The Blossom and the Firefly

by Sherri L. Smith

  Sparks on sand.

  Ruptured spray of pungent fuel.

  Taro slammed into the earth in a clap of thunder and lightning.

  His war was over.

  CHAPTER 55

  TARO

  “Sir! Sir! We’ve got you!”

  Sea spray. Aeroplane fuel. Smoke.

  He was alive.

  CHAPTER 56

  TARO

  “Sir! Sir!”

  Taro tried to sit up, his lips forming the word yes. The scorch of disinfectant. The ache of bones. The scent of death.

  “Whoa, whoa. Lie back down. This is serious business!” A light pressure on his chest, and the world exploded, falling into blackness.

  * * *

  —

  “Inoguchi Taro, Corporal, Imperial Air Force,” Taro confirmed through parched lips. He was sitting up now, propped against the wall of a weather-beaten hospital tent. The canvas was rotting. The air, deeply humid.

  “Good. You understand there’s paperwork to file before we can let you go. Normally I’d let it slide, but, well, we have to be sure. Where you were spotted is so close to the American fleet, you might be a spy.”

  The doctor was a jovial little man with a soft, square face and horn-rimmed glasses. He should be fat, Taro thought. There was a comfortableness to him that an extra thirty pounds would solidify. But the war had made him thin.

  Just as the war had made Taro a joke.

  “Thrown back by the sea,” the doctor muttered over his clipboard. “I wouldn’t believe it if your accent wasn’t perfect and those fishermen hadn’t vouched for you. They say you lit up the beach like a signal fire. Somehow, they got you out before the flames reached you. Wibaru and his family have had a fish camp on that spit of land for generations. Lucky for you we get fish from them. Lucky for you they were even out today. The gaijin are so close, even our fishermen aren’t safe.

  “Imagine our surprise when the catch of the day was tokkō!”

  The man liked to talk. Taro didn’t mind. It gave him something to focus on, instead of the drifting sensation. He was a leaf twisting in the wind. A boat without an anchor.

  “That thousand-stitch belt really did its job,” the doctor continued, and handed Taro his senninbari. A thousand red Xs hand stitched by a thousand women. His mother standing at the temple, at the train station with fabric and thread, to keep him safe. It was cut up the middle now, sliced clean by surgical scissors. The white cloth now bloodstained and blackened with smoke. Taro ran his hands over the little red bumps.

  “A concussion. A few broken ribs,” the doctor explained. “We had to cut the belt off you to bind them.” He turned for a moment, scooping something off a rolling metal stand.

  “I’m sorry to say your hachimaki didn’t make it.”

  The white strip of cloth with its embroidered red sun was a blackened husk, nearly unrecognizable. Taro reached for it, but the doctor tossed it aside. Taro’s hand dropped into his lap. It was for the best. He should hold on to nothing. Not the headband, nor the memories it carried.

  “Pretty lucky, all in all,” the doctor surmised. “If you weren’t tokkō.”

  Taro’s eyes suddenly stung. His violin had likely burned with the plane. But the belt had survived, and he along with it. He should never have worn it.

  “What about the rest of the unit?” he asked, his throat froggy.

  A look flashed across the doctor’s face. The man’s mouth tightened. He glanced at Taro, then back down at the chart.

  Judgment. Taro was a coward in his eyes. Or a spy.

  “Really, I couldn’t say,” the doctor replied.

  First Nakamura, and now Tomomichi. Everyone.

  “I should be dead,” Taro whispered.

  “What’s that? Yes, you should be!” The doctor handed him a glass of water. The efficient brightness was back. “It’s the damnedest thing. Well, sit tight, and I’ll see if I can get any answers. If you check out, we’ll get you on a transport to the nearest base. I know you’re eager to get a new plane.”

  “And if I don’t ‘check out’?” Taro asked. The water had helped. His voice was stronger. But his hand shook as he placed it on the tray beside his cot.

  The doctor shrugged. “Well, I’d say prison camp, but more likely we’d just shoot you here. It’s a crazy thing, to come through a crash like that unscathed, only to be shot as a spy. Or a traitor. Let’s hope I can get that confirmation.”

  He strode away, the bald spot at the back of his head staring at Taro like a disapproving eye.

  CHAPTER 57

  TARO

  “What’s that you’re humming?” The old fisherman rowed hard, putting his back into it.

  After a month in hospital, Taro was heading back to duty at last. Or so he hoped. With the enemy controlling the waters around the southern islands, they were forced to take a roundabout route. Kyushu was weeks and miles away. Taro sat uselessly in the bottom of the boat, sand flies nipping at his ankles, the itch of white sand and flaking paint where the gunwale pressed into his back. He shrugged and fell silent. There was nothing to sing about, no violin to play, and yet there was music ringing constantly in his head.

  The old man frowned, squinting against the glare.

  “I’ve rowed many young men to their death,” he growled in his heavy Okinawan accent. “But you’re the first who has been unable to catch it.”

  He laughed like a barking fox. “When my son found you, I said, ‘Throw him back!’ Too much trouble for this old man. But we were afraid they’d find your wreckage on our little beach and wonder why we did nothing. So here you are, sad as can be. Ha! I say life is a gift. If the gods want you to keep it, they must have a reason.”

  Taro had thought that himself, for a moment. But that was lunacy, desperation. Hope. It was not Bushido. “I am tokkō,” he said firmly. “My life is already gone.”

  The old man smirked, shifting his grip on his left oar. “That why you’re so heavy? I’m rowing a dead man? What does that make me? Jizo-sama, I guess,” he said. Jizo was the ferryman for the dead.

  “Or maybe I’m that old bitch Sodzu-Baba. I might make you give me that pretty hat of yours as payment,” he leered. Sodzu-Baba was said to live on the banks of the river between life and the afterlife, demanding payment from the dead in coin or in clothing. Taro had no coins to give. He would see that the next base offered the old man something. Though what value was the life of a twice-failed tokkō?

  Taro turned his face toward the water, watching the distance to shore steadily close. For a terrible moment, he wondered, What if I am dead? What if this was indeed Hell, and the old man was Jizo himself, ferrying Taro across Sanzu-no-Kawa, the River of Three Crossings, the river of the dead? What if he was doomed to chase his death in the afterlife, to always think he had failed. Perhaps that was his punishment for not body-crashing when he should have. For thinking, even for those few days, that another life might have been his. That Hana might have been his.

  “Keep rowing, old man,” Taro found himself growling back. He would gladly chase his death across the Sanzu River and the seven seas in payment for those eight short days. And when he had finally paid his debt, he would fade away to nothingness, and that empty state would be bliss.

  * * *

  —

  “Corporal Inoguchi Taro reporting for duty, sir!” Taro snapped to attention. The humidity inside the base headquarters was overwhelming. The walls bamboo instead of plaster, the roof thatched instead of shingled. Even the uniform he wore was borrowed and had seen better days, but at least he felt like a soldier again.

  Until the commanding officer looked up from his desk, his eyes distracted, his skin sallow.

  “No planes,” the CO said.

  “Sir?”

  “You want a plane. We don’t have any. And if we did, there’d be no fuel. The
best I can do is get you on a transport boat to the mainland. See what they can do for you.” He consulted a schedule on his desk. “It’s going to be a while. We’ve got bigger worries than getting you back home.”

  Thrown back by the sea. The doctor had been right. The fisherman had been right. This was Hell after all.

  Taro bowed to the CO and stepped into the heat of the day.

  Old Wibaru had dropped him near a spotting station on an island whose name he could not remember, where a small group of soldiers manned an outlook on the single mountaintop, armed with a portable radio antenna and sharp binoculars. He’d caught a ride with their dispatch messenger on a motorboat to a two-peaked island, where the supply sergeant scared up a tropical uniform for him—khaki shorts that went to the knee, brown shoes a half size too big, and a tunic that billowed about the waist when he tightened the belt.

  “We’re plumb out of aviation insignia,” the man had said wryly. “But I can draw an aeroplane on your sleeve if you’d like.”

  The man had meant it as a joke, but shame had burned Taro’s face. Perhaps he should have killed himself when the old fisherman had left him in the shallows of the island. He could have walked into the ocean and let his body be devoured by the sea.

  But Command was expecting him. He was still of use to the Empire.

  Or so he’d hoped. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  CHAPTER 58

  HANA

  “There she is! The flower of Chiran!” Second Gunnery Sergeant Taiko croons as I enter the room.

  June is fast approaching, bringing heat and the welcome comfort of routine to our work at the hospital. What was once an upper-grade classroom is now a dormitory for soldiers recovering from surgery. Taiko-san had shrapnel removed from his right leg and lost two of his fingers. He will be maimed for life, he says, but for now he is surrounded by pretty young women and likes to pretend he is in a hero’s afterlife.

  “What nectar do you bring today, fair Hana?”

  I no longer blush when he says such things. Taiko-san is not the first soldier to hide his pain with bluster. I switch my tray to my hip and reach for one of the small cups it holds.

  “I have your pain pills here, and if I may set this on the edge of your bed, you can have the sweet nectar of water to wash it down.”

  Taiko-san sighs dramatically. Without his fingers he has been unable to shave. His tanned face is scruffy. We Nadeshiko have offered to help, but I agree with his assessment of our skills with a straight razor: “You haven’t even seen your fathers shave in years!” he cried when Mariko and I saw he could not manage on his own. “Why would I trust these good looks to such unskilled hands?”

  There is a barber in town, an elderly man who is popular with the officers. Kaori-sensei says she will talk to him and convince him to visit soon.

  Taiko grimaces as he swallows his pills. “Ah, sweet bliss! Thank you, Little Flower,” he says with a sigh. A change comes over his face, dulling the edges as the soporific sets in. “No wonder the Germans surrendered,” he murmurs. “They didn’t have blossoms like you!”

  I bow my head, unable to imagine the fate of schoolgirls in Germany since the terrible announcement came two weeks ago. Their Führer is dead. Their army destroyed. American and British tanks roll through their streets and villages. First Italy and now Germany have fallen. Yet Japan fights on.

  I look at Taiko-san’s missing fingers, the hand clutched to his chest like a fist. He is half asleep, but still joking. His spirit is stronger than the medicine he takes.

  “Next time . . .” he says, waving his good hand in the air, “bring some peaches . . . Heavenly food is best for heroes.”

  Beside Taiko-san, a new patient watches us with mild eyes. His chart says his name is Captain Sato Toshiro. He has a broken leg. The sheet has slipped from his cot, showing his cast.

  “Fall seven times, get up eight,” I tell him, rearranging the coverlet.

  He takes my hand. I recoil, but he is gentle, neither pulling me toward him nor gripping too tightly. It forces me to look him in the eyes.

  The sunlight from the window brightens his irises into deep brown pools. His lips move, shaping a silent word.

  Arigatō.

  For some reason, this catches at my heart. I nod a swift bow and pull away.

  When I finish dispensing medication, Mariko is in the hallway waiting for me. She clutches a note in her hand.

  “Oh, Hana! There you are! Come with me.” She takes my hand and leads me to a storage closet. Checking the hallway for unwanted eyes, she pulls me inside. The smell of disinfectant is overwhelming, and the room is close, but I know it’s only for a moment. The first of these secret councils sent me into a panic. Such a small space. I expected the walls to fall in on me. But my heart failed to race. My pulse failed to quicken. Instead, I suffered the stench of bleach and musty mops. My claustrophobia must have left me for good the day we were bombed at the base. With no place safe, why fear anything at all?

  “Look!” She unfolds the note and spreads it out between shaking hands.

  Another love poem from the young captain in Room Six. He and Mariko have been making eyes at each other ever since he woke from his fever. “A case of malaria,” the doctors had said. Thanks to quinine and Mariko’s insistence that he looked “just like the actor Fujita Susumu,” he was recovering well. Well enough to start courting, as it turns out.

  “Daisuke-san has asked me to wait for him!” Mariko all but shrieks. “Hana, my heart is pounding! I feel faint.”

  I smile at my friend. “Mariko, you sound like Sachiko. What’s happened to my sensible friend?”

  “Oh, Hana, she’s in love! And he’s not a farmer! If I marry a captain in the army, who knows what life will bring?”

  Her voice paints pretty pictures of long cars and fancy dinners. Warm, sunlit eyes and a whispered word. I shake the image away. I can see the underbelly of that dream.

  “Mariko, look around. This hospital is full. Even the tokkō flights leaving the base have dwindled.”

  “What are you saying?” She frowns, hearing my words but not listening.

  “Please don’t make any promises. At least not until the war is over.”

  She folds up her love poem and puts it into the pocket of her apron. “Is it so wrong to be in love, Hana? I should think you of all people would know it’s what makes this war bearable.” She bites her lip, but it does not stop the sudden flow of her tears.

  I bow my head in shame. “I want you to be happy, Mariko. For as long as you live. Not just for a week, or a day.”

  “Well . . .” She wipes her face on her sleeve and snuffles a little. “I suppose that’s reasonable.” She straightens her apron, and my Mariko is back. “But try to be happy, Hana. Don’t be afraid of a little hope.”

  She opens the closet door a crack, looking both ways, and we slip back into the stream of life.

  That night, as I kneel before my father’s koto, fingers plucking the length of the dragon body, I play a song for Mariko and her captain. And one for blustery Sergeant Taiko. This is my routine now; the way other girls brush their hair one hundred strokes, I play nightly, and my mother listens as she finishes her evening’s work. I play happy songs, folk tunes, love songs— anything but military marches. And though I tell myself, This one is for Mariko, or This one is for Taiko-san, I find myself hoping someone else is listening, even from the other side of life.

  CHAPTER 59

  HANA

  There will be a special broadcast at noon today, Imperial Headquarters announces on the radio. “The Jeweled Sound of His Imperial Highness” himself. Neither I nor anyone I know has ever heard the Emperor speak. It can only mean one of two things—peace, or gyokusai.

  The days have grown hot and humid as summer dampens the air. Now anticipation chills us to the bone. Noon comes and we are all on pins and needles, Nadeshiko,
patients, and doctors alike. We crowd around a radio one of the doctors has rolled into the break room. The divine voice of our Emperor fills the room. We are breathless.

  The transmission crackles and pops, the formal Japanese archaic and hard to follow. He speaks of “extraordinary measures” and a “new and most cruel bomb.” When he is finished, we wait for the radio announcer to clarify.

  It is August 15, 1945. After fifteen long years, the war—first in China, then against the West—is over. And we have lost.

  Some of the doctors shout in anger. The nurses clap hands over their mouths or weep. We Nadeshiko look at one another in confusion. As word leaks into the wards, the soldiers translate the message a dozen different ways.

  “Extraordinary measures means it’s come to gyokusai,” Taiko-san tells me. “The Americans will invade. We must fight to the death. Even you, Little Flower. I hear you practicing in the yard with your schoolmates. This is good. I can no longer hold a stave, but you will kill two soldiers for me, yes?”

  “For you, I will kill three,” I say with a smile. My Nadeshiko skills no longer falter, but I am afraid. It seems so long ago that Mariko worried about marrying a farmer and I wondered if we would live to turn sixteen. My birthday is two weeks away. Can we survive what comes next?

  CHAPTER 60

  TARO

  “It’s over!”

  Word spread fast across the little outpost. Three men had come running down from the radio truck with the news. The commanding officers had disappeared into the Quonset hut office, shoulders hunched, faces grim. Taro joined a cluster of men outside the barracks.

  “The Emperor himself just announced it!” one of the radio- men said, impressed. “The war is over!” he declared again. “The transmission was rough, and the Emperor has a high way of talking, but it’s done. We’re through!”