A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

by Jackie Copleton

  What to say of a city you haven’t seen for nearly forty years? The two peaks, the harbour, Chinatown and the Dutch Slope were still there but modernity had left its mark. Pachinko parlours were everywhere, with their neon lights and beeping machines and silver balls. Newly built offices of metal and glass and concrete rose up above our heads, and the centre had been taken over by a covered central shopping mall. Despite those curiosities, I had come home. How to explain the feeling? Do you remember waking on a summer morning as a child, when you opened the window and the promise of that day flooded into your room? That was Nagasaki for me, a shocking sensation of hope. I had robbed Kenzo of that unexpected feeling of return, but I tried to tell myself I could not have come back any sooner. America was a place to heal as best we could. I had needed those four decades to find the strength to revisit the ghosts and the places where they hid.

  Hideo’s home was situated in one of the steepest parts of the city. You could only access the two-storey house by walking up flights and flights of concrete steps, or by finding your way to the top of the hill and then walking down. I had grown too used to the flat, uniform streets of my American home, with every address labelled and known. Here, houses and apartments were crammed one against the other, all different sizes and shapes linked by warrens of paths. Their home was a side of grey pebble-dash and a roof of red tiles, built against a moss-stained stone wall beside a river that ran past a medley of corrugated-iron shacks, wooden lean-tos and tarpaulin flapping against brick huts.

  We stood outside his home and he told me not to be nervous but, of course, I was. He rang the doorbell and there was a clatter of feet and shouts of ‘Daddy’. The door opened and Benji and Hanako ran into their father’s arms. He held them tight. ‘My little devils. How I’ve missed you. Have you been good for Mummy?’ Angela stepped into the hallway, drying her hands on a dishcloth. She reached down and tickled Benji. ‘They’ve been perfect monsters.’ The children laughed and gave me curious glances. Angela took a step forward and kissed Hideo. She spoke in English, ‘Hey, baby, glad you’re home.’ She smiled and kissed him again, switching back to Japanese. ‘And you must be Amaterasu. We’re so thrilled you could visit. Come in, come in. Where’s your bag? The children have made you a cake, haven’t you, kids? Go bring it into the living room.’ They ran off, shouting, ‘Cake, cake, cake.’

  ‘Apologies, the kids are wild. Let me take your coat. The oil heater is on. You’ll be freezing and exhausted. It’s quite a flight.’ In the living room we sat on beige sofas surrounded by bookcases crammed with books and walls covered in pictures drawn by the kids. A large glass door opened to a small courtyard. The children returned and placed a chocolate cake on the coffee table. Round red candies had been pressed into the brown icing. Hanako looked at me shyly. ‘It’s a ladybug.’ I smiled. ‘My favourite.’ Benji knelt down next to me as Angela cut thick slices. Hideo told his family about his trip, while his daughter clung to him.

  I looked at the children, greedy for signs of Yuko in them. Hanako’s dark hair fell down her back and she was dressed in maroon corduroys and a grey jumper. She fiddled with a scab on her chin as she ate her cake. Benji had a rash of freckles and a fringe that fell in a heavy layer over his eyes. He wore a baseball shirt and denims that threatened to fall off his thin hips. His lips were coated in brown frosting. He whispered to his mother, who replied, ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ He turned to me. ‘Want to see your room?’ Hanako stood up and reached for my hand. ‘This way.’ She held my fingers lightly, as if she was worried she might crush my bones.

  First they took me to their small yard, next to a waterfall that trickled over rocks black with slime. They threw a ball back and forth while they asked me where I had come from and did I like America and had I seen The A-Team? The inquisition over, they led me to a door that opened to a small room, little more than a cupboard. We peered inside. A round hole had been cut into a raised wooden platform. Benji sneaked past me and looked down the open sewer. ‘This is the toilet,’ he explained, laughing as he revealed that during the monsoon season Hideo had to nail a board over the seat to stop the water shooting up into the house. Next they took me to the kitchen and Hanako scuffed one foot back and forth along the tiles as she told me in the summer the floor was overrun with slugs. She shuddered when she said this. I had imagined a modern home for them. Sato’s wealth and Hideo’s job as a teacher surely would have bought them a more comfortable property but the chaos of the ramshackle house suited the family.

  Back in the hall, Benji warned me the stray cats liked to congregate outside their front step at night and I must not be worried by all their howling. We took the stairs and they waited patiently for me to climb each step. They showed me where they slept and then slid open a paper door to reveal a square room, with tatami floors and a futon, already made up. ‘This is where you’re going to sleep.’ I was thrilled by the prospect of sleeping on a futon again, even if my body was not. Hanako pointed to some plastic daisies in a vase. ‘These are for you.’ I thanked her and she shrugged but seemed pleased. ‘We’ll get your bag.’ She ran out and Benji followed her but before he closed the door, he said, ‘Let’s play sumo wrestlers later, OK?’ I smiled. ‘OK.’

  In the evening, while we sat in the living room before dinner, the children came running in, giggling. They had stripped down to their version of a sumo wrestler’s mawashi fashioned out of their father’s white T-shirts tied in knots. Hideo laughed. ‘What have we here? Our own sumo match?’ Benji nodded and ran to a clean pile of laundry and started pulling out socks to make the outline of the ring. Hanako came up and tapped me on the knee. ‘You’re the judge. You decide who wins.’

  Later still, Hanako sat next to me on the low couch with a sketch pad. She chewed a pencil in her mouth. ‘What shall I draw?’ I thought for a moment and suggested a horse. She leaned against me as she drew and I marvelled at the ease of children in new company. Angela smiled as she played cards with her son. I put my arm around Hanako and rested the side of my head on top of hers. I smelled the fresh air caught in her hair and the sweet milk scent of her skin. Closing my eyes, I imagined Yuko nestled in my arm, the weight of her, all those hours we had passed this way. When Hanako was finished, she looked up to me, a slight furrow in her brow. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s perfect.’

  She held the picture at arm’s length, admiring her work. ‘I’m quite good at drawing.’ She showed the sketch to her father, who pinned it to the wall and then ordered them both to bed. They hugged their parents and suddenly I felt a stranger again. ‘Give Amaterasu a kiss,’ Angela said. Before I could say there was no need they ran up and took turns to kiss me on the cheek, wet lips soft on my skin.

  During those first few days, Angela and Hideo fizzed around me, hovering and anxious. I told them to go about their business as normal. I wanted to be left to explore the city, ease back to the point where I had left Nagasaki. I needed time to reacquaint myself with all that I had left behind. One morning I rose early and wrote a note to say I would return before dinner time. I took the tram past Hamaguchi-machi and got off near the post office. I walked five slow blocks to Sanno shrine, reconstructed after the bomb. To reach it, I passed through a torii gate, one leg blown away, the other upright. It had been left that way after pikadon as a memorial. I crossed flagstones and found one of the camphor trees that had survived all those fires that had raged across the city. I ran my hand down the blackened bark and felt our shared past in the cracks and charcoal fissures. We were still here, one growing, the other stunted, but both alive. I could not face going to Urakami Cathedral and Yamazato Primary, where new buildings had replaced those lost. Instead I went to the Peace Park. A statue of a man sitting in vigil stood at the head of the open square. Kenzo had shown me a picture in the newspaper after the site had been built in 1955. He had called it an affront, so ugly, but as I sat on a stone bench and looked up at this muscular naked man, with his flowing hair and loincl
oth, I took comfort from his presence. We had a watchman for the city at last. His green bronze right hand pointed to the sky, the left horizontal across Nagasaki, his eyes closed in prayer. Paper cranes – red, yellow, white, orange, purple – lined fences and posts and benches. Schoolchildren, so neat in their sailor outfits, walked up to tourists and handed them postcards with handwritten messages of peace. One ran up to me and gave me a card and I looked at it for a long time before I walked down to the circular stone fountain, where jets of white spray shot up into the air. Here was the water the dying had begged for. A leaflet flipped by in the breeze and I stooped to retrieve it. There was a map of atomic bomb landmarks, the cover dominated by the cathedral. This new version built in 1959 was so red, so substantial. Here was the great solid entrance returned, those two towers rising tall once more. Only the original belfry remained, lying on the riverbank, blown thirty yards away by pikadon. ‘Urakami had been a distinct Christian district since the second half of 1500. Under the suppression of Christianity from 1613, Christians continued to practise their religion by organising secret groups. The villagers managed to come back to Urakami in 1873. When they built the cathedral, it took almost 30 years to complete. The cathedral was also exposed to the atomic bomb and was destroyed. Around 8,500 of the 12,000 Christians living in the area were killed by the blast.’

  I read that last sentence and thought of Yuko, just one among all those thousands. Where had all the shattered bricks been taken? Where had they been buried? Where had she gone? Was she buried with those bricks? Could I dig down into soil and unearth the black embers of her? I did not follow her faith but I was drawn to the stories of burning pits and boiling cauldrons and crucifixions. These were stories of pain and of loss that I could understand. The twenty-six martyrs of 1597, the 37,000 peasants massacred forty years later, the thousands arrested in the city and exiled not so long ago, those thousands more who lived and worked in the shadow of Urakami Cathedral; I admired the sacrifices made by them all to this religion, but no, I was not a believer. I looked again at the photograph, ran my fingers over a line of worshippers walking toward the great oak door. Those Christians who survived, how could they worship in that new building, how could they cross its entrance and not wonder: Why did we live? Why were they taken? Why did my god allow this?

  Shade and Light

  In’yo: The idea of these dual forces evolved from the cosmology of the ancient Chinese, and explains every phenomenon of the universe by shade (in) and light (yo). For example, day and night, heat and cold, and male and female all comprise in’yo, day, heat and male being yo.

  My journey home had taken me thirty-eight years. The winter sun was beginning to set and orange lights appeared from the windows of the cathedral. I whispered my apologies to my daughter for my lateness and stepped over the threshold. The last time I saw Yuko, we met at the cathedral, two days before the bomb. The red facade was bleached coral in the sunshine but the darkness of its interior swallowed the daylight. I could see her sitting on one of the back pews, the outline of her shoulders and head shimmering from the golden shafts that spilled off the stained glass. I walked up to her, my feet silent on the paved stones, and touched her on the shoulder. She turned round and her face was pale and drawn. Call it a mother’s instinct but I knew something was wrong. We moved outside to one of the stone seats west of the building. She opened a parasol and we sheltered under its white frame. I tried to fill her silence with chatter. I asked after Hideo and told her Mrs Goto had been unwell. She did not respond and stared at the ground. I waited, and when she finally spoke, she could not look at me. ‘You know Jomei is back?’

  The dread returned instantly. We had never spoken about the doctor since her marriage. What would have been the point? I tried to keep my voice light. ‘No, I wasn’t aware. Since when?’ She said nothing. ‘Your paths have crossed?’ Fear coursed through my body. ‘He has acted in good faith?’ Again she did not reply but her hesitation was enough. She handed me the parasol, turned away and began to cry. Her tears fell in splashes and she reached into her pocket for a handkerchief. I’m ashamed to admit this but I often feel a swell of disgust when seeing someone in distress, especially someone I love. I need them to be strong, contained. Any show of weakness frightens me. I ran my palm down her wet cheek. ‘Why are you telling me this today, Yuko? Why now?’

  A minute or so passed and she grew calm. She folded the handkerchief into a square and wiped her eyes. She reached for the parasol and we drew closer under its protection. ‘I need your help, Mother. I need to do something and I cannot face it alone.’

  ‘Do what, Daughter?’

  ‘This is not his fault, before you blame him. To see him again after so long, it was as if all those years, Shige, Hideo, had vanished. I was foolish, selfish, I know.’ She sighed, ready for the confession. ‘To keep the baby is a sin. To get rid of it is a sin. What can I do, Mother?’

  ‘Baby?’ The word fell from me in a rush of anguish. I said the word again and then dug my fingernails in my palm so that I would not cry. We sat in silence as the sun began its slow descent behind the cathedral. My throat felt gritty with the dying afternoon heat. Finally, I found the strength to speak. ‘Does Sato know?’

  Yuko dabbed beneath her eyes with her fingers. ‘I haven’t told him yet, but surely I have to tell him?’

  I gathered up my fear, sealed it away. ‘You want my advice? Then this is it. You cannot keep the baby and he must never know.’

  ‘Maybe I could have the child and have it adopted?’ I looked to the sky, exasperated. ‘I can’t destroy the baby, Mother. What will God say?’

  ‘It’s not God you have to worry about, it’s Shige. He’s your concern. And Hideo. They are your family. This thing, this seed in your belly, it’s nothing, see, nothing. The war will end some day. Shige will return. Hideo will need a father. And you a husband.’

  ‘What if I could take Hideo away with me, start a new life?’

  ‘And abandon Shige? You could do that?’

  She started to weep again. ‘He’s dead. I know it. I feel it.’

  ‘You can’t believe it. This is war. This is what happens. He will return.’ I took her hand. ‘You asked me here today for help. Women have been dealing with this problem for centuries. There’s a fishing village down the coast. Years ago now, before you were born, a great storm hit the area. It battered the nearby cliffs so hard that when the wind and rain passed on, the villagers noticed strange objects protruding from the cliff face. Bones, human bones, children’s bones. For hundreds of years, the women of that village had gone to that spot to rid themselves of children they could not keep because of disability, or hunger, or parentage. There are places you can go. You will not be the first woman to fix this problem.’

  ‘So, it’s that easy? Some trip down an alley and the problem’s gone?’

  ‘And Sato . . .’

  She pulled her hand away. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I do understand, Yuko. I understand that kind of love, I do. But it doesn’t make you happy. Believe me. You can’t see beyond it now, but you will.’

  ‘I need time to think.’

  ‘The longer you wait, the harder it will be, the more likely you will be to tell Sato.’ I forged the plan in my head. ‘We will meet here on Thursday. I’ll find someone who can help us. You have a break at eleven in the morning, yes?’ She nodded. ‘OK, two days, you have two days to accept what you have to do. We’ll fix this, Yuko. But you must promise, when this is done, no more Sato, no more. You have your family. That is who you are.’

  She looked up at the cathedral. ‘I can’t make that decision with God so near. Let’s meet somewhere in town after work. I’ll be finished by five o’clock.’

  ‘No, here is better. Thursday at eleven o’clock. I’ll be waiting.’ I had thought maybe the presence of the cathedral would remind her of her vows to Shige.

  She stood up. ‘
I’m expected back at the hospital.’ She looked away briefly as if trying to contain her emotions. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you.’

  I should have called her back, gathered her in my arms, told her she had never disappointed, not once. How could she? Yuko had been the one true joy in my life, the pearl in the shell of my heart. But rather than say any of this, I watched her walk away, her nurse’s uniform shrinking into the evening as she returned to work. My biggest worry was that she would confess the pregnancy to Sato before our next meeting and he would manipulate her into keeping the child. As I sat on the bench my loathing for him poured over me. I felt the hatred prick my pores and pierce my stomach. I had tried to cleanse the doctor from our lives before. I had underestimated his resolve, but there was one final move I could make that would poison any feeling he might have for my daughter. I could see no other alternative. This is not my excuse, but an attempt at an explanation.

  Lingering Attachment

  Miren: A feeling one develops when, for example, one is forced to part with one’s beloved due to the pressure of social circumstance. It is part of the emotional category of sorrow. A man is said to be effeminate and unreliable if he cannot suppress his lingering attachment to his sweetheart once he has decided he had better leave her.