“Where were you when the bomb fell?” I asked, taking her hand in mine. It was clammy and rigid with pain and I stroked it gently as I spoke.
“Far enough away not to die immediately. But now I think, not far enough,” she said, allowing me to assist her into a sitting position against the headboard. “I thought I had escaped the worst of it, but my doctors have told me that they have seen cases like mine. The body only shows the damage when it wants to, even if it is years later. At least, that was their conclusion, since they could find no other reason.”
“And your family?”
She closed her eyes and wiped her mouth with a silk handkerchief. “I lost everyone of my family. My brothers and sisters, my father and my mother. Endo-san’s family and everyone who had stayed in Toriijima were all killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I did not love Tanaka-san, yet I used his feelings for me and asked him to follow Endo-san here. And now you have told me that I caused his death.”
“He would have died as a soldier in the war or when your village was destroyed,” I said.
She shook her head. “I was selfish.”
I handed her the pills that she continued to take out of habit, even though they had long ceased to make a difference.
“I blamed Endo-san for agreeing to work for the government in exchange for his father’s freedom. After the war I waited for him to come home. But he never did, and no one ever knew what had happened to him. But I never stopped thinking of him.” She winced with pain.
“He only did what duty demanded,” I said, holding her hand more tightly. “He tried to bring a sense of harmony to all the conflicting elements of his life.”
I could not bear to see her suffering. And I felt a selfish fear that I would not be able to tell her everything. I had waited so long for all of it to come out: the guilt, the regrets, the darkness that had filled my days for such an eternity. There was nobody else I could ever have spoken to about the mistakes of my life and to have found her, someone who had known and even loved Endo-san, was something I had never dared or hoped to ask for.
“I do not have much time left to me,” she said.
“We will go to Endo-san’s island when morning comes,” I said to give her something to focus on, to look forward to. My initial reluctance to show her Endo-san’s island was gone, now that I had come to know her better. It would be cruel not to take her there.
“Yes,” she said. “I want so much to see it.” She coughed and then said, “May I live there, until ...”
“Of course,” I said quickly, not wanting her to finish what she was trying to say.
“Are we going in your little boat?” she asked. “I would like that very much.”
I shook my head, and told her about my boat, the boat that had taken me so many times across the sea to Endo-san’s island. The wood was rotten and falling to pieces and it had sprung an irreparable leak. The last time I would ever use it, I took it out to sea at sunrise. I rowed to a position just off Endo-san’s island and waited with it as it slowly filled with water, stroking its peeling sides and cracked wood, talking softly to it. The sea came in with respect, a little at a time, and I felt the water rise up my feet, then my shins, and then my knees. All the while I watched the light of a new day touch the trees of the island, until a strong wave came, leaving me to float on the surface. I held my breath in the water and watched as the boat of my childhood dropped soundlessly away, raising silent clouds of sand when it hit the bottom of the sea. Like the lonely casuarina tree it was as old as I, and I never regretted not giving it a name. It had been my boat, and that was enough for me.
* * *
There was nothing much to pack. She had left all her clothes in her valises and Maria helped me carry them. I held Michiko’s arm as we made our way carefully down the steps to the boathouse. She was dressed warmly. A storm had come in the early hours before dawn and the air was still cold. We had sat watching the lightning from her room, wondering what the day would bring.
The journey across to Endo-san’s island, which I had made so often and so easily in my youth, tired me now. “It seems such a distance away,” she spoke, shading her eyes with her hand.
“We will be there soon. These old bones of mine are making the trip seem long, that’s all.”
“I am glad I came here, and I am glad I met you. Thank you, for last night.”
I grunted as drops of perspiration stung my eyes. She reached across and dabbed them away with the edge of her sleeve. We passed the rocks that had once appeared so much like a row of rotting teeth to me but which I discovered later on in my life looked beautiful, like ancient markers warning people to stay away from the place they guarded.
I pulled the boat high above the waterline and helped her step out. Her eyes went immediately to the landmarks I had described. “Here is the rock where you wrote your name!” she said, running her fingers over my scratching. “It is real,” she whispered, wonder in her voice. “It is all real.”
I led her into the bamboo trees. The gardeners of Istana had done their weekly duties and the place was well kept and lush. We came to the house and she let out a soft cry. “It looks exactly like the guest cottage on his father’s estate,” she said. She stopped to take in the house. “You have taken care of it well.”
I helped her into the house. I had left everything almost as it had been. The old and torn tatami mats had been replaced, but Endo-san’s ink drawing of Daruma, the monk with the lidless eyes, hung in the same alcove as it had when Endo-san was alive.
I found a futon mattress in a cupboard and unrolled it for Michiko to lie on. Her breathing was worse and I tried not to show my worry.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I am afraid,” I said. It had been so long since I felt such intense emotion that I stopped to consider it, to
feel
it. “I’m frightened to tell you the rest of what happened. I want, I need to tell you, yet I am so afraid.”
She saw my bewilderment and the tender compassion in her expression made me believe what she said next. “I am not here to judge you. I am not here to condemn you, or to forgive you. I have no such right. No one has.”
It was now her turn to hold my hand. “I am here because I once loved a man, and I never stopped loving him, that is all,” she said.
She squeezed my hand harder and a smile appeared on her face, and I knew I need have no fear. She alone, of all the people in the world, would understand.
“Tell me,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-One
The monsoon returned like a family guest, to be tolerated by some, hated by others, loved by one or two, and the brilliant sunshine of our days became a clouded memory again as fleets of storm clouds sailed in and anchored themselves in the sky.
I ran on the beach before sunrise every day, through the morning drizzle, always keenly aware of the island on the edge of my vision. Once I saw a small sampan heading for it and my heart quickened. But as it broke though the veil of rain I saw it was only a fisherman braving the choppy waters, his cormorant sitting on the prow. He waved to me and I returned his greeting, wishing him a good catch.
It was less than a week since General Erskine’s visit and Endo-san still had not been found. I was not unduly worried: Endo-san was capable of taking care of himself, and would probably have a safe place in which to shelter. I would wait for him, however long it took.
* * *
“May I speak to the master of the house?”
I gave a tiny start. It was already dusk and a soft rain was falling. I was sitting on the terrace beneath an umbrella, holding the letter informing me of Edward’s death four months earlier, and staring at the sky, looking at the overburdened clouds that were trying to bend the line of the horizon. The words, although spoken softly, jolted me out of my thoughts.
I placed the letter on the table and looked up to see Endo-san.
So time—mischievous time, cruel time, forgiving time—plays tricks on us again and again.
“I would like to borrow a boat from you,” he said.
He held out his hand and I reached across the table, reached across time, and gripped it as hard as I could. He pulled me to him and embraced me. Then he stood back a little and reached out to touch the top of my head.
“You have grown so much since the day I first saw you,” he said. “You looked so sad, that day, sitting here, unmoving, your eyes on the sea.”
“You were right, you know, when you told me we would have to endure terrible things,” I said. “There were times during those years I hated you and could have killed you. I had to remind myself of my true path. Some days I failed. I failed everyone.”
He could not argue with the truth of what I said and so he merely asked, “What are you going to do now?”
I shook my head. “I’m not certain. I suppose I’ll rebuild the company, rebuild my life.” I paused, then I said, “It all depends on you.”
“I cannot be with you now. This is where we set out on different roads.”
“I can walk the same road as you.”
He shook his head. “That would be to delay our fates.” He turned to me and held my hands, his eyes studying my fingers, my palms. “We must achieve harmony now, find an equilibrium, so that the next time I see you, the sand will have been wiped smooth. And then we can walk, on and on, toward the horizon of an endless beach.”
It was difficult to accept his point, yet somehow it was as clear as a bird in the sky to me.
The clouds had moved away and we went out through the garden of statues. At my father’s grave, Endo-san bowed, his heart speaking words I could hear so clearly, resonating like echoes across a canyon.
We took shelter under the casuarina tree, the lonely tree that still looked so steadfastly toward Endo-san’s island. Water dripped down on us, carrying with it the essence of the leaves.
“You have the most beautiful home in the world,” he said.
I was breathing heavily, my breath choppy as the wind-tousled sea.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
I gripped the wet bark of the tree as though trying to cling to it, to fasten myself to its unmoving presence so that I did not have to take another step. But I saw the pain in Endo-san’s expression and I could not deny him his wish.
There was nothing to pack except my white
gi
and black
hakama
—both had been gifts from Endo-san. I rowed once more across the water, and he sat facing me, facing his island, his expression unchanging as the boat navigated the confluence of currents that ran hidden beneath us. And I felt, too, the confluence of time. The oars vibrated and seemed to sing with each pull and dip. I saw, from a great height above, our little vessel, two figures in it that I knew were us. We looked so small as the boat stitched the fabric of the sea like a needle, leaving a flowing white thread behind. And I saw the green island in the immense sea, the borders of the sea curling with a lining of light, like a vast piece of rice paper, its edges alive with weals of red embers, ready to burst into flame.
From the sky I fell back into myself in the boat. I felt the spray as the swells rose up like hands to push us back. Still he looked to the open sea, his eyes open but unseeing.
Silence closed in from the edges of the sky; the wind became a memory and the persistent swells melted into flatness. But I continued to row; there was no drag as we moved closer and closer to the island. We left no wake, no curls of water spreading out in a silky
V
as the boat slid forward. The confluence of time shifted and entwined, merged and diverged, but did not separate. I knew Endo-san and I were partially responsible for this psychic tear.
Then I heard a wave spread itself out on the sand in the immense cathedral silence and time resumed again. We had rowed past the line of protruding rocks and were now being gently pushed in by the waves. The boat slid into the sand with a rasp, like a knife cutting into soapstone. I got out and pulled it high up on the beach. Endo-san stepped out onto the soft sand.
* * *
We walked up the little pebbled path that wound around the grove of bamboo. Birds sang in the chorus of the leaves. He stopped. “Listen to that,” he said softly. “How I have missed them!”
I wanted to ask him what had happened on the boat, that inexplicable silence, and how he had managed it. He raised his fingers and stopped me before I could say a word. “I do not know,” he said. “Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.”
We approached his house and again I admired its simple elegance. Endo-san had once told me that it had been built like an
aikijutsu
movement, and only now could I truly understand what he had meant. A strong base, effective, lyrical, in total harmony with the world.
We slid open the door, exposing the musty smells and dampness within. A light layer of dust lay on every surface. I was relieved that General Erskine and his men had not discovered the place. Endo-san moved to the alcove, knelt, and bowed to it. Reverently he opened his hands as though in supplication and gently lifted my Nagamitsu sword from its cradle. It was the only weapon there and I wondered what he had done with his own.