A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

by Jackie Copleton

  Maruyama in the early morning resembles a geisha stripped of her fine kimonos and make-up. Empty beer bottles are stacked in crates, the shutters of the dim-sum and takoyaki stalls are down, the lanterns droop and the clogged drains ferment under the day’s harsh judgement. The cracks and stains and decay are all too visible, but most delivery men, or cleaners, or hostess girls making their way home know better than to look too closely down side lanes or inside doorways.

  I had chosen a bar where night workers could still find a beer or company come the end of their shift. I sat at a bench at the back wall and asked for a coffee. Except for two hostess girls, bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, I was the only female customer. I watched the door for Sato. When he arrived I felt that same pull in my guts of fear, anger and some feeling I refused to acknowledge.

  He sat down opposite me and studied my face. Even in this forgiving light, I knew what he saw. The greying under my eyes, my skin still pale from the night’s caress even after all those years. I remained a creature of twilight, blanched. He pulled a silver case from his jacket pocket and offered me a cigarette. I refused and he lit one for himself. I had left my name and the address of the bar with his receptionist the evening before. I did not know whether he would come but I had not dared go to the hospital in case Yuko saw me. The waitress came over and he ordered a glass of shochu. He tapped his cigarette carton on the table and waited until our drinks had been delivered before he spoke.

  ‘Tell me, Amaterasu. I was thinking on the way over. How long have we known each other?’

  I smelled the aroma of roasted acorns as I replied. ‘Don’t be cruel, Sato. Don’t make me count.’

  ‘Nonsense, we are still young, you and I. We’re still game for the fight.’

  Wisps of tobacco crackled near his mouth from his cigarette. I gave him a rueful look. ‘Come now, Sato. You’re not feeling nostalgic, are you?’

  This amused him. ‘You know me better than that.’

  ‘We have known each other . . .’ I began to count. ‘One, two, three . . . no, don’t make me do it.’

  He leaned forward and touched my hand. ‘In all those years, I have not been as forthcoming with my expressions of admiration.’

  I fell into my former guise, pouted and fashioned a frown. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  He half smiled at this. ‘Did Yuko tell you I was back in Nagasaki?’

  ‘She did. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Tell me, Sato. What is it about Yuko? Of all the women in the city, why do you keep coming back to her?’

  ‘You’re not jealous, are you, Amaterasu?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not your wife, Sato.’ I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘My only concern is Yuko. Do you understand what you have done here?’

  ‘I did not come here to explain myself. Only to tell you, unlike last time, I will not be ordered around like some housemaid. This matter between Yuko and me is unfinished business. And maybe more too.’

  ‘What? You still think this love? You have no idea what that word means. If you continue to pursue Yuko, you will destroy her life, for what, your own selfish needs? A parent’s love is selfish too, in different ways.’ I paused. ‘Why her? Anyone but her. Think, Sato. Think. Did you never do the calculations? Did you never consider how soon Kenzo and I began after you and I ended? Did you never think about her age?’

  I watched the clouds of confusion clear on his face as he understood what I was saying to him. He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray as he shook his head. ‘Amaterasu, don’t do what you are about to do. If you love Yuko, don’t say what you are about to say.’

  ‘Yuko was a small baby. It was easy enough to pass her off as premature. No one guessed the truth.’

  He sat back with a look of despair. ‘Why would you tell such an unnatural lie? Don’t you realise I know when you are lying? Even after all these years. You pride yourself on deception, but you are a terrible liar.’

  I pulled some money from my purse. ‘I’m sorry, Sato, I really am, but it’s no lie. Who could make such a crime up?’

  He sat back, as if stabbed in the chest. There were tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t believe you. You are nothing more than a Maruyama whore who would lie and cheat and say anything to get her way.’

  I stood and picked up my parasol. ‘I’m meeting Yuko at Urakami Cathedral tomorrow morning. You have until then to break off this foul union, or I will tell her everything.’

  Sato gave me another look of revulsion. ‘You would do that to your own child? I can see how you would lie to me, but her?’

  ‘To keep her away from you, Sato, I’d do anything.’ I walked out of the bar, turned down an alleyway, squeezed through lanes little wider than me so that he could not follow me – faster and faster – and when my lungs burned in protest and I could run no more, I bent over in a doorway and retched. Again. And again. And again. Until I had purged those words from my body.

  India-ink Painting

  Suibokuga: This style of painting was introduced into Japan from China together with Zen Buddhism and perfected by the painter and priest Sesshu (1420–1506) in the fifteenth century. As in many other Japanese arts and traditions such as haiku poetry and tea ceremony, there is a deep-rooted preference for simplicity and subtlety. Suibokuga abhors superfluous strokes of the brush and unnecessary splashes of ink. It is interested in the essence of the subject matter, usually mountains, rivers, plants, animals, etc. Various shades of black and grey on the white background stimulate the imagination of the viewer far more than colours. The white space left untouched does not represent emptiness but embodies all meaning and possibility, thus playing as important a part as the painted object itself.

  A couple of worshippers bowed their heads in prayer underneath Jesus on the Cross. The silence was calming. This was as close to a cocoon as I could find. I opened my bag and took out Yuko’s journal and Sato’s last letter, dated 1972. I opened my daughter’s diary to her final entry and listened to what she had to tell me.

  ‘Unlike Mother, I am weak but maybe I will have the courage to do the right thing, if only I knew what that was. I love Shige. I do. These words are easy to write. I love his constancy and his loyalty. He is a good father. I thought I would have to live with the pain of Jomei’s departure forever. Shige helped me mend. He fixed me. No word but maybe Mother is right. I must believe him alive. I would not wish to cause him pain. I do not wish to cause Hideo harm. What am I if I cannot be a good wife and a good mother? What else will be left of me? But there is the other side of me, a darker part where Jomei exists. He is a tumour who feeds on me and grows stronger every day until all of me, bones, organs, flesh, will be consumed by him.

  ‘Mother says there is no choice to make. Shige and Hideo are my family. She says the role of mother and wife has been sufficient for her. She cannot imagine the alternative. She says to surrender to some foolish notion of love will hurt everyone. Sometimes women are the collateral damage, she says, but we can bear the agony of decisions forced upon us. Is killing one child forgivable if it saves two families?

  ‘All these words mean nothing until I meet with Jomei again. Despite what Mother says, I must tell him about the child. He may not want me or this new life in my belly, but if he does, what then? I cannot have the child and him without losing Shige and Hideo. Surely then there is no choice to be made? Surely I must stay true to what I have and not gamble on the unknown? What would my life be without Hideo and Shige? What would have been the point to all of this?’

  Had I acted too hastily in meeting Sato at the bar that morning? I had seen the move as security against any indecision on Yuko’s part. I wanted to leave nothing to chance. I pulled out his letter from the envelope. His words were barely legible, scrawled in an uneven slope down the page. He must have taken great effort to write them.

  I think about the child we would have had. For some reason I see a
daughter. I imagine her born healthy, with screaming lungs and clenched fists raised at the rudeness of her delivery to the world. I call her Miki. I imagine her growing into a young child. She would be free from worries and fears. She would delight in her surroundings and laugh with abandon and cry with gusto. She would not shy away from her feelings but embrace and wrestle with them. As I write I can see the bushes in my garden, shaking with the sparrows that have gathered in them. Safe within the inner branches, they chirrup to one another all day. The sound cannot fail to make whoever hears their song happy. I imagine Miki listening in wonder to the singing bush, mimicking the sound of these delicate little birds. As she grew into a teenager and young woman we would have shown her wondrous places beyond her own country. She would learn other languages and other cultures. She would make her own way in the world, choosing a career, falling in love, having children of her own. I see you holding a grandchild in your arms. These images do not torment me. I take solace from them, this imagined other world.

  And then I think of Miki as she might also have been, infected by the bomb. I know the challenges she would have encountered, the obstacles we all would have faced. I imagine strangers looking at her, turning away, asking ugly questions, rejecting what they see. But her life would still be a success, only different, her goals changed but still achievable, and our love for her the same as it would be for any child, fiercer maybe in our fight to protect her. And the singing bush? Can you imagine her joy at such magic? We would have been happy, just in a different way.

  I used to think losing you both was punishment for China, but I deserved such retribution, not you. This cruelty I cannot reconcile. Hideo is no atonement for all my wrongs, but my pride in who he is, what he is, how he is, are as deep as the fires that flow under Japan. As my body and mind prepare for what is about to come, my doubts about him are gone. He is your son and I love him, Yuko. It was an honour to raise him on your and Shige’s behalf. He is a giant among men. This is no surprise to me. He came from strong stock. We just provided shelter while he grew. The rest, all that he is and all that he will be, is down to you. To Hideo, my love. To your son.

  I wept there in the comforting shadows of the cathedral, tears muffled by a hand over my mouth. I accept now that Sato loved my daughter but I will always struggle with what happened because of that love. I’m glad she did not take my advice and had told Sato about the pregnancy. The burden of a decision was not hers alone to endure. Sato had mentioned nothing of what they had discussed when he came to my home in those days after pikadon, desperate to believe somehow she had escaped. As he stood in my bedroom, he had only one other question to ask.

  ‘What you told me the other day in the bar, was it a lie?’

  I hesitated to tell him the truth, frightened about how he might react. The summer sun fell in hot streaks through the window and we were both stripped of age and duplicity in its harsh light. We were young again, unsullied by our schemes and ambitions, a young doctor and a hostess girl. I had been a fool to imagine a life with him. I could not picture our home, our children, our happiness. The greatest gift Sato had given me was Kenzo. I returned the favour. ‘Of course it was a lie, Jomei. A terrible lie. I could not let you destroy her life.’ Rather than seem angry, he looked relieved. ‘Please tell me, you said nothing of it to Yuko?’ I asked.

  A cloud cast him in shadow and he aged before my eyes. He shook his head. ‘Why would I say such a thing to her?’

  I glanced out of the window as I watched a kite harry another bird in the white sky. ‘But you met, reached a decision?’

  ‘It’s none of your business, Amaterasu.’

  ‘It’s just, I see her there, in the cathedral, alone. I want to believe in that final moment she had some peace.’

  His was the saddest smile I’ve seen. ‘We both wanted that for her. We both did.’

  He walked out of the room. I never saw him again. Would it have helped if Sato and I could have mourned her death together? Ours was a shared loss but not shared grief. The only kindness we could afford one another was honesty during that last encounter. There was no need for deceit after the fires of pikadon. Her diary and his letter gave two endings. Which was I to believe? Had she made her way to the cathedral that morning to tell me she was keeping the baby or had Yuko told Sato she had chosen her life with Shige? I’ll never know but I cannot contemplate the former. The second ending is the one I choose to believe. Maybe that decision would have been easier in those final moments of her life. I hope that was her choice. I can do no more than that. Hope.

  I watched a woman, close to my own age, light a candle and place it next to others melting away to nothing. Candles burn, diaries and letters rot, memories weaken or die. When I am gone, what will be left of my daughter? What will remain to show the world she once existed? I had carried her with me through the years but the toll was a heavy one. I had felt dead inside for a long time. I knew why Sato wrote to Yuko and why he created a new ending for her, alive, with a daughter called Miki. I too sometimes conjured up my own fantasy that she had survived pikadon. She had not waited for me at the cathedral. This had been my hope, Sato’s too. Had this been true, Yuko would be sixty-three years old by now. I try to imagine how she might look. I try to conjure up the colour of her hair, the pallor of her skin. I try to sketch a softened waist or protrusion of bone and veins. Even if I use my own face and body as a map, I cannot picture this other Yuko, but I guessed at the life she might have led had she chosen Sato, the joy a daughter would bring, the sacrifices this Miki would be worth.

  The doctor’s letters and Yuko’s journals had forced me to accept that I must let this fantasy creation go. I did not need to think of other endings, only the actual one: my daughter was taken suddenly from me, before I had a chance to tell her that I loved her, before I had a chance to ask her to forgive me, before I had a chance to say goodbye. I wanted to mourn all of the woman in the journals and letters, not just the one trapped in the cathedral when pikadon hit. She had been so much more than the Yuko of that day and that hour. Inside me, she will always be a baby, a young girl, a lover, a wife, a nurse, a mother. I told myself, while I had led her to the cathedral that day, none of us could have known the fate about to be bestowed upon our city and its people. I heard the great bell that had survived the war ring out, I watched the woman’s mouth move in silent prayer, I looked up at that bleeding crucified carpenter. Yuko had believed him the son of God. She had come here to pray, seek solace. Maybe finally, if I had to let her go, it needed to be here.

  I took hold of the pew in front of me with both hands and lowered myself onto the knee rest, the green leather worn through with the weight of others. I spoke to Yuko’s god in the cathedral; I finished the prayer that she could not. I asked that he might set me free. I asked that he might show me how to live again. I asked him to deliver a message. I whispered the words over and over again as outside the neon lights of the city flickered to life. Peace, Yuko. Peace, Daughter. Peace, my beautiful child. You are the pearl in the shell of my heart. Forgive me. I love you. Goodbye.

  Pilgrimage

  Tera-meguri: Pilgrimages to Buddhist temples made for religious purposes are called henro or junrei, the most popular of which is the pilgrimage to the eighty-eight sacred places in Shikoku. These temples are all associated with Kukai or Kobo-Daishi (774–845), the founder of the Shingonshu sect of Buddhism. This custom originating in the medieval times is still maintained today by devout believers of Kukai. Pilgrims travel from temple to temple, ringing bells and chanting Buddhistic hymns. The names of the temples they visit are stamped on their white clothes or on the notebooks they carry with them. The pilgrimage to the eighty-eight sacred places is believed to make one happy both in this world and in the next world.

  I had been back two weeks when Hideo served me some sukiyaki at dinner and told me he had something special to show me tomorrow morning. Angela and the children smiled conspiratorially. Hanako giggled as
she picked up her chopsticks. ‘You’ll like it. It’s a good surprise.’ No teasing or coercion as we shared the beef, tofu and bamboo shoots would make them reveal the plans. Angela and Hanako woke me up early. They laid out a crimson kimono for me, with embroidered white blossom. ‘We thought you might like to wear it,’ Angela said. I looked down at the sashes and cords. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll help.’ They wound the material around my body and led me to a mirror in the hall. I smiled at the reflection. ‘You look very pretty,’ Hanako said. Hideo was waiting in the hallway, dressed in a suit and tie. He took me by the arm, led me up the stone steps to a waiting taxi. I recognised none of the streets we passed for a mile or so but I knew we were heading east. Then certain places began to merge with a map of the city I carried in my head: a stone bridge, a row of shops, a confluence of houses on a hill. Their familiarity grew stronger and then we passed a small shrine and all those years of my self-imposed exile fell away. The row of trees we pulled up beside was unmistakable. Hideo paid the driver and jumped out of the car to open my passenger door. I eased my way to a standing position and looked up at the tops of the purple maple and blue beech and peeked through their branches. I clapped my hands together. The house had not changed. How could it still look the same after so many years?

  ‘How did you arrange this?’

  ‘I just came round and asked the owners. The husband is a television producer for Nagasaki Broadcasting Company and will be at work, but his wife is expecting us. She said she had to drop off the children at their grandparents’ but she should be back by now.’

  We opened the gate and as I stepped down that gravel path the ghosts came out to play. I saw Hideo running back and forth with his kite and next to him Yuko sat on a patch of grass with a sketch pad by her side as a ladybug scuttled over her hand and along her upheld arm. Next came Kenzo digging out weeds and Shige walking up the path to meet us for the first time. I had dreaded returning to my home because of these memories but they did not hurt; they filled me with an extraordinary lightness of spirit that carried me down the path to the god of war straddled over the boar at the door. Hideo knocked and a woman in her late twenties appeared in the doorway. She bowed. ‘Mrs Takahashi, what a pleasure. My name is Izumi Fujita. Welcome back.’