all confused and presumed everyone would forgive him. His lawyers took over and I never saw him again. (Never wanted to.) I was allowed to live in the apartment, but not to sell it – it was during the bubble economy, and the value of the place doubled every six months. This was shortly after your first birthday.
I was not a well woman. (I’ve never been a very well woman, but at least now I know it.) Some women take to motherhood like they were mothers even before they were mothers – I was never cut out to be a mother, even when I was one. I still hate little children. All the money your father’s lawyer sent for your maintenance I spent on an illegal Filipina nanny so I could escape the apartment. I used to sit in coffee shops watching people walk by. Young women my age, working in banks, doing flower arranging, shopping. All the little ordinary things I had looked down on before I became pregnant.
Two years passed. I got a job in another hostess bar, but I was jaded. I’d already caught my rich patron, and every time I went home you and Anju reminded me where rich patrons leave you. (Nappies and bawling and sleepless nights.) One morning you and I were alone in the house – you’d had a fever, so the nanny took Anju to kindergarten. Not the local one – the young-mother mafia had threatened to boycott them if they admitted you – so we had to take you to another neighbourhood. You were bawling. Maybe because of the fever, maybe because there was no Anju. I’d been working all night so I washed down some pills with vodka and left you to it. Next thing I knew you were rattling my door – you were walking by this time, of course. My migraine wouldn’t let me sleep. I lost it. I screamed at you to go away. So of course you bawled some more. I screamed. Then silence. Then I heard you say the word. You must have got it from kindergarten.
Daddy.’
Something broke in me.
Quite calmly, I decided to throw you over the balcony.
New ink, new pen. Pretty dramatic point for my pen to die. So. Quite calmly. I
decided to throw you over the balcony
. Those eight words explain our lives since. I’m not saying they justify what I did, not at all. I don’t mean I wanted to throw you over the balcony. I mean I was going to. Really. It is so hard to write this.
This is what happened. I flung open my bedroom door – it opened outwards – and slid you clean across the polished wooden landing, over the lip of the stairs and out of sight. I froze, but I couldn’t have stopped your fall, not even if I was superhuman. You didn’t cry as you fell. I heard you. Imagine a sack of books falling downstairs. You sounded like that. I waited for you to start screaming, and waited, and waited. Suddenly time moved three times as fast, to catch up with itself. You were lying at the bottom, with blood squirting out of your ear. I can still see you. (I still do, every time I go down any stairs anywhere.) I was hysterical. The ambulance people had to shout at me to stop me jabbering. Then, when I put down the phone, guess what I saw? You were sitting up, licking the blood on your fingers.
The ambulanceman said that children go limp sometimes, like rag dolls. That saved you from major damage. The doctor said you were a lucky boy, but he meant I was a lucky woman. The vodka on my breath pretty much shot down my story about you climbing over the stair guard. Actually, we were all of us lucky. I know I was going to kill you, and could have spent the rest of my life in prison. I can’t believe I’m finally writing this. Three days later I paid the nanny a month’s money and told her I was taking you to see your grandmother. I was mentally unfit to raise you and Anju. The rest, you know.
I’m not writing this for your sympathy or forgiveness. This story is beyond all that. But the memories even now keep me awake, and showing you them is the only way I know to ease them. I want to get well. I mean—
—you can tell from the creases, can’t you, I just scrunched this up and threw it at the bin. I didn’t even bother aiming. And guess what? It fell straight in, didn’t even touch the sides. Who knows? Maybe this is one of those times when superstition pays. I’ll go and slip this under Dr Suzuki’s door, before I change my mind again. If you want to call me, phone the number on the letterhead. Up to you. I wish—