“It will remain in a special room of the temple. Only the throat Buddha is placed in the grave.”
The gravestones were stone obelisks set on marble platforms. Michi's family gravestone was beneath a huge camphor tree. Seiji said in a soft voice that her parents, her brother Shoichi and Ume had already been laid to rest there. In the base of the obelisk was an open, empty slot reserved for Michi-san. The priest, and then Seiji, said something in Japanese. “Now you say that I Barbara Jefferson am here,” Seiji told her.
Barbara announced her presence, then watched as the priest placed the wrapped bone in the stone drawer. Seiji stepped forward, took a white rectangular envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and laid it inside the drawer. Maybe a photograph, she thought, or a letter of farewell.
They bowed goodbye, walked to the truck, and got in. Seiji's head was bowed, one hand over his face. She slid closer and put an arm around him. He reached for her hand. He started the truck after afew minutes and they drove away from the temple, heading further up the mountain. She didn't ask where they were going. They climbed higher and higher, rounding sharp curves.”What is the throat Buddha?” she said.
“Here.” He pointed to his Adam's apple. “Place of speech—the bone protecting vocal strings.”
Barbara's eyes filled with tears.
Seiji pulled the truck to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. “This is Mount Mitaki,” he said.” You may recall Nakamoto's writing of this place, coming here with her family to gather chestnuts.”
As they walked through the woods, Barbara took in the trees, the carpet of dead leaves, a fallen log covered with ferns. Michi had scampered around on this ground, playing hide and seek behind the trees with her brother and sister. Lively like a monkey, her mother had said.
They came to a clearing at the edge of the mountain. Below them, in the valley, lay Hiroshima.
She and Seiji sat on a large rock overlooking the city. Michi had written that Hiroshima meant “broad island,” but it was more like a series of long peninsulas separated by rivers. All the rivers ran to the Inland Sea, a shimmering expanse of water to their right. Crowded on the fingers of land were houses, and in the central area, taller buildings. The green area near the center must be Peace Park. Ground Zero.
“After the bombing,” Seiji said, “all that you see below, with the exception of Koi, was desert. Only five or six buildings remained even in part—all the rest was ash and rubble. That hill, Hijiyama”—he pointed to a small mountain on the far side of the city—“held back the bomb's power, so some houses on other side—in Donbara-cho— were spared. Only areas of city not to be destroyed completely are Donbara-cho and Koi, also some houses near Ujina port.”
“I'm glad Koi is still here—at least some of it.”
“Why should we have a house when others houses are gone? Why should we live when others have died? It seems we have bought our life at expense of others.
“This is bond between Nakamoto and myself. When I say why should my sister be killed working in fire lane and not I, she knows my feeling exactly. She has suffered that she lived by miracle of her mother's rescue yet her brother and sister have died.
“She and I are not like ordinary lovers. Fate of our experience has brought us together. We are welded together like pieces of glass in explosion.” He held his palms tightly together. “Can you understand me?”
She thought of the deformed glass bottle in the tansu. “Yes,” she said, “I think so. To the best of my ability.”
“I have promised to tell you entire truth, even to my shame.” He lit a cigarette, closing his eyes against the smoke for a moment, then took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “After aunt and mother settled in Tokyo and Nakamoto-san came to Kodaira she stayed with us as I have told you. Our mutual trust and dependence on each other deepened. We became like family, all of us, in a sense, because we are united in concern for Ume.
“Aunt became jealous of Nakamoto-san when she sensed our closeness. She insisted I marry with a young woman who will not know our past and bear children to continue our family. But I had no wish to pass along contamination of Hiroshima—maybe radiation will cause deformity in my children. Also, I felt obliged to Michiko-san, and I had come to think of Ume as child I would care for.”
It was the first time she'd ever heard him use her given name.
“Why didn't you marry her?”
“In truth I must confess I did not love her as I should. I was weak man, a coward, standing between disapproval of aunt and mother on one side and Michiko-san's wishes on the other.
“So we remained in Takanodai for some time. Michiko and aunt were in a sense like daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. This is difficult in Japan usually, but worse in this case without marriage, especially as Michiko was rather strong-willed. Also my aunt resents her to go out to her teaching and leave care of Ume to others. One day she and aunt had bitter fight and I did not stand for her as I should. This was the tragic matter.”
“What happened?”
“It was in middle of summer. Michiko was making the plum wine with Ume's assistance. They had spent long time cooking fruit and preparing large jars of umeshu to be aged. Ume insist to help carry jars to large tatami room for storage. Somehow she tripped and fell down, spilling wine on tatami. I was in nearby room reading. I heard aunt shout, ‘Stupid girl!’ and Michiko shout to her, never to speak to her daughter this way. Ume ran away crying but aunt continued to scold Michiko, saying she and Ume were nothing but a trouble. ‘If not for you my nephew would be married to a young woman by now.’
“Michiko walked by room where I sat. She stopped at door. ‘Did you hear what your aunt has said?’ she asked. Her eyes pierced me. ‘Hai,’ I said. I could not speak further, nor move. She ran down the hall. I should have gone to her then. Instead I went to my pottery.” He put his face in his hands. “All night in my pottery. Next day they are gone.”
“Moved out?”
“Yes. I tried to find them but for long time could not. To tell the truth I did not try so hard as I might at first. In my selfish pride I reasoned that Michiko did not appreciate my care of her and had failed to understand my delicate position in our household. I have much obligation to my aunt for her years of helping my mother and myself, especially in Fukuyama when we were both invalids. And I would not have pottery were it not for her. Later I learned that Michiko had met with much hardship, first having to board in a sort of hotel. Eventually she found caretaking home for Ume and she moved to Kodaira campus. Not long after, Ume was found to be ill; the next years were very difficult time. I tried to help, pleading Michiko to hear my apology and to return but she would not. She was alone in her grief. She bore grief of her daughter's illness and death alone.
“Barbala . . . sometimes you have asked me do you think Nakamoto-san has taken her life? I believe so, yes, she has done this, and underlying reason was my cowardice and poor treatment of her.” He looked at her. “This is my deepest shame.”
“But . . .” She touched his arm. “When was this fight with your aunt?”
“In 1961, summertime.”
“That was years before—four years before her death.”
He shook his head.
She moved closer and put her arm around his shoulder. “I'm sorry you've suffered so much. But maybe she didn't kill herself...or if she really did, there must have been many complex feelings. Remember what you said, ‘It is impossible to know the soul of another?’”
“In her writing, she has revealed her soul. She asks what purpose is there to live, with Ume gone. She says she has leukemia of the spirit, and wonders if she may have physical disease of leukemia as well. But the worst despair is that I have just described to you, to bear her grief alone.”
“Did she write about that?”
“Indirectly, yes.” He looked at her. “This is why I have destroyed the papers—for my shame.”
They drove back down the hill to the city. Barbara stared numbly
out the window as they went through Koi, crossed over a bridge, and entered the center of the city.
“If you didn't want me to read the papers, why didn't you just destroy them and be done with it? Why did you go to all that trouble of making copies?”
“I did not wish to lose you.”
“Why not?”
He did not answer.
As they crossed another bridge, Seiji said, “This is Motoyasu River, where Chie has brought Michi after bombing.”
She stared down at the water glittering in the sun, trying to imagine the river choked with bodies, Chie holding Michi on her back.
“In Hiroshima we celebrate O-Bon festival of the dead on anniversary of bombing. On this day, spirits of the dead are believed to return to their home. In evening we set bright lanterns on river to guide spirits back to land of rest.” He paused. “Tonight I will bring lanterns for Michiko-san and others. Will you come?”
“Yes,” she said, “I will come.”
At dinner, Rie said that she and her father would celebrate O-Bon at the Enko River in Donbara-cho, where they had lived before the bombing. “I'm going to the Motoyasu, with Seiji,” Barbara told her.
“You have reconciled then? I am glad for you.”
Barbara took her hand.
“We have improved too, ne, Sensei?” Rie said.
Seiji picked Barbara up just before dark. There was a huge crowd along the edges of the Motoyasu River. She helped Seiji take the lantern boats from the back of the truck. They were made of straw; each one had a small paper lantern in the center, and a candle beneath the lantern. Seiji had written the names on the lanterns in black ink. There were sixteen of the boats: for Michi, Ume, Chie, Ko and her other relatives and several for members of his family. Barbara watched Seiji light the candles beneath the lanterns, and they set the boats afloat along with all the others. Most people shoved theirs out into the stream, using their hands or a stick. Seiji waded out with his until they were taken by the current. Then he and Barbara ran to the first bridge to watch them float past. It was dark now, the river water dark too, reflecting hundreds of yellow and orange lanterns, the spirits of the dead returning to their place of rest.
“Can you see Michiko-san's boat?” he said. “It is burning more brightly than the rest.”
She looked at him. “Her papers,” she said.
“One of them, yes.”
“1961?”
He nodded. “The others have already been burned. Some of those ashes were placed in her grave.”
“In that envelope!”
“Yes—and other part of paper ashes in the urn.”
She watched the lighted boats sliding from under the bridge, bobbing slightly on the current. “You didn't even tell me.” she said.
They walked on beside the river, watching the lanterns drift past, hundreds of spirit boats moving toward the sea. On the other side of the river was a line of Bon-Odori dancers with a long, brilliantly colored dragon over their heads and shoulders.
“I have one other confession,” Seiji said. “At times I have felt much jealous envy. I think Nakamoto has left tansu to you to revenge me. Giving tansu and stories of our Hiroshima experience and life together to an outsider is a vengeance upon me. Forgive me for saying this, but I believe is truth, no matter that she was fond of you.”
She glanced at him, then looked at the water, the reflected lights of the lanterns. There was a silence.
“Do you ever regret . . . our meeting?”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “Do you remember the festival day, when you came to raku?”
“Yes, I remember very well.”
“On that day, I have known . . .”
She waited for him to finish, but he said nothing more.
They went into a bar and sat at a small table. Seiji ordered beer. She drank one, he three, in quick succession. They left the bar and walked on along the river. He stopped in front of a hotel. “Hotel High Up” was on the outside in neon. “This is where I stay,” he said.
They craned their necks to look up at the roof.
“It certainly is high up,” she said. “Is it nice?”
“Not so nice as ryokan. Would you like to see? We can have a good view of the river.”
“Okay,” she said. She felt lightheaded as the elevator carried them up to his floor.
It was a Western-style room, very plain, a bed, a table, one chair. “Not so nice as a ryokan,” he said again with a laugh.
To avoid looking at the bed she walked to the window. He came to stand beside her. Far below them the lantern boats drifted slowly along with the tide.
“You can never forgive me I think,” Seiji said.
She pressed her forehead against the glass and stared down at the boats, blossoms of light on the dark river. She thought of Ume running awkwardly along the river of iris with flowers in her skirt, and Michi feeling guilty because she'd scolded her. Now they were both spirits, moving toward the open sea. Chie too, and Ko. She thought of her brother, who died before he was given a name, and her mother, her life more than half gone.
“I forgive you, Seiji. I more than forgive you.”
“But we will not meet as before?”
She turned and put her arms around him. “Of course we can meet.”
“Barbara-san,” he said, pronouncing her name carefully. “Once I said I cannot love someone. But if I can, she would be you.”
“If I had the terrible fortune to be born here, and to live through the bombing, I couldn't accept my fate. I'd fight against feeling tainted. I'd love whom I pleased.”
“This is true,” he said, “if you are Barbara.” Then after a pause he added, “But you would not be Barbara.”
31
Early the next morning Seiji picked Barbara up from the Yokohagis and took her to the station where she was to catch a train to Yonago. Though they said little during the drive, there was an almost palpable closeness between them.
They stood silently in the ticket line as it inched forward.
“I don't want to leave,” she said in a low voice.
“I can drive you,” he said. “I have been thinking of it.”
“All the way to Yonago?”
“We can go to Hāgi, beautiful town on the Japan Sea, which is famous for ceramic. You will enjoy very much, I think. If you don't mind to delay your visit to Yonago a day or so.”
“I don't mind at all.”
“Let me show you.” He led her to a map hanging on the wall and traced the route from Hiroshima to Hāgi. “Then, after our visit, you can take train to Yonago.” His finger moved north along the coastline. “Nice ride of only a few hours.”
They stood smiling at each other.
“How long will it take to get to Hāgi?” she asked.
“We can reach there this afternoon.
“So we will stay tonight?”
“Many nights,” he said.
“I think maybe just two days . . . Miss Ota is expecting me.”
She was nervous, going to call Miss Ota. As she dialed the number, she tried to think of an excuse, but all she managed to say was, “I'm sorry, I've been delayed.”
“It is no matter,” Miss Ota said. “Arrive any time at all, my dear, just let us know when you are coming. I imagine you must find the experience of Hiroshima enervating.”
Seiji telephoned an inn in Hāgi to make a reservation, and they carried her bag back out to the truck.
She noticed his suitcase was already there, in the bed of the truck. “What were your plans?” she said.
“To go to Hāgi,” he said with a grin.
“You're very sure of yourself.”
“No, it is only I have foolish hope.”
They drove through the city and into gently rolling farmland. After the past few days, everything seemed miraculous to her—the orange groves, the air fragrant with the smells of earth and growing things, his hand on hers. She sat close to him; the wind blew her hair against his face. She held it
back with her other hand, then took out a scarf to tie it back. “No,” he said, pulling off the scarf. He caught a handful of her hair and held it against his face.
They began to climb into mountainous terrain, with deep, heavily wooded valleys. At Tsuwano—a famous old castle town, he told her—they got out to stretch their legs, walking along the narrow streets past thatch houses and shops. They went into a small museum devoted to the work of Hokusai. On display was the series Thirty Six Views of Mt. Fuji. Seiji pointed out one of the prints and said “This is at the Tokkaido Pass—very near to us in Hakone.”
Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) Page 29