The Emperor of Any Place

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  But back, now, to the deep, green pond. Time passed. The dove flew off. The shadows moved. I stood, a little groggily, on my feet, a mud man. How you would have laughed to see me. I was mud from head to toe. I contemplated bathing in the pond. If the waters were indeed magical, surely they would heal me. But then I thought of how my body might contaminate it, the only source of potable water I had found so far. No, I would leave it be. I would bathe in the ocean eventually. But for now, I had to eat.

  I headed back toward the beach, through the glinting light filtered down through the palm trees, banana trees, papaya trees. There was food there, all right, but I was in no shape to climb a tree. Not yet. I made my way back down the sloping path, a path made by animals, as I had supposed, for there was one now, a deer, a sambar hind with her fawn. I stopped in my tracks. So did the deer.

  “Konnichiwa, shika-san,” I said, bowing to the animal. She did not move. The young stag did not move, either. “You are going to the magical pond,” I said, very gently, calmly. Then I stepped aside into the dense underbrush and gestured with my hand for the deer to pass. A long minute passed and I stood perfectly still, as still as any tree. And finally she budged, her eyes alert for movement. There was a curious blemish on her neck: a hairless bloodred spot on the underside of her throat, oozing a white liquid. I stared at it as she hurried past, so close I could have patted her yellowy-brown hide. The fawn skittered after her, frisking at one point, kicking out his back hooves. I laughed and watched them proceed up through the tall grass until they were out of sight. I couldn’t say why but I felt strangely blessed.

  Such wonders I have seen, Hisako-chan.

  The sun had passed over the island and was low in the western sky, though it would be hours before it set. I ventured out onto the sand. Atsu! Still hot, but bearable, and it was time to see what there might be amongst the wreckage on the beach. I passed by where I had taken off my uniform, what was left of it, and had hung it on the low branches of a tree. I had fashioned my loincloth out of a torn piece of cotton I found, caught in the branches of that very same tree. These branches shall be my clothing closet, I thought, my chest of drawers! The cloth of my loincloth was dead-leaf yellow, the color of bravery. Ha!

  As I had made my way from my makeshift raft up the beach, staggering and crawling and half dead of thirst, I had seen this strip of cloth fluttering, caught by a gust of wind, a tattered flag. And when I reached it — reached the coconut palms and shelter from the scorching sun — I had stripped out of my army uniform, peeling it away from my damaged skin, glad to be free of the stench of it.

  I stopped now, beside the uniform, dry and warm to the touch. It was so strange, Hisako, for it was as if I were touching the shoulder of a dead comrade. My hand strayed to my chest, to my omamori, your gift to me. There were beads of water on it. I brushed them away.

  “I am alive, Hisako,” I murmured. “I have no idea whether I am in this world or some other, but I am alive.”

  Then I turned to scan the beach, my hand raised to my brow, squinting in the brightness after the shadowy coolness of the jungle. My ghostly cavalcade turned with me to look.

  There were torn and broken things everywhere.

  Crates and broken boards of wood, tangles of rope, all manner of debris. All manner of treasures! It was like a market — a bazaar. I remembered in a sudden flash the busy prefecture where you lived and worked in your father’s noodle shop.

  “Ah, for a bowl of miso nikomi,” I said out loud, patting my stomach. But no, there was nothing so comforting there. After a while I did find food, or something like it, half buried in the sand, like pirate treasure. On my knees, digging like a dog for a bone, I cleared away the splintered, sun-bleached wood. I peered into the crate, shoved my arm inside it, and pulled out something wrapped in cellophane. I pulled out tin cans with indecipherable words on them. What else: matches — good!

  And what was this? I picked up a slim packet, as long as my hand, flat and wrapped in paper and foil. I opened it to reveal a hard flat brown stick. I smelled it, scraped at the dark surface with my ragged fingernail, sniffed it again. Sweet. Then I tasted it. Ah, such sweetness. I dared to bite into it. Pock! A piece snapped off in my mouth. I let it sit there. It was not like anything I have ever tasted. I closed my eyes and savored the substance now melting on my tongue.1

  There were other things, white tablets. I licked one of them.2

  “Mazui!”

  I spit and spit to get the taste out of my mouth. Luckily, there was also dried fruit, which I gobbled down greedily. But the dark brown substance, Hisako. How I hope one day you will taste it.

  Before nightfall I had explored the eastern side of the island and found no signs of human habitation, other than the detritus on the beach. The jungle was dense enough that there might well be people at the heart of it. But I did not see the smoke of fires nor, as it darkened, the lights of any settlement or camp. I would explore the island in time, for there was nothing else for me to do. And I would have to make myself some kind of a shelter. How long would I be here? I could not say. But by the end of that first day, I was in no hurry to go anywhere. Somehow, I knew, I would have to try to find my way back to Saipan, back to you, Hisako, and to our tiny set of rooms, if indeed there is anything of it left. But I wanted to be whole again, first. I wanted to heal. There was so much healing to do.

  At sunset I climbed a grassy hill at the northern end of the island, a hill high enough that I could see the whole island with its white beaches and green heart. And from there I perceived that it was, yes, heart-shaped. Gazing down at the place where the western and eastern shores curved up and around and then back down until they met in a deep cleft, I suddenly remembered a favorite book of my grandfather’s, Kokoro by Sōseki Natsume. I love reading, as well you know, and it was only because of Ojiisan. I have told you about him, how we talked — or Ojiisan talked and I sat at the old man’s feet, listening. At least when I was younger I listened, when I still knew how to sit still and be obedient. Before I reached the age where I was in such a hurry to do things my own way.

  I sat now on my heart-shaped island, cross-legged, and thought of him.

  “A book called Heart?”

  “Ah,” said my grandfather, “there are shades of meaning. It could refer to ‘the heart of things’ or ‘feelings.’” I remember how he patted my chest gently, where my heart was. “It can mean ‘Heart and mind’— many things.”

  I remember frowning, shaking my head at this. What was the use of a word that meant many things? When you said “carburetor,” it meant carburetor. When you said “piston,” that’s what you were talking about. Even as a small boy, I was wild about automobiles and motorbikes — anything that roared and belched smoke. I remembered Ojiisan smiling at me kindly. “If only life worked as simply as an automobile. In books things can mean more than one thing, and that makes you work at the meaning.”

  I stood and looked out at my new home. In honor of my ojiisan, and in honor of things not being as simple as automobiles, I called the island “Kokoro-Jima.”

  It was in the cleft at the top of the heart that I discovered the lagoon. A wide barrier reef crossed the northern reach and turned the voluptuously curving V-shaped bay into a warm, sandy-bottomed shallow salt lake. I bathed there that night, tired from my trek along the island’s eastern flank. The moon was frozen in its fullness, heavy with light, and I lay on my back in the water staring up at the stars. I imagined you, Hisako, in my arms, the two of us naked in this paradise.

  1 Isamu would seem to have tasted chocolate for the very first time. He had stumbled on a box of K rations, the “assault lunch,” by the sound of it, which also included caramels and chewing gum.

  2 Probably water purification tablets!

  I found other rations in the wreckage along the eastern beach of the heart-shaped island. The flat, brown-colored stick was a marvel, but some of the other food items made me wonder if the rumors were true about the Americans being monsters, for the
re were cans of vile, gelatinous meat, or so I supposed it to be, though the sight and smell of it made me retch.1 There were also bisuketto I could barely crack with my teeth.2 It was hardly food at all!

  But, as I had known from the start, there was food growing on the island. And as I combed the beach, sifting through the debris of the war that I had slipped away from — drifted away from on a piece of broken ramp — I found a good sharp knife to cut down papaya and even a sword to open coconuts. I made a spade to dig up taro. The island provided.

  Unfortunately, the island also provided food for the restless jikininki. These are not like the friendly children ghosts. No. I knew the jikininki for what they were, from the minute I laid eyes on them. Human-eaters. They were harmless to me as long as I stayed healthy, but they were repulsive and a reminder that death was here in this otherwise beautiful place.

  “Here!” I shouted, hurling a can of the horrible meat at one of them that ventured too close. The ghoul recoiled and shuffled a few yards off, sniffing the air like a dog, although how it could smell anything with what was left of its decrepit nose was a mystery to me. The jikininki stepped from foot to foot as if the sand were too hot for its misshapen, cadaverous feet. “Eat up!” I yelled, pointing to the opened can at the ghost’s feet. The creature sniffed again, hissed, then turned and loped awkwardly away. I laughed and slapped my leg. This thing that ate putrid flesh — even it wouldn’t touch the canned meat.

  It was the jikininki that led me to the first corpse.

  I came down from the hill one fresh morning and saw several of the ghouls congregating on the beach. As I got closer, I could see that one of them was kneeling on the ground with his hand under the head of a dead man, its shoulder protecting the carcass from its hideous kinsmen, claiming the body as its own, while it lashed out at any of these revolting creatures who dared to come too close.

  “Shoo! Off with you!” I shouted, racing across the hard sand toward the gathering, splashing into the low tide, my sword raised in two hands like a samurai. Ah yes, I can hear you say, what a dashing figure I must have cut, Hisako! Oh, how the jikininki hissed at me, stumbling out of my way, to the left and right, but not prepared to leave. They spit and slobbered. Then they turned their backs on me, bent over, and farted horribly. You laugh, Hisako, but it was true! Bravely, I covered my nose and waded into their midst, swinging my sword back and forth. You cannot kill what is already dead, but the jikininki are tender-skinned nonetheless, I soon found out. They are half rotted and, in any case, afraid of the living. They hate the living; too much of a reminder of what they’ve lost, I guess.

  “Leave him!” I shouted, slashing at the one who had claimed the body. The thing pulled back. Then it opened its horrible maw, from which gobbets of blood and flesh spilled. It tried to growl at me, but its mouth was too full. Sick with revulsion, I pierced the creature through the chest. It squealed hideously, loud as a siren, and clambered to its feet, scuttling away, but not without taking a great hank of flesh in the talons of its left paw. While I stood guard over the corpse, the other jikininki circled the one with the food, slavering and screeching, like so many seagulls wanting their share of the bounty.

  The flesh-eaters had hideously disfigured the dead man’s face, but his tattered uniform proclaimed him to be an American sailor. I wasn’t sure what Americans did with their dead; I seemed to think they buried them, but since I was not sure, all I could think to do was to cremate him, as is our custom.

  There would be no need to moisten the lips of the soldier with the “water of the last moment.” He was lying in the wet sand of low tide, waterlogged. I wondered how long the sailor had been trying to land, washed up and washed back out again by the tide.

  It is not hard to die; I had learned that all too well. But I found myself thinking how hard it is to settle, to find a place of rest. With the flesh-eaters around, there would be no rest for this soldier’s spirit. So I dragged the man up the sand to dry off. I stayed nearby, for I could sometimes see the ghouls not so far off, watching, waiting for their chance. Then the wind changed and they wandered off. When I felt I could leave him for a moment, I gathered what I needed and built a pyre of driftwood and a bamboo platform for the sailor to lie upon, his body facing north. I talked to him. I wished him luck.

  “I have no coins to give you to ford the River of Three Crossings,” I said. “I’m sorry. But perhaps your gods do not require payment.” Then I lit the fire with one of my precious matches and watched the flames consume the man. I fed the hungry fire to keep it as hot as possible. The jikininki returned with the fickle breeze, drew as near as they dared, and howled at their loss, their hands raised to their cadaverous cheeks, but did not dare come too close. Fire, it seemed, was their enemy.

  And so I set myself up as the island’s undertaker. It was something that needed doing, and I went about it as best I could, sending dead souls to wherever it was dead souls went. Did gaijin go to the same place our own people go? I had no idea; I had never given such things much thought. But here I had only to keep myself alive and to get well, and so the days stretched before me with more time to think than I would have thought possible. By the time you next see me, Hisako, I will be a wise man, a philosopher! Meanwhile, the dead floated in on the tide, and I was the only one around to send them on their way to heaven or hell or wherever it was they were going. The destination of the dead was not my business: the vehicle was.

  “Am I not an auto mechanic? Is it not my job to make sure people get to where they are going as smoothly as possible?”

  I made a spear out of bamboo. Using my trusty raft, I ventured out onto the reef, where I proved an able fisherman. It seems, Hisako, that for all my unkind comments about him, my father did at least teach me something. There were sea urchins, crabs, oysters, octopuses — real food! The gelatinous canned meat did have one great value. It made good bait.

  There was some American food I grew to like, especially the beans in a red sauce and a vegetable stew of which there was an abundant supply. But fish became my staple diet. Besides, fishing gave me something to occupy my time.

  Once, when I was fishing in deeper waters with a line and improvised hook, taking advantage of a clear, calm day, I looked down and saw the ghostly form of a sunken ship. It might have been the source of my bounty, spilled onto the tides to wash up on the shores of Kokoro-Jima. I knelt on my raft and stared down into the waters at the wreck. I said a blessing to the gods for the bounty and a prayer for the dead I knew must be trapped down there in the green darkness. I had found three other corpses by then. But if the wreck gave up further members of its crew, I would give them a proper send-off. I could do this much.

  Days passed into weeks. I had clothes to wear now, and shoes. I had stripped the clothes off more than one dead sailor by then. As I had suspected, other sailors from the wreck washed ashore, and I sent them on their way, getting to them whenever possible before the jikininki. I would regularly go on death patrol, which, as awful as it may seem, was better than when I was a soldier and went looking for people to kill!

  “Come home in death.” It was a line from a song we had learned when I joined up. There were many such songs extolling the proud deaths we soldiers would earn on the battlefield. Curiously, there were not a lot of songs about what to do if you happened to survive.

  Sometimes I would wake and find the ghouls hovering near me, longing for me to die, drawn to the stench of the corpses that lingered about me, I suspect. A smell that remained no matter how many times I bathed in the lagoon. But I would not die. I would not give them the satisfaction.

  I will return to you, Hisako, when the aroma of the dead is gone from me.

  I have not mentioned the other pleasant ghosts for quite a while. I suppose that is because I have become quite used to them, these “children” of mine, for I cannot seem to shake them. I no longer try to frighten them away. I do not waste my breath yelling at them. Though their faces are hardly formed and they cannot speak, they seem to exp
ress human emotions. They smile and frown and look angry sometimes, though it is hard for me to know what motivates their feelings. The expression I see most when I gaze at one or another of them is hopefulness. There is one, a boy child, Hisako, who comes closer to me than the others. In some strange way, he reminds me of you. But perhaps that is just my longing for you that makes me look for your features everywhere — even in the clouds.

  I have come to taking the clothing from dead men and hanging them over bushes to dry, leaving them until the sun has bleached every last drop of death out of the material. One of the corpses I found was not so big, and his boots fit me quite well. I go barefoot most of the time, in any case, but these boots are good for when the sand is hot or for my sorties into the jungle, where there are snakes and thorns but where there are also luscious fruits for the picking.

  Ah, but I have not yet told you of my biggest project! Up on the promontory above the lagoon, I built a shelter, which I work on all the time. It is made out of wooden packing cases, stout bamboo posts and beams, and with a roof of palm leaves. I have notched into one of the posts the number of days I have been here and in that way kept track of the passing of the summer. Of my time on the raft reaching this island, I can only guess. One night, two nights, thirty-one?

  I made a hammock of fish netting I found washed up in a terrible snarl on the beach. Ah, the beach. It is like a postbox!