Picking Bones from Ash

by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

  And then one day while I was staring out the window, I saw a woman, stooped over, with a basket on her back. She was elderly, perhaps around eighty, but carried her head with dignity, like a dancer. She turned, seemed to see me, and smiled as though we shared a secret before shuffling on and out of sight. I thought of the old woman I’d seen in the bamboo forest so many years ago and of Sanada-sensei and my mother too.

  At that moment, I felt split in two. There was the Satomi leaving the baby by the window and going to her room. She removed the brown bag filled with money from her drawer. Why had she been saving all this money if not to give herself some kind of choice?

  This Satomi looked at the clock and calculated that François would be home in just a few minutes. She hurried to go out for a walk, knowing that this time she would never return. The other Satomi watched, horrified, but also fascinated that such a choice could be made. She allowed herself to be carried along, fairly certain François would find the baby, just as he always had. But by then the first Satomi would be far away where he could not find her.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 10

  Snow Devils

  Rumi

  Tokyo, 1991

  An hour before my plane landed, a peak of white snow punctured the dual layers of mist and earth. The cabin came to life, and half a dozen people, mostly Japanese men, pulled out their cameras. “Fuji-san!” someone exclaimed. We circled around the mountain, then began to press down against the sky, and rice paddies and little roads with bright blue trucks and slate-roofed houses came into view. I thought of all the little hand scrolls I’d seen over the years. It was as though one of them had come to life, its images growing exponentially until I had fallen down into this landscape I knew so well from pictures and books.

  However, the actual land of Japan was quite different from the one I knew from my studies of art. Very quickly, I realized how little conversational Japanese I actually understood. In the terminal, I listened to a recording, first in incomprehensible Japanese, then in studied English, advise me to keep track of my belongings. I exchanged some dollars for yen, then boarded a train bound for Tokyo’s city center. Through a green-tinted window, I watched bamboo forests and rice paddies, brown in winter, give way to the spread of buildings capped by halos of neon and inscribed with one-word messages: Glico, Seiko, Panasonic. It started to rain, and a cheerful, high-pitched female voice announced that we would soon be making a brief stop.

  At Shinjuku station the blond and brown heads of American travelers disappeared into the tide of subway riders and taxicab seekers. I was alone, the heterogeneity of my fellow world travelers diffused by the population of Tokyo.

  It was nearly eight in the evening when I reached the hotel. The man at the desk greeted me with a bow and proceeded to walk me through registration. He handed me an envelope containing a note whose English letters had been written with extra courtesy and attention.

  A Ms. Shizuka would be coming to see me at eleven o’clock the following morning. She would meet me after breakfast.

  A porter carried my things up via an elevator to a sterile room on the fourteenth floor. After he left, I opened the curtains and peered out over the neon horizon. A low spread of buildings swelled and crested to a tidal wave of skyscrapers in the distance. Unlike San Francisco with its centralized downtown, Tokyo was a city in which tall buildings sprouted from a number of neighborhoods, where helicopters winged from district to district across a red sky.

  I closed the shades and sat down on the bed. Everything was cold and new and I longed for the green hills of California, for the gentle lapping of the fog in and out of our neighborhood. As so many travelers have before me, I turned on the television and went to sleep.

  Seventeen hours behind me, San Francisco whirled slowly, emerging into the dawn of the day I was now leaving.

  At eleven the next morning I went down to the hotel lobby and found Ms. Shizuka waiting for me. She was rail thin and elegant, with tiny wrists and slim fingers. She wore an immaculate navy blue suit with a restrictive little blouse that gathered around her throat, and the skin on her face was flawless. Standing in front of her, I felt unkempt and sloppy. It was as though she had mastered all the secrets of the material world. Not even an atom would be out of place in her orbit.

  Ms. Shizuka bowed, then extended her hand timidly, as if testing the air between us. We shook hands, then sat down on two large armchairs.

  “How was your flight?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Long. Your English is very good.”

  She smiled. “Twelve years at the International School here in Tokyo. I went to UCLA for college. Would you like coffee?” She motioned to a hotel attendant.

  “Yes please,” I said.

  While we waited for our refreshments, she reached inside a small briefcase and pulled out a long envelope.

  “So, I am here,” she said in a formal tone of voice, “because my law firm was contacted by Mr. Sumiyoshi in America. I believe he represents Timothy Snowden?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Timothy Snowden is a friend of the family. He used to know my mother.”

  “Our firm was unable to locate any records related to your mother, Satomi Horie. There was such a person at one point, but she has simply disappeared. This is unusual in Japan. We keep good records of all our citizens.” She frowned.

  “You don’t know how she died or where she was buried or anything?” I sank into my chair.

  “No. However, we did follow up on the Muryojuji temple connection for you.” Now she extracted documents from the envelope. The first was a pamphlet. “The Handa family, who live at the temple, have requested that you come to see them.”

  Our coffee arrived, and while we took a few sips, I examined the brochure. On the cover was some kanji lettering, a picture of what looked like a large cabinet with two doors on hinges, and roman letters at the bottom that read “Muryojuji Temple.” The cabinet housed a national treasure, a sculpture put on view only once a year. The temple was out of the way, but well known among art devotees for its collection of statues, donated by a pious, not to mention wealthy, shogun some three hundred years ago.

  “Why do they want to see me?” I asked. “And who are they exactly?”

  “It isn’t entirely clear,” she said. “Masayoshi Handa, the head of the family, is related by marriage to your mother. When we asked for an explanation as to what happened to her, he would not tell us. He only said he wanted to meet you.”

  She handed me a small map and a train ticket. I would need to take the bullet train from Ueno station to Morioka, then change to another bullet train that would cross the mountains and go all the way over to Akita, in the northwest corner of the main island. The entire trip would take around four hours but she thought I would be comfortable, and she had reserved my seat in the First Class Green car.

  “Maybe you have some questions,” she said.

  “Will anyone speak English?”

  “They said they would arrange for an interpreter.”

  “And if I go see this Handa family, I’ll find out what happened to my mother?”

  She swallowed. “I am afraid that I do not know. I only …”

  “I know, I know.” I sighed. “You only know that they want to see me.”

  She smiled, a momentary look of indulgence crossing her face. “You are a gaijin. A foreigner. You have a kind of pass in our country. People will, how do you say, cut you some slack?”

  “I can get away with asking more questions than you can.”

  Ms. Shizuka’s face relaxed into an intimate, confiding expression. “Aomori Prefecture, where you are going, is a strange place. They have an unusual sense of humor. Many things happen there that do not happen in Tokyo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People have been kidnapped by the North Koreans. The Russians used to steal women. That is why all demons in the north have large noses. And there are also many more ghosts in Aomori Prefecture than in Tokyo.�
� She said this with complete sincerity. “It is a shame you must travel there.”

  “I’ll be careful.” I tried not to laugh.

  “Your train leaves in one hour. We must get going.” Then she smiled, as though pleased by her ability to use another English idiom correctly.

  The bullet train, that marvel of Japanese postwar engineering, awoke the child in me. For a time, I forgot that I was nervous and that I’d never been far from San Francisco, let alone out of the United States. I walked the full length of the train, end to end, and examinied the toilets, the vending machines, the speedometer. The conductor and attendants echoed the formal dress of the Tokyo hotel clerk, Ms. Shizuka, and the bento-box seller from the train station. All had worn navy blue and white, and bowed to me each time I passed. What an organized country, I thought.

  The landscape fluttered between city and country. Clouds gathered on the horizon, and the sky grew gray, then white. Moisture slapped the windows. The rice paddies, covered by aged stubble close to Tokyo, grew a coat of frost. I spotted cars traveling in the opposite direction with mounds of snow on their roofs, a harbinger of the territory we would enter.

  Each time we raced into a particularly long tunnel I felt pressure in my ears, as the tense air struggled to make space for the train. As we emerged, the landscape seemed to grow darker.

  Two hours into the trip, the bullet train made an uncharacteristic hiccup. A young man in a business suit reading a comic book jerked up his head. Older ladies whispered in the hushed sounds of the worried. After a few minutes, a voice came over the loudspeaker, but I couldn’t understand a thing it said. An English voice assured me that we would soon reach Morioka station, and that passengers should change here to go to Akita. But the fidgety manners of my fellow travelers told me that they knew more than the robotic woman. Or perhaps it was the paranoia of a jet-lagged mind and my unwillingness to trust the pre-prepared bilingual signs around the country. In any case, I gathered my bags and disembarked.

  It had been snowing in Tōhoku for almost two months straight, a record snowfall, declared the English newspaper that I had picked up at Morioka station. What Ms. Shizuka had not known and my cursory glance at CNN had not told me that morning was that a bullet train had derailed while attempting to cross to Akita. The tracks had been closed, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at points north.

  I had phoned Ms. Shizuka from Morioka station, but she hadn’t answered. It was too early in the morning to call the United States, and anyway, what would Timothy tell me to do? I thought of calling Muryojuji temple but, to be honest, I was nervous about reaching someone who spoke only Japanese. I had learned very quickly how unusual it was to have met someone as proficient in English as Ms. Shizuka.

  I decided to play my gaijin pass to get to Akita. I found a man in uniform and through hand gestures and broken Japanese explained my predicament. He sent me to another man in a uniform, who passed me on to yet another man, and so on until I found myself boarding a bus with four strangers. The white-gloved driver snapped his hand, waving to some other suited worker, and we pushed off.

  Not long after leaving the outskirts of Morioka, the bus began to climb up a fairly steep mountain. I couldn’t see much out of the window, but felt the bus tilt and heard the wheels stolidly churn through gravel and snow. The passengers were mostly quiet. One was a boy around my age, in a cheap, well-pressed suit with a pair of loafers, clutching a briefcase perched on his knees. Behind him was an older man with a horsey, toothy mouth, round spectacles, and shaggy, unruly hair. The pockets in his overcoat had been mended a number of times, and the heels of his shoes were worn down. I guessed he was an academic. He had come prepared for this voyage, carrying a case of beer, which he methodically consumed a sip at a time, every now and then smacking his lips. Two women sat together: a petite older lady with deft hand gestures, a youthful smile, and a short bob, and a young woman I assumed to be her daughter, all shadows and frowns, a person accustomed to expecting life’s catastrophes.

  The road became windier and steeper, and the engine growled as it contended with the incline and curves of the mountain. I felt the bus nudge around a corner, like a cat prying open a door with its nose. I looked out of the window. An oncoming car lit the side of the road for a precious few seconds. Snowflakes the size of dandelions bloomed in the air, their heavy bodies hurtling over the edge of a precarious cliff just off to the left.

  Beside me, the student gasped and hunched over his briefcase, breathing deeply. One of the tires slipped against the ice, and the daughter seated ahead of me gripped the side of her seat.

  I told myself that if I concentrated, if I followed absolutely every turn of the road, the bus would arrive safely. But when we rounded the next corner, the bus lurched and slid backward again. The two women in front shrieked. The bus began to spin, the large metallic body whining like an animal downed by a powerful predator. Headlights flashed against the white curtain of snow, and my brain collected snippets of information. I saw trees. Now rock. Now ice. We teetered one way, then back again in the opposite direction, and I pictured the bus toppling down the ravine. The bus gave a great groan and we screamed, sliding, careening to the front door as the driver shouted something unintelligible. I had my cheek pressed against the young student, and the professor had his hands against my back. And then, abruptly, all was still. Eerily quiet. Blood raced from my heart to my toes and back. The air in my lungs was thin. I might as well have been on Everest. Synapses misfired like faulty fuses. Snap. Snap. Then, slowly, the machinery of my body regained control of itself and I strained to look out of the window to see where we were.

  The bus driver was screaming that we should take our seats. And we did. After all, we were still on the road. Though the driver tried a few times to urge the bus forward, the wheels whirred in place and refused to move. Between the professor and the driver there was an angry exchange, and then the driver stood up and put on his coat, opened the door, and went outside. Almost instantly, a gust of cold air penetrated the cabin, before the professor pulled the handle and wrenched shut the glass door.

  The passengers entertained themselves with the habits of the nervously bored. The daughter breathed on the window, then wiped away the condensation. The college student snapped the handle of his bag back and forth in a rhythmic fashion until the professor told him to stop. The professor conducted a disgruntled monologue, then, putting on his coat, stamped outside. When he came back, the cold had sobered him and he barked out a few short sentences that were followed by a lengthy discussion among the passengers. I sat there, helpless. No robotic voice came to my rescue. No bilingual signs told me which way to go.

  The professor turned to me. He seemed perturbed, as though it were either my fault that we were in this predicament, or that I, with my limited language abilities, might as well have been suffering from a mental disorder. “Bus driver. Gone.” The latter word was emphasized with a wave of both arms, as though the bus driver had struck out in a game of baseball.

  “Gone.” I mimicked his exaggerated hand movements. I couldn’t help it.

  The professor continued barking in short phrases. He had found the bus driver’s tracks in the snow and was quite certain that the driver either had gone off to find some help, or had abandoned us. The latter was far more likely, given that the bus driver hadn’t told us where he was going. In any case, there was a town nearby. We were going to walk there.

  Were they nuts? “Walk? Wait a minute!” I protested.

  “No waiting,” the professor retorted.

  The mother turned to me and began to chatter happily in Japanese. She held out two tangerines and a pack of rice crackers. “What are you so happy about?” I asked her. Of course she didn’t understand me, but continued yammering away. Then she handed me two plastic bags.

  “Snow!” the professor barked again, by way of explanation.

  I was to tie the plastic bags around my shoes to keep them dry.

  We pared our luggage down to
one easily carried bag each, and filed off the bus.

  How cold I was that day, the coldest I ever remember being in my life. The mother led us, shining a flashlight on the ground. We followed her, holding on to a rope we’d fashioned by tying together various articles of clothing. Each step was a challenge, for the snow was thick in some places and icy in others. Soon we developed a rhythm, a comfortable pace at which the person in front could secure a safe footing before moving on to find another. Then the person behind would occupy the vacated footprint. I don’t know how long we went on like this. It seemed like hours, but then I had no sense of our geography and where we were going.

  In the beginning, the mother did most of the talking, adding a cheery “desu ne” at the end of each of her sentences, to which the professor responded with a few guttural syllables. Gradually the professor’s talk began to take over the group. I realized how clever the mother had been. She had engaged in the old female art of winning over a man by getting him to talk about himself. And so as we walked, his baritone came over us all and though I could not understand him, I imagined him informing us of the university where he taught, the books he had written, the cities he had visited, and the home he longed to see at this very moment.

  Once we passed a streetlamp marking a long driveway flanked by a sign with the word hotel in roman lettering. There was a brief discussion here as to whether or not we should turn off, but in the end the mother and the professor insisted we continue on.

  Eventually the snow stopped falling, and the clouds parted. Moonlight hit the white earth and the air took on a silver quality. Now I could see the outline of trees, the shadow of forests on the snow-covered ground. Sometimes I looked ahead and saw the figures trudging before me and I felt as though I were watching a negative of a film unfold in slow motion: white earth, black sky, blue trees. It was eerily beautiful and foreign.