Soldiers in Hiding

by Richard Wiley

  When we woke we realized that we had only a few moments to prepare ourselves for the return of Kazuko’s mother. We seemed to wake all of an instant, and Milo, though he did not cry out, was busy working his mouth in ways that made me think he might. We quickly pushed the futon out of the way and positioned ourselves as we might for a family photograph, sitting close together in the front room.

  We could tell that Kazuko’s mother was tired by the noise the door made sliding in its groove when she opened it. She stood for a long while taking off her shoes, while Milo and Kazuko and I waited secretly. Most of the red had gone from Milo’s face by then and we’d hurriedly cleaned him up and dressed him for her. He had fallen back to sleep though, and the white knit cap that his grandmother had made curled off the top of his head like an old man’s nose.

  “Mother,” Kazuko called, not wanting to startle her when she saw us. “I ’m home, come look.”

  Kazuko’s mother stepped up into the anteroom but did not turn toward us. She wanted water on for tea and was miffed, I could tell, that tea was not ready, that Kazuko had not put water on when she’d arrived so early.

  “Our factory was one of the ones bombed today,” Kazuko told her. “Near us many people were hurt or killed.”

  Kazuko’s mother stopped what she was doing and came into the room where Milo Maki slept upon the top of the table, all curled in his newborn way.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said. “You are not injured?”

  But Kazuko did not answer, nor did her mother ask again. Her eyes had reached the pinched persimmon of Milo’s face. “Ah ra!” she cried, dancing sideways a bit and then coming over and running her hand softly over the flat front of Kazuko’s kimono. “When? Where?”

  Kazuko laughed for a time, pointing up at her mother as she stood there above us. Milo sucked his seeded gums and opened his mouth once while Kazuko told her mother the story of the day, and soon Kazuko’s mother picked him up lightly and began to sing to him even while Kazuko spoke. “Sho-sho-shojo-ji. Shojo-ji no niwa wa. Tsun tsun tsukiyo de mina dete koi koi koi.”

  She danced with him through the small room, even over toward the tokonoma where the tatami was weak and the floor gave a little under her feet.

  “He’s had a long day, Mother,” Kazuko said. “Try not to wake him.”

  Her mother danced with Milo into the other room, where she placed him on the floor and went about the business of laying out the futon in a proper manner, with crisp and clean sheets tucked under it. She had made new bedding for Milo. He had a tiny new pillow and a wonderful patterned top, and she knelt beside him when he retired, singing several songs that I had not heard since I was little and my mother sang them to me. She looked at Milo’s small form sleeping there, at the way the blankets came up just to his chin, at his thick patch of black hair, all askew, like a poorly kept calligraphy brush. “Milo Maki,” she said, messing up the vowels a little, and I felt giddy, fresh, anxious to watch him grow, for him to recognize me as his father.

  THE FIRST YEAR OF MILO’S LIFE WAS SERENE FOR US, but not for the city. Every day seemed to pass in photographic repose and I remember no events. At the end of Milo’s first eighteen months, however, though Kazuko’s mother went daily to her work at the uniform plant, Kazuko was still home with her baby. She had decided that she would stay with Milo long enough to see, at least, his robust flesh lose some of its baby tones, long enough to know, at least, that he knew her name and might call for her if, finally, she decided to work again.

  The official word was that we were winning the war but the sounds from the sky made everyone suspicious. Airplanes with spider-faced pilots like the one Kazuko had seen had been finding their way through our defenses often, and for awhile the radio and newspapers reported the locations of their strikes. Milo and I sometimes heard the awful buzz of the unknown planes in the hours of the morning when we were wide-eyed in our beds but not yet ready to rise. And not long after that Kazuko’s mother began giving reports each evening that there were certain areas of the city that had been burned nearly entirely away. Kazuko kept listening and wondering what she would do if she heard, once again, the dull complaint that she’d heard over her factory, the patient whistle of a bomb descending. But as each month passed the neighborhood remained as it had been before the war. Except fewer housewives gossiped on the streets, fewer pushcart merchants called out the names of their wares as they passed slowly by.

  To spend the days alone, yet still in the presence of another human being, always under the simple gaze of our baby, made us try to set an example for him. “Milo,” we would say, “it is wonderful to have you but there is a war on. You will be surprised later, when you find that life is not normally so poorly lived around us.” Kazuko would make up little songs containing messages pertinent to a good life, and as she sang and danced throughout the house Milo would seem to watch and listen. He was a fat baby, yet from the folds of his face I detected an intelligent interest in the songs his mother sang, as if he were listening to the words.

  Then one Sunday, though we had been cautious about taking Milo out of the house too often, we decided to take him to the Buddhist temple nearby. There were still monks living in the temple and there had been articles in the newspaper asking, wouldn’t it be better if these priests, scattered throughout the country as they were, donned uniforms and were placed among the troops to uplift their spirits and offer parables? They had been stupid articles and had made Kazuko’s mother laugh to picture the priests all dressed like soldiers, Kazuko’s small and delicate battle flags sewn to their sleeves. Milo, hearing the unfamiliar sound of laughter, smiled slightly and then farted as he tottled along.

  It was a cool but clear day, and as soon as we passed under the temple gate we saw, ahead of us on the stone path, a young priest sweeping, sending dust into the air around him and peering at the rocks to pick weeds with his fingers.

  “Young priest,” said Kazuko’s mother, “what do you think of the article calling upon your kind to join the service? Do you think it justified?”

  When he saw us the young monk picked up his cleaning basket and hurried off in the direction of the main temple house. He did not answer, and though the skirts of his robe danced up around his knees in the breeze he made, he did not slow down.

  Kazuko’s mother was holding Milo’s hand and letting him walk slowly along the path beside her. We turned up the same path the monk had taken, and as we walked Kazuko reminded me of the story of our calico cat and how I had retrieved it from the arms of a gangster and how I’d suffered a real wound for my trouble. Kazuko’s mother nodded as I walked beside her but she kept her eyes on Milo, her feet straight on the path. We walked up to the top of the small bridge that covered a carp pond and looked down into the open and waiting mouths of the beggar fish. “We will all be like that if the Americans win,” Kazuko said, then she picked Milo up and stretched way out over the railing with him, hoping that he would see the fish and recognize that there were other creatures on the earth.

  “Stop that!” shouted her mother. “You might drop him! Stop now!”

  She pulled hard on the sleeve of her daughter’s kimono and when Kazuko bent back up, her mother quickly took Milo away from her, appalled by what she had done. “Really Kazuko, there are limits,” she said. “Talk if you must, but never lift a child toward an open pond! I know the war is hard on you but there are limits!”

  Her mother was angry and walked quickly off the bridge ahead of us, taking Milo with her. And when we got to the main temple building Kazuko’s mother was still punishing us by walking a meter or two ahead.

  “Why don’t you wait?” Kazuko called once, but her mother entered the big building and when we finally caught up she was feigning involvement with the Buddha image that sat before her, the light from its eyes so dull upon her face.

  “The Americans are not going to bomb Kyoto,” she told us. “I heard it at the bath the other day. They are going to concentrate on Tokyo. They have respect for Japanese cu
lture and have decided not to bomb our best cities.”

  When I looked at Kazuko’s mother I saw that she’d been crying, her tears falling down and wetting Milo’s hair.

  “I wasn’t going to drop Milo in the pond, Mother,” Kazuko said. “I just wanted him to see the fish.”

  “The ladies in the bath have been having an argument,” her mother said. “Do the American bombs blow things up or blow things down? Try to remember. Is it better to hide in the back of your house or to run out into the street and get under a tree? I told them of your experience and they’d all like an answer from you.”

  Kazuko tried to take Milo’s hand from her mother but she wouldn’t let her. Milo looked toward Kazuko in the same way her mother did, as if he too expected an answer.

  “I don’t know,” Kazuko said. “There is nothing to worry about, you know. They are going to restrain themselves. The ladies in the bath won’t have to worry about it.”

  Her mother got mad again and said, “We are discussing, not worrying. It is a simple question. Do they blow up or down?”

  Kazuko stood staring at her and at the dusty Buddha sitting there so patiently. “Down,” she said, finally. “If I remember correctly the bomb goes off on top of the object that it hits and the pressure from the explosion blows everything down. What difference does it make?”

  “So if we were in the bath, if the ladies were in the bath, they wouldn’t be very safe at all? They’d be hit by falling roof tiles and left dying and naked in the tubs. They’d be wounded and unable to cover themselves. Would they drown or would the impact from the bomb splash all the water out of the tubs?”

  “The bath would not be a good place to be,” Kazuko said evenly.

  Her mother nodded briefly when she decided that there was no hint of condescension in Kazuko’s voice, then she and Milo turned their attention to the Buddha and the relics that sat in cages all around them. There were old Buddhist hats and long chains of beads with tiny Buddha images impressed within them. Kazuko’s mother said her favorite temple article had always been a human hair rope, coiled like a thick and silky snake, in a huge glass case in the far corner. I enjoyed watching the way she pointed it out to Milo, and Kazuko said she remembered her mother showing the rope to her, in the same manner, years and years before.

  “Once I knew where the hair for this rope came from,” said her mother, “but now I have forgotten. It was such a dramatic story that it seems impossible that I would forget it, but now I have. What do you make of that?”

  When we had circled the inner walkway of the temple and were back in front of the bronze Buddha once again, Milo began to cry. Kazuko had full breasts and pulled her clothing around so that she could bring him to them, but her mother was still reluctant to give him up.

  “Mother,” said Kazuko.

  “You’ll drop him in the carp pond.”

  “He’s hungry. I’ve milk for him. Everything’s fine.”

  Kazuko had bared a breast and I was looking down at the bluish veins that ran out of her upper chest and down its slope. She found a small bench and sat with perfect posture, turning just a little away from the Buddha’s cool eyes. She held out both her hands with enough authority so that her mother let Milo go to her. We watched as Milo’s mouth let a seal of Kazuko’s milk run around its edges, we listened to his lovely clucking. “He will be safe with his mother, I suppose,” said Kazuko’s mother, finally sitting down softly beside them.

  While we waited there, Kazuko’s mother and I watching the wonderful lightening of Kazuko’s breasts, a line of seven Buddhist acolytes came in through the huge front door of the temple and began walking around toward the side. They were bald young men and walked single file, in identical formation. There was humor in their seriousness and Kazuko and I began to laugh. Each of the young men carried a hoe or a rake across his shoulder, as the soldiers did their rifles.

  “Young priests, young priests,” Kazuko’s mother called.

  The young men stopped. They had not noticed us sitting there and as they turned about, each just missed the one behind him with the dangerous tip of the tool he carried.

  “We would like to have a word with you,” said Kazuko’s mother. “About the war. What are you doing here? Why don’t you all go out and fight?”

  The young men looked at each other, but then turned back and hurried away, so Kazuko’s mother stood and called, “Come closer and look at my grandson. The Americans will bomb your temple and might kill us all. The blue veins of my daughter’s breasts will be torn from her skin, spilling her milk onto the dirty streets. What good does it do, then, to merely tend to your gardens? There will be big holes where you have tried to rake so nicely.”

  By the time she finished speaking the monks were gone, of course, but Milo had separated himself from Kazuko’s breast and was looking up at his grandmother politely, smiling.

  “I do not think they are allowed, right now, to speak to us,” I said, but Kazuko’s mother had lost herself in the images she had created. She had spoken too harshly, too vividly, for the teasing she had intended.

  When we stood to leave, walking through the lovely gardens, perfectly raked, as she had said, Milo tried to hold his grandmother’s hand. The trees and gravel paths were unchanged and the great boulders of the rock garden were immovable.

  Kazuko’s mother walked a little ahead of us, the tightness of her obi showing the smallness of her waist. It was warm and clear by then and the sky was empty. Milo tilted his head a little, but all he could hear was the sound of birds, so he quickly lost interest and bent to pick up some of the stones that the Buddhists had raked, to turn them in his hands as he toddled on.

  KAZUKO RETURNED TO WORK, AND AS MILO GREW AND the war wound on, I fashioned for myself a way of living. All during the time between our visit to the temple and Milo’s second birthday I became the central raiser of my child. Kazuko and her mother gave me the duties easily, each going off quite early to her respective factory and both expecting dinner or a clean house when they returned. I didn’t mind. I dusted the altar photographs of Jimmy and Ike and cooked with as much dedication as either of them would have had. I let Milo help me and let him call both of the men whose photos he saw “uncle.” I told him stories of their bravery without the slightest irony, without the slightest indication in my voice that I had participated in their fall. The question I asked myself earlier—Why am I living while they are not?—had gone forever, I thought, from my mind.

  Milo was a little Japanese boy and we were at war with America, but during those days when cleanliness and dinner were our only concerns, I taught him English. Though Milo didn’t look the part I had decided that, whoever his father, he was half the offspring of America. I worked diligently to increase his vocabulary, to build his syntax, to let him see reality through both grammars. He called me only “father” then, never the diminutive, never the cute or coy. And whether we were busy with our daily work or walking the side streets of the section of Tokyo in which we lived, we spoke the language of the enemy. I guess I thought that if my son could speak my language, if he could speak English, he might be able to free me from the prison in which Japanese held me. When we spoke English it was Teddy who felt free, not necessarily Milo. In English I became a full person again. In English I could easily escape the rigorous life of wartime Japan. Though my little boy did not speak well or often, I spoke with the fluency and speed of an expert. I told him stories of life in Los Angeles and of the days before the war when the band was making its way. Milo always stopped what he was doing whenever I felt the need to speak to him. He always cocked his head and looked into my eyes and listened. And although now, alas, Milo is nearly monolingual, I hold the belief that if he ever sees America, the tracks that that country’s language have made in his brain will reassert themselves. His given name is not Japanese, nor is his father’s name nor those of either of his “uncles.”

  Milo, during the wartime, was always with me, and though he would never believe it now, t
hat was a time when he preferred, clearly, over the coos and voices of his mother and grandmother, the singular and sterile company of a man.

  ASIDE FROM THE JOY SHE TOOK IN HER GRANDSON, Kazuko’s mother’s only pleasure, during the war, was her nightly selection of a public bath. There were a half-dozen baths reasonably close to our house, and it was her job, each evening, to decide where it was that we would go. She carefully described, to Milo and Kazuko and me, the best qualities of each bath, speaking slowly and expertly, and it was our job to be attentive, to insist as much as she did upon the importance of the ritual.

  One evening, during the early spring weeks of the war’s final year, she chose a bath some distance from our house and we set out in clean kimonos, Milo holding my hand and stepping along between his mother and me. Kazuko’s mother was talking cheerfully, anticipating the bath for us all, when we turned a normal corner and discovered before us a part of the city that had been bombed. We slowed when we saw it, standing tentatively at its edge. It was not a large area, but there had been houses there only a few days before, and we’d been unaware of any such nearby bombing. The ground in front of us was cold gray and had been burned so evenly that there were few mounds of ash. It looked like a field in preparation for some kind of devilish crop, and we were afraid to cross it, afraid to step, with our clean zori, onto its awful crust.

  It was odd to be walking in urban Tokyo and to suddenly find a newly made and open field. There was a warm wind about and as we stood there, hoping not to see a sight worse than that silent field itself, Milo began to laugh. He had been a docile child, a slow responder, but now he began pointing at the rubble, laughing, and even clapping his hands. “Ha ha,” he said, in one of his languages, and I was forced to hold on tightly to his hand for fear that he might slip from my grip and go walking off into the ruins.