Kiyoshi shook his head. War crimes! What of that punishments he himself had ordered, back when a captured enemy was considered less than dung? He fumbled in his pouch—still with him always—and pulled out the two precious cigarettes the American soldiers had given him after the visit to the Kiyomizu-dera. He handed one over to Father and put the other in his mouth. “Let’s have luxury for a moment. Let’s forget things.”
His father examined the cigarette, holding it carefully by his fingertips. “Look how all the tobacco is rolled evenly. It’s American! Worth good food if you know where to take it. Don’t waste that one in your mouth by smoking it!”
Absently, Kiyoshi removed the cigarette and handed it over. War crimes. Who might have survived to tell what he’d ordered? The prisoners under his direction had lost their rights because they’d surrendered. All the Japanese soldiers back then had believed it. They’d been told so, in speeches and in written directives. And most of his prisoners were still able to walk when he turned them over to the next command.
Father rose abruptly and brushed at his patched kimono. “Come. Let’s sell these American cigarettes and have a feast to celebrate your homecoming! For one meal we won’t need to look for grasshoppers or pinch bugs out of cabbage.”
Kiyoshi rose to follow. For the first time since his son’s homecoming a few hours before, a spark of purpose had flashed from Father’s eyes.
The way to the black market led through the harbor. Along a pier with missing boards were two trawlers, their hulls and superstructures red-orange with rust.
“You might recognize those from better days,” said Father. “They’re still mine. But as I told you, there’s nothing to paint them with, no fuel to take them to sea, no money for their upkeep. And even if my boats could get fuel and if the government returned my canning ship, I’ve always depended on the waters north of us—especially for crab. And it is rumored that the damned Russians have closed all of our northern water to us. All our great traditional fisheries around the Kuril Islands! That’s the end for me. The Russians mean to starve us to death, in league with these Americans that seem to please you so much.”
In the harbor, five old men hunched aboard a clumsy, open boat. By moving a sweep oar back and forth, a younger man propelled the boat along the water.
“They’re going to one of the traps I told you about,” Father said. “That’s what fishing amounts to now. Cuttlefish and small mackerel. Once, just once, a big mambo! They cut it into small pieces so that everybody could have a bite. Ai, the fish that used to swim in these waters . . . before the Americans dropped their bombs and scared them away!”
As father and son walked down the road, children stopped to eye them, and mothers paused by their doors. One little boy held out an open hand and ventured: “Chokoreto?”
Father snapped him away. “You see? Hardly a barbarian yet in town, and the kids are already beggars. They see the clothes you’re wearing. Not Japanese, so they must be American. Eh?”
“They . . . fit me.”
His father stopped and glared. “Are you pretending to be American, then?”
“No. Of course not. No . . .”
The black market vendor, whom they found on a side alley, was not as secretive as Kiyoshi might have expected. At their call, he emerged from the back of a house—a confident man of about fifty in old army khakis. The sleeve that would have held his left arm flapped loose. Without even a glance to see if anybody was watching, the vendor asked at once, “What do you have?” He examined the two American cigarettes between the fingers of his single hand.
“I see part of one’s been in somebody’s mouth—too bad. You want white rice? Half kilo for the good one, quarter kilo for the other.”
“Kilo each,” said the senior Tsurifune. “They’re both good and you know
it.”
The man handed them back. “Good luck somewhere else.”
“Instead of your stingy price then,” said Kiyoshi, taking over the exchange with sudden relish, “We’ll just enjoy a good smoke.”
“Bring me a whole pack unopened and you’ll have enough rice to carry in both arms and I’ll throw in some sugar.”
Kiyoshi liked the man’s tone. “Army? That where you lost that arm?”
“What’s it to you? Were you ever a soldier?” Kiyoshi bowed a polite affirmative. “Well then. Happened in Manchukuo five years ago. You see I’ve survived.”
“Doing this, aren’t you afraid of the authorities?”
“Maybe once. But our great Emperor no longer bothers to watch. All he’s done anyhow is smell flowers. Now we know.”
“That’s blasphemy!” the elder Tsurifune declared. His son turned respectfully to hush him.
“Tell the police if you want,” said the man. “You’ll see how much they care for banzai now. You think they don’t get their share?”
When Kiyoshi laughed, the two bowed to each other in good humor. They settled for a full kilo of rice and, for good will between ex-soldiers, a few pinches of sugar.
An aged car drove up. Its faded black hood was polished around spots of rust. Through the open back window poked the gleaming rim of some piece of machinery. The driver shut off the noisy engine, pulled a soft army cap low over his face, and sat back.
“I knew you’d find a way to get that!” declared the dealer. He started over at once, pausing only to call back to Kiyoshi: “Come with bigger things and we’ll talk longer.”
Back on the main road, the Tsurifunes passed a procession led by a Shinto priest. In the center walked a woman with lowered head. Her outstretched hands held a box covered with a white cloth. Both men moved to the side to let the procession pass, bowing deeply as the box passed them.
The elder Tsurifune cleared his throat, but still his voice wavered. “Many, many ashes have come home from battle. So many heroic spirits now swirl in the air around us.” He touched his son’s arm, then grabbed it, and pulled him closer for an embrace. “What a blessing. I’ll go tomorrow and remove the funeral marker with your name. Then I’ll smooth over the spot reserved for your ashes, left open had someone ever brought them.”
“I’ll go with you, Father!”
“No. No! You’ll stay at home with the door closed. What if some true spirits were hovering in the air out there and grew jealous that you weren’t among them? I’d better find a priest to do it right, after all.”
“I thought you hated priests.”
“Not when they’re needed. Only when they charge for foolish charms that don’t work.
Only half in jest, Kiyoshi declared, “I’ll wait for you behind a closed door.”
“And then, my son, we’ll start to figure how we can save my fishing company for your future. And for your sons when they come!”
5
REALITY
A few days later, Kiyoshi Tsurifune summoned the will to register with the local authorities as a demobilized officer. To his relief, no one looked at him with eyes that suggested he ought to be honorably dead. He received a ration card and a small amount of cash. “Perhaps you’ll get clothing later, if some is available,” said the official. “One more small payment next month, if we have it.” The Americans might now be in charge, but the official and his government agency were still Japanese.
With money in pocket, Kiyoshi proceeded to a house of prostitution he had patronized years before in his youth. Women had been supplied him in his army days, before the battles that required them to live in caves devoid of all civilization. With hunger and the confines of the prison camp, his desires had disappeared. He took it as a good sign that his urges had now begun to return.
Nothing at the pleasure house was the same except for the agreeable odor of perfume. All was shabby, even the sprigs of artificial flowers. Dried bamboo slivers popped from the few pieces of furniture, and the patriotic posters on the walls had begun to peel. One poster—with a smiling girl and soldier standing under a message urging happy sacrifice—had been ripped at a diagonal and the
lower half removed just at the couple’s necks. The women were now different ones, of course. Children, they seemed.
“I remember you, sir,” said the mama, bowing. “Young and handsome, brought first time by your honored father.” Although the flower print was now faded, her kimono rustled with the swish of fine silk. Heavy powder and penciled features failed to hide pockmarks on her face. “Don’t you remember me? Why should you? I was young and beautiful then. Those you might remember were conscripted to serve our fighting men. None have returned.” She touched her face. “I was not chosen to serve.”
Kiyoshi bowed, but chose not to comment because, perhaps, he did remember and she might have been beautiful.
They made him bathe in a tub with truly hot water and gave him a kimono which, here, it seemed right for him to wear. He folded his denim clothes—they were fresh-washed now by Mother, but the pants were still stiff—carefully in a corner of the tatami to indicate their importance to him.
The girl supplied him was young, attentive, soft-skinned. Barely before he could enjoy her, he’d been aroused and had ejaculated.
“You finished, darling?” she asked.
“No. Haven’t started. Stay here.”
She obeyed without question and caressed him for more than an hour before his body summoned the force for another entry.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said his father at supper, when he said where he’d gone. “Did they ask about me, from times when I had the money?”
His mother, looking down so that only her forehead showed, murmured, “I, too, am glad to hear it. A man should be satisfied.”
“Glad because it’s time you started to have sons,” Father continued. “You were born in the year that I established my fishing company, you know. A year of my greatest energy. Your sister came before that, followed by two baby sons so weak they died. Then, of course, your now-dead hero brother Shoji, the final of our children. So you see, as the family’s only son, how important you are. Now your energy is returning. Time to find you a new wife and start having sons of your own. You are already getting old—what, twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-eight,” said Mother softly.
“You see.”
“I know no other women, Father.”
“We’ll correct that. Two other fishing company owners in town have daughters, even though none of us have boats fit any more for sea.”
Kiyoshi laughed. “Give me time, Father.” He liked having a reason to laugh again. And he enjoyed the new spurts of resolve his father had begun to show.
“By the way, why haven’t you called on the parents of your poor dead wife? My colleague Nitta-san has surely been expecting you now for days.”
“I’ve . . . not had the time yet, Father.” He had indeed postponed the visit, reluctant to face another challenge to him having survived the war. “Tomorrow.”
The Nitta house, like that of Kiyoshi’s parents, had a thin strip of land around it for the planting of food. Fresh green shoots sprouted from the earth.
A young woman answered his knock. Her black hair, tied in back, hung as carelessly as a horse’s tail. She wore pants and a loose shirt, both patched. All most unladylike. She didn’t even return his bow, but exclaimed, “Kiyoshi Tsurifune alive! At least someone came back!” She took his hands boldly. “You’ve been expected.”
The daughter, he decided from her shocking familiarity. She’d become a woman in only a couple of years, unrecognizable from the child she’d been. He couldn’t remember her name for a moment, then: “Ah. Miki?”
“Of course. Come in, come in. All the town knows you’re home, so naturally we’ve been expecting you.” Kiyoshi removed his shoes and ducked inside through the low doorway.
He entered the family room. Father Nitta, who must have heard his daughter’s exclamations, stood waiting. His face, once round, was now drawn taut with yellowing skin. His kimono fell loose around thin legs and slippers. Worse, for a man hardly in his sixties, he supported himself with a cane. At sight of Kiyoshi he extended a trembling hand. “So. My son-in-law, back alive to find his wife, my daughter, no more.” His voice broke. Scarcely anything seemed left of the robust father of the bride, who, at their wedding, had managed to provide volumes of food for the guests despite wartime austerity. Nothing of the man who had told endless, often nonsensical, jokes that made everyone laugh and forget the problems of the times.
Little Mother Nitta hurried in. Also now thin to the bone. She grasped his hands and they exchanged repeated bows. “You’ve come, you’ve come. Still straight and strong, alive, oh!” She broke down and buried her wet face in his hands.
They settled on the main tatami, with his own place of honor indicated in front of the tokonoma niche with a classic vase and single flower. Mother Nitta could barely keep still. She bustled around, arranging cushions that needed no arranging, while her daughter calmly served tea. Then, with “Ah!” she hurried out and returned with a white silk robe over her outstretched arms. “Her wedding kimono. I brought it out when I heard you’d come home. I never allowed it to be sold—despite everything.” She placed it in folds beside Kiyoshi.
“Oh, Mother,” cautioned her daughter. She must have noticed Kiyoshi’s clamped jaw as he tried to edge away without being too obvious. “Afraid of ghosts?” she challenged him with a bold smile.
Why did she need to say the obvious? Kiyoshi thought, annoyed, as he denied it. He didn’t like this girl. This woman.
The parents of Yokiko recounted her death at length, breaking down in tears more than once, as they spoke. How, with everyone commanded by the Emperor to work for the war, and no men to do the many tasks, she had been assigned—despite her shy nature—to operate a metal cutting machine in a small factory that made tank parts.
“Work for which she had no skill,” said Father Nitta, shaking his head. “My poor child was raised to keep a home.” One day she sliced her arm while handling a piece of rusty metal salvaged from what was most likely a farm structure. The cut failed to heal. The arm swelled and turned purple. At last, after two days, she bravely returned to work, since the war and her soldier husband needed her tasks. But she was told to stay home and nurse her arm. The doctor came eventually, but no medicine was left on any pharmacy shelf to halt the infection. “And so your wife died, in delirium and pain,” concluded Father Nitta.
In the silence that followed, Kiyoshi reached over and touched the pile of silk. He eventually stroked it, as he joined them in weeping.
When at last he rose to leave, Mother Nitta gathered the silk in her arms and held it out to him. “Yours now,” she said.
He drew back. Then, unable to think of a reason to refuse, he reluctantly held out his arms.
“Oh Mother,” declared Miki, as she lightly stepped between them. “Better to leave it by our own shrine in the next room. This is where our Yokiko lived. Where she died.” She turned to him with eyes almost merrily narrowed, “Kiyoshi-san wouldn’t deprive us of this comfort. Would you?”
With many words he assented, careful to hide his relief. After further bows, Miki accompanied him to the door. She stood patiently while Kiyoshi laced up his black American shoes, which he had buffed with a cloth for the visit.
He looked up. The light caught in gleams on her smooth black hair. Her eyes remained lively. “Do you work now, some place?” he asked politely.
“Once also in the same factory as my sister. It wasn’t as bad for me. Until it closed, of course. No more tanks to be built. Now, for what pay as there is, I’m in the office of ration distribution. I noticed you there two days ago, but you were paying no attention to anything but your hands and feet. Ashamed to come back alive, aren’t you? Stop being stupid.”
Shocking intrusion! “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My parents will be glad to see you,” she continued without sensitivity for what she had said. “Any time you wish to call. Of course we’ll all cry a little bit, at first. But not forever.”
Kiyoshi found h
imself smiling. She was, after all, being realistic. “I should thank you for keeping the silk garment,” he ventured. “I . . . would have had no place for it.”
“You are afraid of ghosts!”
“Of course not.”
“Don’t you ever speak the truth?”
“I will of course call on your honored parents again,” he said stiffly, and with a bow, he hurried off.
On the way home he realized that he’d started smiling again. Actually, Miki’s silky hair tumbled down her back more like a cloud than a horse’s tail.
Next day, without announcing his intent, Kiyoshi walked to the harbor and down the pier, dodging loose planks, to where the two trawlers Father had shown him were tied. Rusty indeed. He climbed aboard the first, kicking beetles off the underside of the railing. A light rain was falling, and drops clung to spider webs thick as cloth around the winch. The door leading belowdecks was bolted, as was that which led up a set of stairs to the wheelhouse. All he could do was to peer through dirty windows at the big steering wheel and the binnacle holding the compass. Loose wires showed that smaller equipment had been ripped out. But most important—and beyond his ability to see without breaking a lock—would be the state of the engines.
He decided to return with Father the next day and make no secret of his interest.
Kiyoshi continued to walk around the harbor. That daughter. Miki was her name? Only a child when he’d married her poor sister. Grown up to be most unladylike. Too bold for a woman. Not like shy Yokiko at all.
On the other side of the harbor lay smaller wooden fishing boats. They, too, appeared idle, except for the open vessel he had seen being propelled by bow oar to a set net a few days before. The same old men were preparing to climb aboard once more.
At least this might show what fish were out there. With sudden purpose, Kiyoshi hurried off the trawler and around the causeway, making running leaps over cracked concrete and loose boards. He soon was out of breath from the unaccustomed exercise. When Kiyoshi reached the vessel, the men had already cast off and it glided from the pier.
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