One Morning Like a Bird

by Andrew Miller

  4

  He is sitting on the drying platform, his back to that part of the wooden wall that divides the platform from Father’s room. The writing board is on his lap, and on the board a page of writing, the last of the Ishihara piece. He has found an entirely unexpected pleasure in the work, just as he found something disquietingly sympathetic about Ishihara himself. Even the novels, with their utter indifference to the genius of the language, their interminable dark combats between unblemished youth and corrupt old age, the page after page of impossible odds, flashing swords, terse farewells, the boy heroes with skin ‘pale as a maiden’s’ or ‘shining with the vitality of his seventeen years’, have had unexpected virtues, have even, on occasion, spoken to him, to some inner and unattended condition of his heart, his spirit.

  Is he not, then, quite what he thought he was? Not the observer standing at a distance, arms folded, a supercilious smile on his face, but nearer to one of those Ishihara spoke of as the future, pouring from the factory gates as the steam whistle shrieks? Can he imagine himself among them, brow grimy with sweat, eyes narrowed against the evening sun, not an individual any more but part of the animated destiny of the nation? ‘A hundred million hearts beating as one!’ ‘Onward, Asian brothers, onward!’ ‘Work, work, for the sake of the country!’ To say such slogans sincerely, to shout them out when everyone was shouting them out so that you cannot tell your own voice from your neighbour’s, might that not be a little like falling in love?

  He is crafting a sentence about Ishihara’s manner of speech, its passionate sincerity (he wants, but cannot quite bring himself to write ‘apparent’) when Miyo puts her head out of the door and tells him he has a visitor.

  ‘Someone to see me?’

  She makes a face as if to say. ‘Isn’t that what a visitor is?’, then slips away. He brings the board inside, buttons his shirt. He has not heard anyone arrive, no car pull up, no call from the vestibule. Who visits him in the middle of a Tuesday morning? An angry woman? A father demanding explanations? Or someone from the military clerk’s office, a red envelope in his hand?

  He goes downstairs. The doors of Mother’s room are open. There are voices inside, the sighing sing-song of middle-aged women. Cautiously, he peers inside. ‘Mother . . . ?’

  The room is lighter than usual, morning sunlight filtering through the paper screens where the sharply etched shadows of leaves move almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Here he is,’ says Mother. ‘Please sit with us, Yuji. Mrs Miyazaki is paying us a visit.’

  He looks at the other woman, recognises her, though only just, for in all the time he has known Taro, the seven years since they first sat beside each other in Professor Komada’s class, he has seen her no more than three or four times. A woman – today in a pigeon-coloured kimono – in awe of her children, her children’s confident friends. One of the old-style wives, content to kneel at the kitchen door waiting to be told when to bring the sake in. A life lived at the edge of the visible. Yet here she is, sitting on a cushion at the house of Professor Takano and his well-born wife, her hands in her lap, the little movements of her fingers suggesting an embarrassment that moment by moment threatens to crush her.

  Yuji kneels beside Mother.

  ‘Mrs Miyazaki was just telling me about her son,’ she says. ‘It appears that he has volunteered for the army.’

  ‘Taro?’

  ‘Junzo,’ says Mrs Miyazaki. ‘Junzo has gone.’

  He gapes at her. ‘Junzo?’

  ‘He left the house four days ago. I have not seen him since.’

  ‘Junzo? But he has exemption. He has his student deferment . . .’

  ‘Mrs Miyazaki,’ says Mother, ‘was wondering if he had said anything to you.’

  ‘About this? No. Nothing.’

  Discreetly, Mrs Miyazaki begins to weep. Haruyo brings in the tea.

  ‘He has not been himself for several weeks,’ says Mrs Miyazaki, dabbing her powdery cheeks with a tissue. ‘His elder brother thinks he might have made an attachment. One that has caused him some unhappiness. Please forgive my rudeness, but you are quite sure there is nothing you can tell me? You are his friend. He would not have done this without a reason, would he?’

  For the first time, Yuji sees something of Junzo in her, something sharp and unexpectedly wilful in her gaze. He turns from her, exchanges a glance with Mother, then looks at Ryuichi, the candlelight playing palely over his face. He cannot take it in. Junzo in the army? Junzo at boot camp? Junzo at the Front with the likes of Captain Mori and Corporal Kitamura? And what is this nonsense she wants him to tell her about? A mystery girlfriend he has never met?

  They sit there in silence, their faces composed as though waiting, with some impatience, for a messenger to arrive. After a minute Yuji makes a sound in his throat, a grunt of irritation. (What is this pigeon-coloured woman doing here, tearing his day in two?) He tells her that he is, regrettably, unable to answer her question. Is it possible there has been a misunderstanding? That Junzo only spoke of volunteering without ever intending his words to be taken seriously? He will, however, attempt to investigate. He will try to discover the information he should already possess but somehow does not. He apologises, climbs to his feet.

  ‘There,’ says Mother, her voice like the careful folding of silk. ‘I was sure Yuji would be able to help you.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Mrs Miyazaki. ‘He has been most kind.’ And she begins again to weep, more loudly this time, crying up tears from her belly as though her second-born, her baby, her brilliant Junzo, was already lost to her. It is unlikely, thinks Yuji, as he slides the doors shut behind him, that such a disturbing sound will be permitted to remain much longer.

  5

  It takes three days to find Taro. When he has tried all the usual places he goes down to Tokyo Central, to a drinking house in the precincts of the station, a fifteen-seater that specialises in broiled eels and a clear soup of eel livers, and where he knows that some of the junior men from the government offices like to stop for an hour between work and the train ride to the suburbs. Taro is at a table in the corner with four others, all in shirtsleeves. The cook, fanning the charcoal, where a row of skewered eels is sizzling, sees Yuji and barks a welcome. Taro glances up. Yuji raises a hand. He hopes that Taro will leave the table and join him but Taro stays where he is. Yuji takes the seat opposite him. He is introduced. Everyone is perfectly civil but the mood is cool. They are from the ministry, servants of the minister, agents, in their humble way, of the Imperial will. He – whoever he is, whatever it is he does – is an outsider. Soon they politely ignore him. When one of them mentions a certain Mr Honda and the others immediately guffaw, no one troubles to explain why Mr Honda is so amusing. Yuji studies the tabletop. After twenty minutes two of the men, draping jackets over their arms, picking up their umbrellas and briefcases, leave for their train. A few minutes later the others go.

  ‘You want to stay here?’ asks Taro.

  ‘Are you expecting more of your colleagues?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Mr Honda, perhaps?’

  They move to a coffee shop in a side street near the station. There’s a mural of a Roman temple along one of its walls, and on top of a glass cabinet of kasutera sponge cakes, there’s a hand-tinted photograph of Mussolini greeting Hitler or Hitler greeting Mussolini.

  They sit, order from a girl in a beret. Taro puts a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the table in front of him. ‘I suppose Mother has been to your place,’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope she was not an inconvenience.’

  ‘She told me about Junzo.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So it’s true?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He volunteered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And his student deferment?’

  ‘He volunteered.’

  ‘He’s Class D!’

  ‘When someone volunteers,’ says Taro, flatly, as though reading from
a sheet of paper, some government prescript, ‘it’s supposed to be an occasion for rejoicing.’

  ‘This is Junzo!’

  ‘Why not Junzo? He has put the nation’s needs before his own. In doing so, he has brought great honour on the family. Once Mother has stopped looking for foolish explanations she will prepare his thousand-stitch belt, and when the moment comes we will go to the station to bid him farewell.’ He stirs his coffee, lights a cigarette. He looks gaunt, exhausted. ‘The country is at war,’ he says.

  ‘You believe Junzo could ever make a soldier?’

  ‘In a soldier, spirit counts for more than stature.’

  ‘So you won’t try to stop him?’

  ‘How can I?’ He volunteered.’

  ‘Isn’t there someone you could speak to? Someone at the ministry?’

  ‘I work in the education department, not the War Ministry.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He has a room.’

  ‘A room?’

  ‘In Kagurazaka.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  ‘I have respected his wishes.’

  ‘And his wish is not to see you?’

  ‘He is preparing himself.’

  ‘Preparing?’

  ‘Hardening himself. Visits from an elder brother will not help him.’

  ‘You sound like a character in an Ishihara novel.’

  ‘Far from criticising us,’ says Taro, ‘you might want to study his example. You might even want to imitate it.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Wouldn’t volunteering solve your allowance problem?’

  ‘They would never take me.’

  ‘They took Junzo.’

  ‘Even so . . .’

  ‘They don’t throw any back these days.’

  ‘My chest . . .’

  ‘Your chest would benefit greatly from the exercise. That doctor of yours, what’s his name?’

  ‘Kushida.’

  ‘He could write a new letter explaining that in his opinion you are now fit for active service.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you from going? You seem so eager for us all to be in uniform . . .’

  ‘For now I have my work at the ministry. But as a reservist, I can, as you know, be called at any time. When the call comes, I will welcome it.’ He stubs out his cigarette on a picture of Mount Vesuvius in the ashtray. ‘It will be a great relief to me.’

  They look past each other. On the gramophone there is a song in Italian, some swaying, lachrymose love song that the girl in the beret, drying cups, is silently mouthing the words to.

  ‘I saw Feneon,’ says Yuji.

  ‘I suppose they will try to move now.’

  ‘Where could they go?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘Anywhere? How unconcerned you sound.’

  ‘Was Alissa there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am not unconcerned.’

  ‘Junzo was there before me.’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘I wondered if Feneon might have said something to him.’

  ‘Suggest he join the army? It’s hardly likely, is it?’ He glances at his watch, counts coins onto the table, pockets his cigarettes and lighter. As they cross the road, a few drops of rain begin to fall, each fat drop hitting the pavement with a noise like something snapping.

  ‘Taking the train?’ asks Taro.

  Yuji shakes his head. ‘I think I’ll go to Asakusa. See a film.’

  ‘Japanese or foreign?’

  ‘I’ll decide when I get there.’

  ‘I couldn’t have stopped him,’ says Taro. ‘You know how he is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s seen things more clearly than us.’

  ‘And this “attachment”?’

  ‘All of that sort of thing . . .’ Taro shrugs.

  ‘I know,’ says Yuji. ‘He’s volunteered.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The country’s at war.’

  ‘Yes. He will be angry with me, but if you want to see him so much . . .’ He takes out a pen and writes an address on the back of a business card. ‘Tell him that his family are thinking of him.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And don’t take too seriously what I said about you doing the same. I don’t want two of you to worry about.’

  ‘I would not wish to burden you,’ says Yuji. They grin at each other, shyly. ‘Will we meet again soon?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Au revoir, then.’

  ‘Yes. Au revoir.’

  They walk away from each other, but after twenty strides Yuji stops. Why not persuade Taro to come with him to the cinema? A good film, a bowl of noodles, some beer . . . They can still do that much, can’t they? He turns and sees his friend crossing the concourse, his broad back, his big shoulders already starting to be rounded by desk work, but before he can follow or call out to him, the crowd opens one of its many doors, and Taro, without a pause, without a moment’s hesitation, steps inside and is lost to sight.

  6

  He cannot, as he has intended, go straight to Kagurazaka the next morning. Haruyo catches him as he crouches by the vestibule step tying the laces of his shoes, and tells him that Mother’s medication needs collecting from the clinic. He cycles there. Kushida is out on a call but a nurse who recognises Yuji, takes him up to the dispensary on the first floor. ‘Mrs Takano,’ she mutters, ‘Mrs Takano . . .’ then lifts down a pair of grey canisters from the shelf and passes them to Yuji. She cocks her head. ‘Anything for yourself?’

  She is one of those ominously flirtatious older women who have an appetite for men ten or fifteen years their junior. She reminds him of Mother’s friend, Mrs Sasaki, and of those farcical scenes at her house in Sendagi as she made him try on all the dead husband’s jackets, adjusting the collars for him, smoothing the shoulders, the heavy perfume from the sleeves of her kimono making it difficult to breathe.

  ‘This must be worth something,’ says Yuji, nodding to the well-stocked shelves, the bottles and boxes, many with their labels printed in German or English.

  ‘Shall we go into business together?’ asks the nurse, pulling the steel door shut behind them and double-locking it with a key from the bunch she carries in the pocket of her apron.

  On the corridor, even in the middle of the morning, the overhead lights are burning as though shadow was a kind of pollution, something that might get into a wound. They pass Kushida’s office. The door is open. ‘Sensei?’ coos the nurse, tapping softly on the wood, but there is no reply. On the desk under the window, a large bell jar is striped with the sunlight that falls through the slats of the venetian blind. Inside the jar, hanging in a colourless fluid, is an object about the size of one of the carp in Kyoko’s pond. Yuji has a glimpse of an eye, immaculately shut, the splayed fingers of a miniature hand, a loosely flexed knee. ‘Everyone,’ says the nurse, ushering Yuji to the top of the stairs, ‘must have a pastime, no?’

  He leaves the canisters outside Mother’s door, leaves his bicycle in the front garden, and walks to the tram-stop to catch a number 7 to Iidabashi. From there he crosses the main road, and keeping to the shadow side, the narrow strip of cool at the pavement’s inner edge, enters Kagurazaka, a High City district, one of the old pleasure quarters, but now long since left behind by the steady westward flow of money and fashion.

  Distracted by the shimmering blue line between sun and shade, he walks straight past the turning Taro spoke of and has to double-back until he finds it, an alley lined with boarding houses, Meiji or early Taisho firetraps, the way between them so narrow the little front gardens, growing wild in so much rain, have reached across to each other, tendril twisting round the tip of tendril.

  Ahead of him, two arrow-headed dogs are sleeping in the dust but there is, at first, no sign of the residents, the inhabitants of these shuttered, blank, blind old buildings. Only when he enters the alley does he begin to see them, soft human forms squatting or lying wherever the shade is dee
pest. Do they watch him as he passes? He cannot tell, but halfway down the alley he becomes aware of light feet following him and he turns to find a girl of eight or ten, a sleeping infant on her back, some little brother or sister tied to her with a length of patterned cloth, the weight of it making her stoop like an old woman carrying firewood. She asks if he is lost. He tells her he is looking for his friend. ‘That’s good,’ she says, she knows everyone in the alley, she even knows the names of all the cats and dogs. He gives her Junzo’s name. ‘He’s not here,’ she says, because she has never heard of him, but when Yuji describes him she nods. ‘He doesn’t have a name yet,’ she says, ‘He hasn’t been here long enough.’ She takes his hand and guides him to a house a degree more decrepit, more hopeless than the others. It is the house of an uncle of hers, she says, a sort of uncle. Inside, Yuji cannot see at all. He shuffles behind her, following the pull of her bony hand, the curdled-milk smell of the infant. They climb a tightly turning staircase. Now and then some partly open shutter or torn screen suddenly reveals the elaborate makeshift of the house’s inner structure, and as they ascend, their heads press against a damp and thickening heat as if they are climbing into the base of a storm cloud.

  At the top of the house, the girl sings out a greeting and slides open the tattered door. It is the attic room (what does one pay for such a room?), a space that can never have been intended for human habitation, its ceiling nothing but the steeply raked beams and tiles of the roof. Light comes from a hole you would have to lie on your belly to look through. There is a smell of birds, bird droppings, sour human sweat.

  ‘He must have gone out,’ says the girl. And then, as though the house, the whole alley, was truly another country, she adds, ‘You have made a journey for nothing.’

  On the wooden boards is an old but neatly rolled mattress, and next to it a shoulder bag and four or five books – The Science of Logic Vol. IV, a book of campcraft for boys, a Sino-Japanese dictionary. There is also a small picture frame, face down. On the girl’s back, the infant whimpers in its sleep. The girl whispers to it, a language all their own, then asks Yuji if he wants some tea. Cold barley? Salty cherry blossom? If he wants some, she will run and fetch it. He shakes his head. He cannot possibly wait here. Alone in this room it would steal into him; he would breathe it in like bad luck. He brushes a mosquito from his cheek. He would like to leave something, some evidence of his having been there, and he rummages in his pockets but can find nothing more personal, more suitable, than the propelling pencil he carries for making notes (those insights and observations that have no purpose to them any more). He stretches into the room, places the pencil on top of the books, then follows the girl down, each of them brushing the stairwell wall with their fingers. In the alley, he gives her a coin. She puts it in a fold of the sash round her waist. ‘He has to be fed now,’ she says. ‘Don’t you think he’s like a big insect?’