‘Are you going as far as Anbo?’
‘Jump in.’
We drive off. ‘Warm day,’ I say. ‘Rain soon,’ he replies. Rain is always a safe bet on Yakushima. The wholesaler is a quiet man, so there are no embarrassing silences. He gestures to me to help myself to a sack of ponkan oranges, which are the island’s chief export and easily the most delicious fruit product in the country, if not the whole of Asia. I must have eaten ten thousand ponkans since I came to Yakushima. Cut me open, you get ponkan juice. I watch the forgotten details of my home. The rusty oil drums up by the tourist lodges, the tiny airstrip, the dying sawmill. This far south-west, the trees are still wearing their shabby summer leaves. We pass a cluster of racing cyclists in sleek, tropical fish-colours. The road bucks here. Over the bridge, the waterfall, and here comes the village of Anbo.
The cemetery hammers and saws with insects. The trees stir and the afternoon stews. An ancient October recipe. The Miyake family corner of the enclosure is one of the best tended – my grandmother still comes, every morning, to clean, weed, sweep, and change the wildflowers. I bow before the main grey gravestone, and walk around the side to the smaller black stone erected for Anju. It is inscribed with the death-name the priest chose for her, but I think that is just a way for them to palm more money from grieving mourners. My sister is still Anju Miyake. I pour mineral water over her. I put the bunch of flowers in the holder, together with those our grandmother arranged there. I wish I knew the names of flowers. Clustered white stars, pink comet-tails, crimson semiquaver berries. I offer her a champagne bomb, and unwrap one for myself. Then I light the incense. ‘This,’ I tell her, ‘is a present from our mother. She gave me the money, and I bought it from a temple near Miyazaki station.’ I take out my three flat stones and build her a pyramid. Then I sit on the step and press my ear against the polished stone, tight, to see if I can hear anything. The sea breathes peacefully over the edge of the land. I want to kiss the tombstone, so I do, and only a dark bird with rose eyes witnesses. I lean back and think about nothing in particular until the champagne bomb explodes. So little lasts. Mountains, classic songs, real friendship. Mist rolls down from Mt Miyanoura, dimming the sun, turning the blue sea beery. I brought our great-uncle’s kaiten journal to read parts to Anju, because they both died under the sea. But I think Anju will hear clearly if I just read quietly to myself, here or wherever. I don’t have to say anything about what happened in Tokyo. Being is louder than saying, for her, for me, for us. Ants have discovered Anju’s champagne bomb. ‘Hey, Anju. Guess who I’m going to go see now?’
The last time I walked up this valley path I was carrying my man-of-the-match trophy, kicking a stone. I was about a third shorter than I am now. I half-expect to meet my eleven-year-old self. Weeds colonize the middle of the track. Not a soul is around. A nightingale sings about another world and a monkey screams -about this one. I pass the tori gate and the stone lions. I never went back to the shrine of the thunder god. A famous craftsman came from Kyoto to replace the missing head, and the tourist department printed his new face on pamphlets. I see the forest has nearly smothered the steep path. Every winter his believers become fewer. So gods do die, just like pop stars and sisters. The hanging bridge no longer looks so safe. My footfalls thud rather than boom, as if the planking could crumble any day now. The river below is swollen from last night’s rain. Over half the rice fields in the valley have fallen into disuse. Farmers die too, and their sons are making money in Kagoshima or Kitakyushuor Osaka. Rice field terraces and old barns are allowed to collapse – typhoons are cheaper than builders. The valley belongs to insects, now. I kick stones. Unkempt shrubs grow from the eaves of my grandmother’s house. I watch the old place, as mist thickens into rain. She is a sour lady – but she loved Anju too, in her fierce way. Leaving a picture lets you see the whole frame. The worst that can happen is that she screams at me to go away, and after the last seven weeks that no longer seems so bad.
‘Gran?’
I wade through the grass into the courtyard, and think of an old tale of a spinning-wheel sorceress awaiting her philandering husband’s return, in which the house goes to rot and ruin, but the wife never ages a day. I see a pearly movement between mossy stones – the coils of a snake! Neither its head nor tail are visible, but its coils are as thick as my arm. Snake disappears behind a rusting rotovator. Did Anju talk about a pale snake once? Or did I dream it? I vaguely recall our grandmother talking about a snake that lived in the storehouse when she was a girl, and was supposed to be the harbinger of a death in the family. That must be superstition. Snakes never live for seventy years. I think. I knock on the doorframe, and force open the stubborn door. I hear the radio. ‘Gran? It’s Eiji.’
I slide the insect screen aside, step into the cool, and breathe in deep. Cooking sake, damp wood, the chemical toilet. Incense from the tatami room. Old people have a particular odour – I guess they say the same about young people. A mouse disappears. The radio means that my grandmother is probably not at home. She was in the habit of leaving it on for the dog, and when the dog died she left the radio on for the house. ‘Gran?’ I peer into the tatami room, ignoring a weird feeling that somebody has just this moment died. A feather duster is propped against the foot of the family altar. Hanging scrolls of autumn scenes, the vase of flowers, a cabinet filled with the trinkets and baubles of an island lifetime. She has never left Yakushima. The rain is splashing through the mosquito netting, so I slide the glass across. I used to be afraid of this room. Not Anju. During O-bon she used to lie in wait outside, and burst in to catch the spirits eating cherries our grandmother left out for them. I look at the dead in the black lacquer cabinet. Dressed in oilskins, suits, uniforms, costumes hired from photographers. And here is my sister, toothy on her first day at elementary school.
‘Gran?’
I go into the kitchen, help myself to a glass of water, and sit down on the sofa that me and Anju tried – and failed – to levitate. She blamed my puny ESP powers, because she could bend spoons with hers. I believed her for years. The sofa boingggggggggs, but after a long walk on a sticky day it is comfortable, way too comfortable . . .
I dream all dreamers, all of you.
I dream the frost patterns on the temple bell.
I dream the bright water dripping from the spear of Izanagi.
I dream the drips solidifying into these islands we call Japan.
I dream the flying fish and the Pleiades.
I dream the skin flakes in the keyboard gullies.
I dream the cities and the ovaries.
I dream a mind in eight parts.
I dream a girl, drowning, alone without a word of complaint. I dream her young body, passed between waves and currents, until it dissolves into blue and nothing remains.
I dream the stone whale, wrapped in seaweed and barnacles, watching.
I dream the message bubbling from its blow-hole.
‘We interrupt this programme to bring an emergency bulletin . . .’
‘A massive earthquake has struck the Tokyo metropolitan region within the last sixty seconds. The National Bureau of Seismology reports a quake of 7.3 intensity on the Richter scale, which exceeds the Great Kansai Earthquake of 1995, and indicates extreme structural damage throughout the Kanto basin. Members of the public listening in the Tokyo region are requested to remain calm, and if possible, leave the building for open space away from the danger of falling masonry, and be prepared for aftershocks. Do not use elevators. Turn off gas and electrical appliances. If possible, stay away from windows. The Rapid Earthquake Response Unit is assessing the tsunami risk. All programmes are cancelled until further notice. We will be broadcasting emergency updates nonstop, as we receive more news. I repeat . . .’
The room is cold. I turn the radio right down, and pick up the antique telephone. I try three times, but Ai’s number is dead. So is Buntaro’s. So is Nero’s. No reply from Ueno. Nothing from the Tokyo operator.
I would give anything to be dreaming right now. Anything. Are the airwaves and cables jammed because half the phone users in the country are trying to call the capital, or because Tokyo is now a landscape of rubble under clouds of cement dust? Outside, a century of quiet rain is falling on all the leaves, stones and pine needles of the valley. Inside, the radio man announces that a state of emergency has been declared. I imagine a pane of glass exploding next to Ai’s face, or a steel girder crashing through her piano. I imagine a thousand things. I grab my bag, slide down the hallway, scrunch my feet into my trainers, and scrape open the stubborn door. And I begin running.
Nine