Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  ‘It’s going to be very bad,’ said Eiko, ‘they say even those side winds will be abnormally strong.’

  ‘There are no shutters to these windows. Can we board them up in any way?’ suggested Yoshiko.

  ‘Where will we get wood or board now, the storm is already upon us, as you can see,’ Eva said. ‘The old building has weathered many typhoons before now.’

  ‘Brown paper tape will strengthen the windows and prevent flying glass. And we have plenty of that,’ Sister Elaine remembered.

  ‘Yes, we could do that,’ Eva nodded. ‘There is a supply in one of the upstairs storerooms. I’m going that way, I’ll bring it down.’

  It was dark in the corridor, the sound of the television droned on. Eva switched on the light and went upstairs to inspect the two storerooms upstairs. The rooms were due the next week for major repairs; a main beam was rotted. The orphanage, beneath its plaster facade, was a wooden structure, as were most older buildings in Japan and rot was an eternal hazard. But they would not know how bad it was until the workmen came. She had not worried earlier, accepting the periodical treatment and repair implicit in a wooden structure. And there were plans, already under view in Osaka, to expand and entirely rebuild the old home. But in the typhoon the house could ill afford the vulnerability of rot.

  She could not tell yet from which way the wind came, whether it skirted the house or blew obliquely at that section with the dormitories above the dining room. She opened the door and found the light had gone, the switch was dead. The room was dark, the branches of a tree thrashed against the glass and thinly sliced draughts cut up at her. The windows were faintly luminous with the last remnants of dusk, the black struts of trees moved outside. It was as she feared. The wind blew off the sea, flat onto the house from the back. She could feel it, for even now the room vibrated gently and creaked, like a ship upon water. And there was the sound of the wind, a low deep whistling round the house.

  She stood in the shelter of the door, and did not feel the power of the storm until she crossed to the window. Then the wet branches whipped against the glass again and she stepped back, fearful, for the trees outside, blacker still than the black wild sky, threw themselves wilfully about, writhing like chained animals. Behind the orphanage, the slope of the hill was crowded with pine trees. They moved and moaned and she dared not think the thoughts that came as she recognised the danger. For there is nothing, she thought, there is nothing we can do.

  Eva turned quickly away and heard the noise then, like the scratch of a small clawed animal. But it was only the boy, Kenichi, wedged into a corner of the room. His eyes swung between her and the window, terrified. For a moment they observed each other silently as he pressed himself against the wall.

  ‘It is all right,’ she said at last, for she felt the unseeable thing that reached out to her from the child. ‘You must not be frightened. We are all together. There are others much younger than you. You will have to help them, they must not see you are frightened.’

  He looked at her, unblinking, his eyes fixed on those things he could not express. And made no sound, made no move. Eva stood quietly before the child until she was sure her presence reassured him. Stepping forward she touched him on the shoulder, lightly. He did not move, except to turn his frightened eyes to the window once again.

  ‘Will it come?’ It was the first time he had spoken. The first time she had heard his voice.

  ‘No. I do not think so. But I am with you, we are all here together. There is nothing for you to fear. It will soon be gone.’ She lifted her hand from his shoulder and stroked, just once, as she would a small animal, the rigid curve of his head. Then she turned him gently to the door.

  ‘Come. We will go down now.’

  Near the door she collected from a box several rolls of the brown paper tape, and shut the door behind them. Halfway down the stairs she felt him hesitate. He gave a sudden brittle look, pulled away and ran ahead, disappearing into the recreation room. But she knew he could not so easily withdraw now to isolation.

  She heard the crash of the front door then and the sound of Daniel’s voice.

  2

  Eva could not ask the question. The words were there, mute in her face, and would not move on her tongue. She stood before Daniel on the last stair, tense and straight. She did not see Akiko.

  He watched her, not knowing himself what to say.

  ‘It was bad. Very bad,’ he told her quietly at last. ‘It was nothing like what she expected. She is in quite a state.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Eva asked stiffly, preparing herself.

  ‘I don’t know. She disappeared as we came in the door.’

  Relief pumped through her then, and beat like a pain in her head.

  ‘You had better change. You’re drenched. Here is the key, I have locked up the house. We shall have to stay here tonight.’ As she said it she saw in her mind again the creaking mass of trees, blacker than the night.

  ‘Akiko?’ Daniel asked, but Eva just nodded. Daniel turned again to the door.

  Sometimes when Akiko was small, she had shut herself away in the the utility room. One time, Eva remembered, had been after a kitten died. It lay behind the kitchens, a small tatami matted room they used for ironing that opened onto a yard where they pegged out washing.

  She walked through the deserted kitchen and slid open the door. In the darkness beyond the tall-legged bodies of ironing stands, she saw Akiko, crouched upon the narrow, glassed-in veranda. There were tough paper sacks of rice and flour and two obsolete ceramic braziers. Usually a dry dusty smell pervaded and the veranda warmed quickly in a sheltered sun. Now there was just a damp fustiness as rain pounded the roof, loud as falling pebbles. Wind hammered the loose panes of the glass doors, and water dripped in the runners.

  ‘Akiko.’ Eva could not hear her own voice above the noise. She manoeuvred her way across the room between the ironing boards and squeezed onto the veranda. Akiko did not move. She sat huddled in a comer, knees drawn up, head buried in her arms. Eva knelt before her, but there was nothing she could say; her feelings were beyond words.

  Against Akiko’s shoulder the black window shook and streamed, a wall of water. Behind it was the blur of an upstairs light that should have been comforting. But instead, in the watery grave of the window, it swam and slipped and lost all shape. Beside Eva the rim of a ceramic brazier pushed into her hip; she recognised it. Long before it had stood in the kitchen of Eva’s house. She had sat with the child before it, resting mugs of hot sweet tea upon its broad blue ledge; inside, the solid core of coals had glowed like a secret cave. Now, covered with dust, it lay unused, a pile of grey ash still locked within it, desolate as the memories to which there is no return. In the wet, pounding darkness Akiko crouched on the veranda, her emotions demolished, no more than a heap of fragments. Eva hurt with a love too physical to express and prayed for the strength to comfort.

  ‘Akiko.’

  After a time the girl raised her head. Eva took her in her arms then, and felt the wet of tears on her neck as the wild night closed in upon them.

  Eventually, she left Akiko and returned to the main part of the orphanage. The high windows of the corridor rattled as Eva walked quickly by, her mind filled again with images of the black writhing menace of the trees. She glanced at her watch: it was seven-forty. Some decision had to be taken. The wind vibrated deeply now beneath and seemed to charge the house at intervals, attacking viciously.

  She found them all in the dining room, taping the windows, and smiled. It resembled the hanging of Christmas decorations. Eiko Kubo stood upon a ladder, Sister Elaine on a table beneath a window. The older children utilised chairs, their lower extremities in the safekeeping of friends, who clung as they stretched to the dark wet windows with long tails of sticky tape.

  The room was brightly lit, and the children ran about busily, measuring and dampening the brown paper strips. Emiko and Kimiko appeared to have swaddled themselves together. Yoshiko Mori chided and disentangl
ed. Hiroshi’s plaster bore a brown striped pattern. Sister Elaine looked menacingly over her shoulder and issued a futile order as the children ran and laughed. Only Kenichi sat by himself on a solitary chair, and some distance away sat Jiro, a sketchbook on his knee.

  Yoshiko Mori stared at the boys, and then walked over to Jiro, bending to speak to him quietly. He picked up his sketchbook and followed her to Kenichi.

  ‘I want two strong boys to lift some tables at the other end of the room,’ she said. ‘You look like the strong man I need, Kenichi.’ The child scowled and looked away.

  ‘Yes. You can’t expect to sit there like that. Everyone else is working. Come along.’ Eiko Kubo stopped in passing, and spoke out forthrightly as usual. Kenichi growled angrily and shrank back into his chair.

  ‘Ssh,’ Yoshiko exclaimed impatiently. ‘That is not the way, Eiko, you always say the wrong thing. You don’t have to help, Kenichi. I just thought you would be the best one to ask. You look stronger than all of us put together.’

  Leading small Toshio by the hand Tami came up to Kenichi. ‘We all have to help each other here, I always look after Toshio. Now be a good boy.’ She put her head on one side and spoke in a small high coaxing voice as she had heard Yoshiko do.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Eiko Kubo decided and marched firmly off.

  ‘Please, Kenichi,’ Yoshiko pleaded.

  ‘Please, Kenichi,’ echoed Tami.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jiro. ‘Afterwards I’ll show you my drawings. You can try my new pencil if you like.’

  Kenichi looked at him hard, under a brow of thunder. Slowly, he got up and allowed them to lead him away, still glowering.

  ‘What a good boy,’ Tami announced patting his belligerent back. She turned to pick up Toshio, and staggering under his weight, hurried after Yoshiko.

  Daniel joined Eva at the door where she stood watching. ‘Akiko?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s coming. She’s gone to change her wet clothes too.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’ll need time.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘The wind is from the back, I can feel it. Should we not tape the upstairs windows?’

  ‘Yes, take some older children with you. I am worried about the trees, not that we can do much, but they’re right in the path of the storm. There have been typhoons before many times, we’ve weathered through all conditions. But tonight for some reason, I do feel worried, they say these are record strength winds. I think it best the children sleep down here. I don’t remember feeling so worried before.’

  ‘Tell me what else I can do,’ said Daniel.

  ‘We shall have to bring down mattresses and blankets off the beds.’

  Daniel nodded and turned to the dining room as Akiko appeared. Her face was drained, her eyes puffy, but her voice was controlled when Eva explained their circumstances.

  ‘I’ll help Daniel see to the beds,’ she said quietly. Daniel took her hand and led her into the dining room. Eva stood and watched them thoughtfully, wondered then and hoped.

  Eva turned into the kitchen to make some cocoa ready for when the children eventually bedded down. Akiko and Daniel had helped to organise the bringing of mattresses from upstairs. Eva heard the thud of things humped downstairs, and Daniel’s voice at intervals instructing the excited children. Eiko and Yoshiko pushed tables to one side of the dining room with the help of Jiro and Kenichi, and arranged the mattresses and blankets as they arrived, helped by the older girls.

  Junko whirled suddenly into the kitchen about Eva.

  ‘Look, look. I’m the wind.’ She rushed around between the tables. ‘Now, I’m a leaf blowing in the sky.’ She swung her arms about, excited, and ran out. Silence descended upon the kitchen again as Eva broke hard lumps of cocoa under a spoon.

  The rain drove down in sheets upon the window. Wind howled and scuttled about in the darkness outside like a live animal, every so often striking the building brutally, so that it shuddered. Eva stared apprehensively at the window and looked quickly away again. She got out a large saucepan and filled it with milk, and a knocking began at the front door then. An urgent, brassy note, repeated like a cough in the voice of the storm. When Eva pulled open the door wind flung her back, and rain thrust in. Arthur John Wilcox stood before her.

  3

  Arthur occupied the doorstep, a sodden ghost of his former self. The stiff brim of his hat held water like a moat and dripped before his nose.

  ‘I am forced to ask you, Dr Kraig, to extend a little hospitality to a hapless traveller,’ said Arthur Wilcox. ‘It is not my wish to intrude, not my wish at all. Rather, something arranged by greater minds. Yes indeed, greater minds, and a little damp in the carburettor too, I think. Deuce of a mess, damn car’s stopped dead, only serviced last week, one hundred and twenty thousand yen. Dead as a doornail, and not a jolt from your gate.’ He sniffed loudly and pulled himself up. Water trickled from the brim of his hat before his nose, and was at intervals brought into contact with his moustache and tongue. It was of a fresh, pure taste, not unpleasant. He waited for Eva Kraig to invite him in.

  ‘Trouble is, not as young as I was. Forced to admit it at last. In the old days a bit of bad weather would not have deterred. No indeed,’ Arthur said as Eva Kraig took his raincoat and spread it across several hooks in the hall. He watched it drip onto the floor, and placed his hat on a peg above.

  ‘Some kind of a blockage a bit further up, branches and soil and rocks and things. The drains are blocked, too, road’s running like a river. Have to beware of landslides tonight, expecially on hills like this. You’d better watch out, there is no retaining wall behind you. Nasty predicament you’d be in with a landslide. Mustn’t ramble on though, just a bit of respite, and I shall push on. Have to leave the car here, of course.’ He sniffed again and stretched his neck in the damp collar of his shirt. He wished he had not been foolhardy enough to go to the club. Instead of looking in the library he had downed two whiskies and fallen asleep in the bar. Eventually the barman woke him to a deserted club, the rain and wind.

  ‘You’re much further up the road, Mr Wilcox, and a steep climb at that, and you say too there is a blockage. All this will only get worse, not better. I don’t see how you could go on. I suggest you stay with us here, until it’s all over,’ Eva said firmly, to Arthur’s relief. He did not argue the matter, but followed her to the dining room. But the sight within made him hesitate. He had never had close contact with small children, nor professed any liking for them. Now, without defence, he was faced with a roomful of them. He drew back as a few small children ran forward and jumped about Eva, observing Arthur curiously.

  ‘Now, this is Mr Wilcox. He lives just up the hill from us, as some of you may know. His car has stopped near our gate. He is going to spend the typhoon with us.’ He heard himself introduced. Many of the other children in the room stopped their industry to survey him. A small boy approached him with a swagger and a broken arm in a plaster cast.

  ‘Why did your car stop? What’s the matter with it?’ He looked up at Arthur suspiciously.

  ‘A question, I think, of water in the carburettor.’ Arthur cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘What’s a carburettor?’

  ‘This is Hiroshi, Mr Wilcox.’ Eva smiled at the children about her.

  ‘And this is Jun and Takeo and Emiko.’ The children stared as Arthur pulled apprehensively at his moustache. He wondered how long the typhoon might last.

  ‘What’s a carburettor?’ Hiroshi insisted.

  ‘An apparatus mixing air with petrol vapour specifically for the purpose of combustion in the motor engine.’

  ‘What’s an apparatus?’

  ‘A mechanical appliance.’

  ‘What’s mechanical mean?’

  ‘Now Hiroshi, don’t bother Mr Wilcox. He is wet and rather weary, I suspect. Maybe, after the typhoon, Mr Wilcox will show you what a carburettor is.’ Eva Kraig smiled blandly. Arthur felt trapped.

  ‘Nobuo and Takeo, find Mr Wilcox
a nice comfortable seat.’

  ‘I’m Eiko. Your trousers are wet. Your shoes are wet. We are not allowed to wear wet shoes inside.’

  A small girl bounced up to him and pulled at his hand. Arthur looked down, the child seemed a great distance below him. He had never seen anything so tiny so close to him before. She had two thin plaits. His nervousness increased.

  ‘All right, Emiko. When Mr Wilcox sits down he will take off his shoes and socks.’

  Arthur turned to Eva in alarm. He saw then that his trouser legs were sodden from the knee down; his shoes left dirty wet stains on the floor. The children clustered around him and Emiko pulled him towards a low canvas chair.

  ‘All the children are sleeping down here tonight, in the dining room, Mr Wilcox. Hence, all the activity. Now make yourself comfortable and give me those wet socks and shoes. I’ll dry them off over the stove in the kitchen.’ Arthur felt helpless. Reluctantly, he removed his shoes and socks as the children watched with interest and then stared silently at his pale, naked feet on the bare floor, until he felt divested of some private layer of himself.

  ‘Emiko. Fetch Mr Wilcox slippers from the hall cupboard,’ Eva ordered, then turned to call a young man to her from the other end of the room. The girl, Akiko, followed him.

  ‘This is my nephew, Daniel. He is visiting us from America,’ Eva smiled.

  Arthur smiled stiffly too, and nodded to the girl, Akiko. He had watched her grow up, secretly. Kyo’s child. Kyo’s eyes. But she went off with Daniel again to the other end of the room. Rows of mattresses were being laid out there. Emiko appeared again before him with a pair of slippers.

  ‘Now Mr Wilcox, have you eaten anything? No, I rather thought not. Daniel, Akiko and I have not either, although everyone else has. You’ll have a coffee and a sandwich with us. Now make yourself comfortable. You’ll have to excuse me.’ Eva Kraig turned away. Arthur was left alone with the children. Hiroshi and his plaster cast appeared again.