Silence stretched between us.
‘How is your family in Geraldton? Mother Superior said there was an emergency. I hope they are well?’
‘Yes, thank you. One of the children was sick, but it wasn’t as serious as they first thought.’
‘And your cousin?’
‘Harry left in January. We haven’t heard from him yet.’ Her reserved manner suggested that my rebuke was still fresh in her mind.
‘Sister, before you left, what I said to you at the hospital . . . I didn’t mean to—’
‘There’s no need to say anything, Doctor. It’s all in the past now. I think we can forget what happened and move on.’ A smile brightened her face.
I exhaled with relief. I wanted nothing more than to put the matter behind us so we could return to our former ways.
Sister Bernice came back to the hospital the following week. Together we scrubbed the mould from the walls and aired the mattresses. When sorting through the patients’ files, Sister Bernice was as nimble and efficient as ever. But for all her outward calmness, I sensed something had changed. She still conversed with me and occasionally brought me black tea—although she herself never used the cup I gave her, which pained me—but there was a coolness to her now. She had closed a part of herself to me.
Loveday
1942
Stan’s disposition improved each day after Johnny’s visit. When I checked on him inside his enclosure of sheets, I often found him sitting up, reading a book. Sometimes he paused to look out of the window, but he was no longer drawn to it compulsively like before. He began to smile when he saw me, and responded to my questions about his health. Eventually, we started to talk while I changed the dressing on his wrist. I asked him about his family. He told me his elder sister, Emmy, was interned at Tatura Camp in Victoria. Their father had died years ago. Their mother was the only one left at their home in Sydney.
‘Ma’s at her wit’s end with me and Emmy locked up. We’re all she’s got. Her health’s not good—she has bad asthma. With the stress of our arrests, I think it’s got worse. She’s been writing letters every day—to me, to Emmy, to our friends, and to the director-general of security to ask for our release. I’m worried something will happen to her while we’re not there. To make things worse, now that I’m in here, this girl I’ve been keen on for a while has finally asked about me. She wants to write to me. Mum told me in her last letter.’
‘Why is that bad? Don’t you want to hear from this girl?’
He sighed and slumped, jerking his arm. The bandage slipped out of my hand. I scrambled to catch the edge.
‘Of course. But she thinks I’m still in the AIF. That’s why she wants to write to me. She thinks I’m off fighting the Japs somewhere, like all the other brave men. Instead, I’m locked up as one of them. I can’t let her find out I’m in here—I just can’t.’ His voice quavered and I thought he might cry. I empathised with his unfortunate situation: wanting to tell this girl the truth yet being unable to do so. But I couldn’t offer any advice. My handling of my own circumstances had been a failure.
He lifted his head, and I was relieved to see he had regained his composure. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you have a wife?’
‘Sorry?’ I stiffened.
‘A wife. Someone special you write to from here.’
‘I, ah . . . Yes, I do. I’ve tried to write to her a number of times, but I’m not sure if she got my letters. The war, you know . . .’
I reached behind me for the scissors. My fingers felt thick as I struggled to knot the end of the bandage. Stan didn’t say anything more, but I felt his gaze on me the entire time. When I was done, I excused myself and swiftly left the room.
While on my rounds that afternoon, I stopped into the tuberculosis ward. Harada was sleeping, the hollows on his neck deepening with each breath. Sunlight streamed through the window and touched the corner of his bed. I thought back to our time in Broome and his commitment to Minnie, and I was filled with regret. He could have returned to Japan with President Kanemori, but instead he’d stayed with her. I, on the other hand, had fled Japan and lost all contact with my wife.
I thought about the situation with Kayoko. I had sent her two letters from Broome, telling her of the new life I had begun in Australia, but I never got a reply. After that, I gave up, convinced she never wanted to hear from me again. But perhaps I had stopped writing too quickly. Perhaps I had not written what she wanted to hear. I tried to think of what Harada would have done. Surely he would have fought for her, even at the risk of shaming himself. Honour, duty, pride—Harada would have sacrificed all those things for the woman he loved.
When I checked on Stan the next morning, he was again sitting up in bed, reading. A pile of letters, probably from his mother, was tucked beneath his pillow. The window was open and a breeze stirred the hanging sheets. When I asked him how he was, he didn’t reply; he simply extended his arm so that I could change the dressing. I sensed a divide had opened up between us, but I didn’t know how to close it. I breathed heavily as I fumbled with the bandages.
‘Stan, yesterday, when you asked me about my wife . . .’
His gaze flicked up to mine.
‘It is hard for me to talk about it, but my wife and I . . . we are separated. I have not heard from her in years. We had a misunderstanding in Japan. She wanted me to help her, to share her pain, but I had my own problems. I wasn’t there for her. I wish I had said more to her before I left. That is my greatest regret. So I urge you to write to this girl you like and share your feelings with her.’
He was quiet for a while. We were just a few inches apart, and I sensed him studying my face. He turned away and spoke into his chest. ‘It’s not that easy. How am I to write to her from here?’
‘Send the letter to your mother. She can pass it on.’
‘And have my mother read my sweet nothings to Isabelle? I’d rather not. Besides, how am I going to write with this?’ He held up his bandaged wrist. The loose end began to unravel.
I took his arm and pushed it back down onto the bed. ‘Let me write it, if you want. Tell me what you want to say to her and I’ll write it down.’
He chewed his lip as he thought it over. ‘Can you write English? Are you good, I mean?’
I laughed. ‘These days, I write in English better than in Japanese. It is not perfect, but I will do my best.’
He eventually agreed to my suggestion. I stepped beyond the sheets to get a chair, passing Hayashi at the front of the ward. He looked at me quizzically, his gaze following me as I pulled a chair into Stan’s enclosure. I set it beside his bed.
‘A little closer, please—I don’t want anyone else to hear,’ Stan said.
I moved the chair till it was almost touching his bed. He gave me a pad and a pen and a book to lean on. He inched towards me until he was lying on his side on the edge of his bed. I looked at him, waiting for his cue.
‘Dear Isabelle,’ he whispered.
‘Sorry—her name: how is it spelled?’
‘I-S-A-B-E-L-L-E.’
I nodded.
‘As you are no doubt aware, my feelings for the past seven years have been sincere, and I believe—no, I trust—’ He paused, struggling to find the right word.
‘I hope?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, “hope”—and I hope you have not regarded my attention towards you unfavourably. Recently, my circumstances have not allowed me to improve our friendship. It is my wish it will one day blossom into something deeper and long lasting.’
I was scribbling frantically to try to keep up. I would have to write it out again neatly later.
‘When I left Sydney a few months ago, I was more or less under a cloud, and consequently I have not written to you during my absence. I am sorry to say that I cannot currently meet you in person. However, it would bring me great joy if you would consider a relationship with me in the future.’ He paused. ‘What do you think, is that okay?’
I took a few moments to r
ead over the lines. Stan shifted, waiting for my response. What would I say if I was writing to my wife? Something true to my feelings. I would talk about our memories, our shared lives.
‘It is slightly formal, perhaps. Could you remind her of something you did together in the past?’
He nodded, sucking on his bottom lip as he narrowed his eyes, trying to call up a memory. ‘I’ve known her for a long time. We practically grew up together. She lives on my street. I have so many memories of her. The problem is finding the right one.’
‘Think of the happiest memory. The first one that comes to mind.’
He thought. ‘I was at the Roxy one night when she came up to me. She would have been nineteen. Said she’d heard I’d joined the AIF and wanted to wish me the best. I was over the moon. We talked a bit—she told me about her job as a typist and about her mother, who’d fallen ill. She seemed to have grown more beautiful since I’d last seen her. I kept looking at her all night. My mates said I was making a fool of myself. They were probably right.’ He laughed, breathing out noisily.
‘At the end of the night, I wanted to go up to her and ask her out, but I didn’t have the guts. Next thing I knew she was leaving—she was at the door and her friend had walked out ahead of her, but Isabelle stopped and looked around. I was praying for her to look at me, and she did—she gave a little nod and a wave goodbye. I should’ve gone up to her, said something then, but I didn’t. I’ll always regret that.’
It was quiet in the infirmary. I wondered if the other patients had been listening; if they had, they would’ve caught only fragments—the odd phrase, further limited by the few English words they knew.
Sitting close to Stan, with a pad of paper and a pen in my hand, made me think of nights at home in Tokyo, going over my English and German medical terminology with my wife.
‘Sensuibyou,’ she had said, holding one of my heavy textbooks close to her chest as she sat on a cushion on the floor.
‘Caissonkrankheit,’ I said. ‘Caisson disease.’
The last of the sleeping huts were completed in late June, and we moved into them soon afterwards. The shift brought several changes at camp. Until then, my daily life had been synchronised with the seven other men in my tent: we had slept, eaten and done chores together, under the direction of Yamada, our leader. But my new life in the sleeping hut expanded to include fifty others. The space was almost as cramped as the tents had been, but I welcomed the solid walls and floor to keep out the winter chill. Although I knew some of the men from the infirmary and baseball, many of the others I had only seen in passing in the mess hall or at headcount. I relaxed in the new setting, surrounded by others who were relative outsiders, like me. Yamada was still our leader, but I felt his presence much less than before. Our seats in the mess hall were also altered to reflect the new hut populations, and I no longer sat at the same table as Yamada.
I began to spend much of my time with Ebina and several others in my hut from the baseball team. At night, we played hanafuda and talked until the lights went out. Rumours of an internee exchange program had been circulating at camp for months. In recent weeks, the newspaper committee had translated a number of articles that mentioned talks of a prisoner exchange between Australia and Japan. Each country would supply a list of potential prisoners for the exchange, and negotiations would begin until an equal number of names were agreed upon for release. Inside our hut, we warmed our feet against the heater made from an empty milk tin and coal from the boiler, and talked about what we’d do when we were released. Arata, one of the men from Surabaya, said he longed to sleep in, instead of being woken by a bugle call. ‘I’d like to wake up next to my wife,’ Ebina said.
By this time, the baseball competition was coming to an end. The three Formosans in Johnny’s team turned out to be very skilled, having played since high school. Johnny and the other Australians on the team hadn’t realised this at first because of the Formosans’ limited English. Johnny’s team won match after match, and eventually gained a berth in the grand final, much to the chagrin of many, including Yamada. Their opponents would be the team from Borneo. If all went well, the winning team would go on to play the champions from 14B.
A week before the grand final, Johnny, Martin Nishimura and Andy Makino left to go to the Aliens Tribunal in Melbourne. They were due to return just in time to play against Borneo. It would be a fitting farewell if their appeal was successful. On a cold morning in early July, I joined the remaining members of the gang at the gate to see them off. Our breath billowed in the crisp air. Magpies carolled and tumbled across the sky.
‘Wish us luck,’ Johnny said, his face creased into a grin. ‘We might not be around here much longer.’ As we watched them filing out of the birdcage gate, I saw that Johnny, Martin and Andy were the youngest of the group going to the tribunal. Most of the dozen or so other men were in their sixties or seventies. They were the older, quieter internees who spoke English well but had little to do with the day-to-day running of camp. They kept to themselves, working in the labour groups if they had the strength, and retiring to bed early at night. Some were married to Australians and even had Australian children. I felt sorry for them—they’d been living in Australia so long that they had little in common with many of the other Japanese.
With Johnny, Martin and Andy gone, my friendship circle dwindled. I saw Charlie, Ernie, Dale and Ken at the mess hall and always stopped to greet them, although the conversation never flowed.
On my day off from the infirmary, I went to buy some soap and a razor blade, and a pen for Stan. As I neared the canteen, I noticed Hayashi at the broad surface of the open counter, talking to the canteen assistant. I was surprised to discover it was Yamada. Although he managed the stocktake for the canteen, Yamada rarely staffed it, saying his time was better spent on other things. When I was about twenty feet away, Yamada noticed me. He said something to Hayashi and they both turned and smiled. Before I reached the canteen, however, Hayashi nodded at me and walked away.
‘Ibaraki, I was just talking about you,’ Yamada said. ‘Hayashi tells me how busy you’ve been. As well as all the patients in your ward, you’re looking after one of his, too?’
I nodded. ‘Suzuki.’
‘That’s the Australian who tried to kill himself, isn’t it? How is he?’
‘Quite good,’ I replied cautiously. Yamada’s interest in Stan put me on edge. ‘His wrist has almost healed. But his spirit is still weak.’
‘When will we be able to welcome him back to camp?’
I hesitated. Stan and I had never discussed his return to camp; I sensed that raising the topic would only set him back. At the same time, I wondered how much longer he’d be allowed to stay in the infirmary. ‘Not yet. Maybe in another few weeks.’
‘Is that so?’ Yamada nodded and looked into the distance, as if deep in thought. ‘We’ll have to find him a bed in a hut. I’m not sure there’s room in ours . . . But we’ll deal with that when the time comes. Anyway, what can I get you today?’
I told him what I wanted and he fetched them for me. After I paid, Yamada indicated the clipboard he was holding. ‘Well, I’d best keep going with the stocktake. We’ve almost run out of cigarettes since the baseball competition started. People have been betting with them. We’ll be sold out by Sunday’s game. I assume you’ll be there?’
‘Actually, I’m rostered to work at the infirmary that day. But I hope to be back in time for the end of the match.’ I didn’t want to miss the entire match. If Johnny, Andy and Martin’s appeal against their internment was successful, the grand final would probably be the last time I’d see them play. They would only have two or three weeks left at camp before their papers were approved and they were released by headquarters.
‘Working on grand final day? Aramaa. Why don’t you swap shifts with someone? Especially since the competition was your idea. What a good suggestion it has turned out to be—the entire atmosphere at camp has changed. Locke’s very pleased—he even bought the compo
und new balls and bats. Plus your friends in the Australian team are playing, aren’t they? You won’t want to miss that.’
I said I’d see what I could do. Feeling restless, I spent the rest of the day going through my belongings and rearranging the piles of clothes around my bed.
I slept fitfully that night. Just before dawn, I glimpsed someone’s silhouette beside the door. As my eyes adjusted, I realised it was old Fukaya. He stood as quietly as a sentinel, staring at the floor. I had often woken at night to hear him shuffling through the hut as he made his way to the latrines, occasionally stopping on his journey to rest against a wall. But he didn’t usually stand there for so long. I crept over to him to see what was wrong.
‘Look. It’s red,’ he said, pointing at the floor.
Dirt spread from beneath the door; it must have blown in during the night. I peered closer. It was much finer than the earth in the gardens, and brighter than the dull reddish-brown earth I was accustomed to at camp. In the pre-dawn light it seemed to shimmer.
‘I wonder where it came from. It doesn’t look like the dirt at camp.’
Fukaya didn’t seem to hear me as he continued to stare at the floor. ‘See how it’s shaped like a fan? It’s like art. It’s beautiful,’ he said.
As I considered the dirt, I could see it was indeed beautiful. Its symmetry and iridescence suggested a human touch, much like the raked gardens of a Zen temple. Like those gardens, the rust-coloured arc made me think of the transience of life. And how, with just one ill wind, everything could change.
Tokyo
1936
One afternoon early in my second year at the laboratory, Nomura, Ota and I were told to stay back late to accept a shipment from Manchukuo. Yamamoto offered to help too, but Shimada refused.
‘This is a job for the more senior researchers,’ he said. ‘The rest of you, wait outside for the trucks to arrive. I will stay in the laboratory. Major Kimura will also be here—he wants to oversee the arrival of the first shipment. Alert us both when it comes.’
After Darkness Page 15