The Emperor of Any Place

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Of what happened to my friend Isamu Ōshiro between the previous entry above and the following entry in late January, I can only guess. He writes that he was running out of steam. There is a wistfulness that might easily be interpreted as the words of a man not long for the world. Perhaps that was it. But in truth, he was a different man after Tengu. There are some battles you lose even if you win.

  That being said, the last entries bear witness to extraordinary happenings and, I hope, something of happiness, as well.

  I have a child! We have a child, Hisako. Ah, but why am I telling you this? Of course you will know. How do I know? Because this very day I witnessed the most astounding mystery. When I arrived on the beach, back from fishing on the coral reef, I saw the ghost children huddled in a close circle. I don’t pay them much attention, for the most part, for they are always there wanting my attention but not in need of it. Something was clearly different today. You see, usually, they become quite perturbed when I go out on the water, and I swear they look as if they would whimper, if they could only make a sound, like puppies tethered in the yard while the master must go to work. So when I landed and was not met at the beach by them, I was most curious and went to where they were gathered.

  Although they are translucent and some of the lesser ones almost transparent, they were packed together so tightly I really could not see right away what it was they were looking at. When they became aware of my presence, however, they moved aside enough to allow me a view. And there was the one who always stands closest to me lying on the sand struggling, as if under the force of some great pressure, a seizure of some kind. I was greatly perturbed. The poor thing looked so frightened, though the others only watched in fascination. How he writhed, clearly distressed!

  The next moment, his entire head was gone.

  Such a surprise!

  He was squirming most terribly now — this headless boy — pushing for all his might with his feet planted on the ground, his back arched, his shoulders pressed into the bright sand of the beach. Then the tops of his shoulders were gone and then his chest, and then — with sudden and astonishing speed — the rest of him disappeared, right before my eyes. I stood there, stunned.

  Behind me the fish I had caught splashed in the shallows on the string by which I keep them tied to my raft. They splashed loudly enough to wake me from my shock. The other children were not shocked or horrified at the loss of their fellow.

  They danced! Their pale faces filled with joy as if a wondrous thing had occurred. Which is when I realized what must have happened.

  He had been born.

  A baby had been born, headfirst into the real world.

  When I counted the days and weeks and months, I realized that it could be true! I decided it must be true. Am I not the Emperor of Kokoro-Jima? I decree it is true!

  I hope my own joy reaches you wherever you are. And I hope that this boy child who has been my ghostly companion all these months will prove to be an honorable and good companion to his mother.

  Tonight I have decided that I will dream of holding him and singing him to sleep. If you hear a ghostly wailing sometime in the wee hours of the morning, do not be afraid. It is only me!

  I have written nothing for so long now. The day that marked the anniversary of my coming to Kokoro-Jima came and went without my making so much as a note in my journal. By my estimation it is now August 7, 1945. I see here before me my last entry from so many months ago. How strange it is to read it again and think about this ghost boy who was here with me and is now there with you. I have decided this is the truth. I am the emperor of this place, and my every wish is my command!

  And yet it is stranger still to think of how much he must fill your life up with his coming into the world, whereas all that I have is this vague sensation of missing him. The others show no sign of missing him. They only wait patiently for their turn, I suppose. Sometimes I allow myself to think that they are our children. How can that be, you ask? Why, that I will find you again and we will be husband and wife together and will make other children, and there will be that many fewer ghosts on this enchanted island. This sweet thought I allow myself.

  But only sometimes.

  If my theory is right, these ghosts could as easily be the children our child will have and his children’s children. There is some comfort in that.

  I write today, because something has happened that snapped me out of this lethargy that has claimed me all these months. Something I must record. As I was about to head down to the lagoon to go fishing, I noticed a wave far out at sea. I had never seen a tsunami before but instantly knew what it was, for it was like no other wave in its height and breadth — its utter vastness. I was halfway down the hill, and even though the tsunami was still far off, I feared it might actually engulf the island! The top of the hill is perhaps three or four hundred feet above sea level, but I even wondered whether I had better climb the tree to my watchtower to avoid this mighty wave. But what would be the point of that? For a terrible moment I imagined myself stranded in a treetop in the middle of an ocean! I did not move. I stood there almost paralyzed and watched in grim fascination as the wave rolled over the coral reef — huge now and I would say majestic, other than the terror it raised in me. It sped across the lagoon. Never, not even on the stormiest of days, do those sky-blue waters see much choppiness, for the coral reef protects the lagoon from the raging of the sea. Not so this day. The wave churned the bright blue water into a leaden gray soup and then crashed upon the shore, swallowing it up. My raft was lifted, lifted, lifted, and then hurled into the trees! It remains there high in the branches like a strange and broken tree house, fifty feet up!

  The water rose and rose but did not reach the headland upon which I stood, which is just as well, because I could not move. I was in such shock. It rose and rose, and then the waters streamed off from every side as if I were at the bow of a mighty ship cutting a swath through the ocean. I was safe, at least for the time being. I have not yet ventured from this high place lest there is another tsunami yet to come. But I imagine the low jungle might be flooded — a giant salt lake! I will have to see when I dare to walk down there. The cargo plane. I can imagine it floating, a pathetic wingless waterbird.

  I wonder how many of the jikininki might have been swept away by the tides. I can’t pretend that I will miss them, but I cannot help thinking, as I write, of what would happen to them in the turbulent waters, all their hard-won memories tumbling out of them to be lost in the ocean. Are there, even now, small water organisms ingesting little pieces of all those collected stories?

  By early evening the sea was calm again, but waves splashed on the shore at the place of cleavage in the top of the heart-shaped island. The lagoon was gone forever. The coral reef destroyed.1

  1 This description of the tsunami hitting the island moved me tremendously and made me think. If Ōshiro’s reckoning of the date is realistic, then it would have been the day after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Might this tsunami have been a result of that cataclysmic event, some fifteen hundred miles away? I can only speculate. If there was another tsunami after the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, Ōshiro does not say.

  I have not been counting off the days in this journal for some time. I make my scratches on the bamboo pole, but otherwise one day folds into the next. I mentioned the date, last month, of the tsunami that destroyed the lagoon because it is a phenomenon of such magnitude I wanted it to be recorded, in case my journal is ever discovered. It might prove of interest to the people who keep track of such things, eruption and catastrophic events. And so I will record this date, as well: the return of the sergeant.

  It is September 20, 1945, by my reckoning. I was on the beach when I saw the boat approaching and raced as fast as I could up to the compound and then, forthwith, to my watchtower. With the binoculars I could see that the boat heading toward the northeast corner of my island was not a military craft. It was, at a guess, a sixteen-foot inboard that
looked as if it had been rigged for fishing. However, the man who steered it into shore, as close as he could get before dropping anchor, was no fisherman. I could see by the stripes on his sleeve he was a marine sergeant, and when I watched him walk up the beach directly toward my hill, I recognized the long stride of the man who had rescued Derwood Kraft some nine months earlier. He wore his helmet despite the swelteringly hot weather, and carried his rifle and a handgun in a holster strapped to his thigh. What was odd was that he carried what looked like a picture in a frame under his left arm. He approached the compound as if he knew exactly where he was going, and I wondered whether Derwood had been tortured to give up his secret.1

  As he got closer, he hoisted his rifle into the air, and I could see that there was a white flag attached to the end of it. Apparently he came in peace. I made no move to go and discover whether he was an honorable man or not.

  As he reached the top of the hill, I lost sight of him because my platform in the tree does not permit me to see the compound through the foliage. I was quite sure that this was where he was heading. I had a weapon with me, my handgun, which I had grabbed on my way up from the beach, just in case.

  I waited and in a few minutes — a surprisingly short time — I saw him on the hill again, heading down toward his boat. I watched and saw him actually wade out to the boat and hoist himself on deck. I expected him to leave, but he merely sat in the shade of the cabin. He had left the picture behind.

  Curiosity got the better of me. Was this a “gift” he had brought me? A picture for my island home? How very odd. He had propped it up in a way that I would be unlikely to miss it. It was indeed framed and glass covered, but it was not a work of art. It was the front page of a Japanese-language newspaper announcing in bold headlines the unconditional surrender of Japan. There was a photograph of the Japanese foreign minister signing the peace treaty on the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The “Instrument of Surrender,” as the newspaper called it, had been signed and witnessed on September the second.

  The war was over.

  The next step was mine, but what was I to do? Why did I feel that this lanky stranger was not to be trusted? Yes, there was a truce flag, but it was flying from his rifle. Was I supposed to surrender to him? Why? If the war was over, why had he come himself? These were the questions that plagued me, and I decided to sit and write them down so that you would know how confused I have become.

  What am I to do, Hisako? Were you here with me, you would have the answer, I’m sure. You would raise me from my torpor and say, Come, you foolish man! It is time now. Your son awaits his father!

  Why is it so hard to leave? Why is it so hard to trust? I had learned such trust with Derwood Kraft. Where has it vanished to?

  I am so uncertain about what will happen next, and I want these thoughts to be known to you, in case this soldier’s intentions are not honorable. Nor is it just him I distrust. I do not trust myself.

  I look up from where I write at the altar and look at my compound. It is sadly overgrown. I have lost the urge to keep the weeds at bay. The doors of the mighty fence were wrenched open one stormy night, and I have not bothered to fix them. What is the point? There is nothing on this island to fear. Not until today.

  But you are shrewd, Hisako. You will want to know why I dared to sit in the compound to write this when, at any moment, this gaijin might return. I can only say that this is a calculated risk. If he comes and finds me here, writing in this journal, he will have the advantage over me and what will happen will happen. Is this a suicidal urge? I do not think so. Something is becoming clear to me that I have not quite understood until this moment. I have not lost the desire to live, but I have somehow lost the will to make any kind of decision. Even as I write this down, I cannot help but ponder what a strange confession this is to make. But when I sift through the tattered thoughts in my mind, I come to a dark place and in that dark place lies the answer: Tengu. He is still there inside me. He is my master, in some terrible, insidious way.

  I can see clearly enough now that I have become unbalanced, Hisako-chan. This is a paradox, is it not? If I can state so clearly that I am sick in the head, then I am clearly sane enough to recognize it.

  I need help. I need help to make the next move. How can I hesitate now, of all times, on this day so long awaited for? Is it because I fear that you have not survived? I have made you exist. I have ordered it and ordained it! I have decided that you have a baby — our baby, a son. This belief was based on observation: did I not see the ghost boy born out of my world? Ah, but how is such a vision rational? Saipan fell mightily. Many, many died. We only heard rumors, but there were many, and each one seemed more horrific than the last. And not just soldiers but the civilian population suffered. I have held all this at a distance, unable to bear thinking of it. You are alive, I have told myself. It was the only way I could stand this solitariness. Can I stand to know differently? But now . . . Now must I face the truth that were I free at last to search for you, you would be gone? That would be a fate beyond endurance.

  I have waited now a good long time. Hours. I can only assume he too is waiting, waiting for me to go to him. I get up, more than once, with that in mind and then I balk. Clutching my diary to my chest. I cannot do it. My fear rises. It is irrational, but I cannot stop it any more than I could have stopped the tsunami that tore apart the coral reef and returned my beautiful lagoon to the wider ocean.

  This above all you must know. Aishiteru. I love you. I cannot explain the strange feeling in my heart right now. The fear that will not leave me. But that does not change my feelings for you and for our child, if such a child exists. How I hope to see him. We shall see whether the war can let me go, or whether it will claim me for its own. I will place the diaries, just so, here under the stone in my little altar. I will go to my tree and wait.

  1 I had not been tortured. By September I had already been long discharged and was living in my parents’ house in Plainfield, Vermont, helping with the haying and busily sending out applications to universities, to capitalize on the GI Bill that had just been introduced. My mind was no longer on war or my extraordinary friendship with Isamu, but on college and the future. I’m not sure when I finally got over not having ghosts with me everywhere I went. It took a while, and sometimes I conjured them up out of the air even years later, something seen out of the corner of my eye.

  Sadly, it is I, Derwood Kraft, who picks up the story at this point, for Isamu Ōshiro wrote no more. I am writing this entry from the comfortable office of my ranch house in Palo Alto. It is a whole lifetime later. Norah, my wife of many happy years together, passed away almost ten years ago. We were blessed with a son, Leonardo. Just the one child, for Norah came to me when we were both approaching middle age. Our lives had been consumed with study, with the brave new world of the “Age of Information.” Assuming there is any truth to Isamu’s miraculous vision of birth on the beach of the lagoon, there was a son born to him, somewhere, as well. Just the one child, unless . . . I must confess that it has only just occurred to me he might have escaped Kokoro-Jima, after all. Despite his diffidence, his apparent trepidation, the sight of the soldier may have caused him to leave the island. Did he hide and find a means of leaving on his own? If he did, he did not take his precious papers, the story you have just finished reading. That seems hard to fathom.

  Then did he leave with Griff? It seems unlikely. Why would Griff end up with the papers? All I can say is that we do not know. Sergeant Major Griffin, having sent me the papers, remains obdurate and unresponsive to my pleas for an explanation. He will not return my calls or letters inquiring as to what happened next. He will not say how he came upon the papers. In the absence of further information, one way or the other, I am left with only conjecture, and I have been a scientist too long to jump to conclusions. Nor will I engage in inductive reasoning in such an instance. Based on the information before me, there is much that one might infer. I have asked Griff repeatedly to comment on t
his mystery. I have met with implacable resistance. Over a year has passed and I am not well. In order to see this publication carried through, I must leave things as they are, hoping that there may be an addendum to follow, that the mystery can be laid to rest.

  As I mentioned in the prologue, we have expended a great deal of energy trying to find Hisako Ōshiro or any other living members of Isamu’s family. We have engaged translators and looked in Saipan and Japan and, indeed, anywhere within the reach of our extensive search engines. I can only hope that when and if we are able to discover a link to Isamu Ōshiro’s family, the mystery of his final day or days on Kokoro-Jima will have been resolved.

  Let me end this book, then, with one final thank-you to my remarkable friend, the Emperor of the Heart-Shaped Island. That he saved my life has been accounted for herein. That he was a friend in the deepest possible sense of what that word might mean can only be repeated again and again.

  Arigatō, Isamu. Thank you.

  Palo Alto, California

  May 16, 2008

  Evan wakes to the sun streaming through his window. The clouds have passed; the air is already warm. Through bleary eyes, chock-full of sand, he checks his iPhone. Eleven thirty and another message, this one from a number he recognizes:

  — Lunch. 1:00. Be there or . . .

  “Be square,” mutters Evan. He throws his head back on his pillow. Some time yesterday, he and Rollo cooked this up: lunch at the mall on Rollo’s break from the Pulse. Good. Better than what’s awaiting him downstairs. He’s in no hurry to see Griff. Not after last night’s confrontation. Not after last night’s reading. Not after his covert trip to the Dockyard to find that Griff had erased Leo’s e-mails. His father had known how to send and receive e-mails, but Evan doubted he had known how to erase anything from the trash. Had to be Griff.