“What are you doing?”
“You have nice hair, o-nesan. Pretty hair.”
It was the first time Masatomi had spoken to her so kindly, even addressing her as if she were an older sister. Maybe he wasn’t such a brat after all. She let him continue playing with her hair, pushing it this way and that way to either side of her neck. She tried not to think about how sticky his hands probably were.
“Don’t move, o-nesan,” he said. “Don’t move.”
She felt his fingers tickling the back of her neck. Then something soft and furry, like cotton balls, brushed against her nape and tumbled down her spine. At that moment she might even have been smiling, the sensation was so pleasant.
A second later she felt a sharp sting in the middle of her back. “Ouch!” She jumped up and felt another sting, then another. Something was inside her blouse and she couldn’t reach it. She whirled around like a dog chasing its tail. In desperation, she tore off her top and shook it out. A giant caterpillar fell to the sandy ground and curled up into a round ball.
She stomped on it with her wooden sandal and then in her fury kept on stomping until she had flattened it completely and its gooey insides were smeared across the ground.
Masatomi doubled over with laughter. Two of his friends emerged from their hiding spot behind the broken wall and joined him, giggling and pointing at Fumi’s bare chest with their grubby fingers.
“We saw your tits!”
She lunged toward them, snapping her blouse in the air like a whip. “I’ll kill you!” she screamed.
“Panpan tits! You’re a panpan!”
“Your sister’s a panpan!”
“Shut up!”
“Your sister’s a panpan. Panpan! Panpan!” Their high squeaky voices echoed as they ran away.
Fumi could feel herself shaking as she put her arms through the sleeves of her blouse. Horrible boys! She would get back at them, especially that Masatomi. He was a wicked little brat. As she buttoned up her top, she looked down at her chest. Her nipples were darker than usual and a bit hard, but otherwise everything was as flat as ever. Good. Although some of the other girls had started to grow breasts, Fumi was determined that she never would. Her wish was that nothing would change, or better yet that she could set the clock back to an earlier time. She thrust her fingers inside her upper left pocket. The picture wasn’t there! A wave of nausea washed over her. It must have fallen out when she was shaking her blouse. She scoured the ground, walking in a spiral from the center of the lot to the outer edges and then back again. Eventually she found it lying in the dirt not far from where she had been sitting, and nearby she spotted the yellowish tissue paper in which it had been wrapped.
She blew off the dirt and stared at the picture. Sumiko stared back at her.
To think that she had nearly lost this! The thought made her heart beat faster. This was a sign, just like the newspaper. And it was also a warning—there was no time to waste.
6
Each time he came to the Alley, Kondo marveled at the density of human traffic in the city. The Alley—its full name was Love Letter Alley (or Koibumi Yokocho)—was really an alley within an alley, a dark offshoot from the narrow crooked line of shops that wound past Shibuya train station and up a long slope. Past the rice ration depot, past the tofu stand, past the storefronts that sold old chipped porcelain cups and battered kettles and pots. A handwritten sign proudly proclaimed DEMOCRACY POTS AND PANS, as if the word “democracy” added a patina of desire to even the most mundane item. Kondo sometimes wondered if he should use it on his sign, too. DEMOCRACY LETTERS—that would be sure to attract lots of customers.
He came here every Saturday after he finished teaching. Usually he arrived by late afternoon and took his time enjoying a bowl of noodles at one of the roadside stalls before opening for business in the early evening. Once he was here, he found it easier to stay overnight. Not only did a lot of customers come late at night but Kondo didn’t want to risk being robbed on the way home in the dark; it was safer to wait until daylight.
He had long ago given up hurrying and he was never the first to arrive. Invariably, Nakamura, Yamaguchi, and Tabata beat him to it, their stools already set up in the best spots. Kondo contented himself with a cramped space at the end of the alley within an alley, a place far back from the crowds, tucked away in a nearly invisible nook.
“Letters! Letters read, letters written. Top quality!” Yamaguchi, at the head of the line, began touting his services. He shouted out his slogan in a loud singsong voice. “Best price. Best value. Letters read, letters written.”
Despite his appalling English skills, Yamaguchi got a lot of customers because of his location. But Kondo knew that his own English was much better than that of the other translators. His reputation was slowly growing and he hoped that eventually word-of-mouth praise would mean that his customers, all of them women, would actively seek him out, pushing past the other more conveniently located stalls until they found him. For the time being, however, advertising was essential. Kondo added his voice to the chorus of letter writers trying to solicit business. He was at the end of the line, at the top of the slope, sitting in the semidarkness. “Teacher of English writes your letters!” he shouted with all the enthusiasm he could muster. “Superior letters for your American Joe!”
The first woman to approach him was wearing far too much lipstick. Her round face was dominated by her shiny red mouth, making her other features—her small eyes and short, flat nose—fade into insignificance. As if self-conscious of her lips, she pressed them tightly together once she had finished speaking. “I need a letter” was all she said.
“English or Japanese?” Kondo asked.
The woman gave him a funny look. “English,” she said. After a pause she added, “Of course.”
“To…?”
She pursed her lips again and bent her head down. Kondo could see that her hair was arranged in large symmetrical curls. The woman shook her head ever so slightly, as if afraid to disturb her hairdo.
“You don’t know his name?”
When she looked up, Kondo noticed that the rims of her eyes were red.
“GI, huh?”
The woman nodded, this time aggressively. She wrung the handkerchief she was holding in her hands.
“You know a letter in English is not cheap, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. He hated to fish like this, but he couldn’t work for free. It had happened all too often before. “And if you don’t even know his name…”
“I have money.” The woman scrunched her handkerchief into a ball and with her right hand patted her handbag. It dangled from a short strap around her left forearm. “I can pay, don’t worry. But I want a good letter.”
“My letters are good,” he said politely.
I only write good ones, the best you can get, was what he meant. He wished he could tell her that she’d come to the best stall in the Alley, that his English was better than any of the other guys here. That he was a teacher and that in university he had studied harder than anyone else, always staying up through the night to memorize one more word of vocabulary, one more tricky idiom. That was before the war, when he had hoped to become a professor or a government bureaucrat, dreaming big despite his poor background. At one point, encouraged by a supportive professor, he had even thought of going into the diplomatic service, to use his language skills for his country. But now, well, there was no knowing which way the winds would blow. Wasn’t that the phrase? Which way would they blow? They blew whichever way they wanted, that was the truth, and to hell with effort and study and hard work. To hell with a man’s dreams. A few winds, a few bombs. Look at him now. All those years struggling to read Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville; all that studying came down to this: I miss you and I hope you remember your promise to me, or some variation. When will you come back? I am waiting for you. I love you.
He knew he was lucky. He had a special skill that helped him make enough money to afford food on the black
market. One needed a mouth not for talking but for eating. One needed to fill that mouth not with words but with rice.
“I can write you a very good letter, but I don’t want you to waste your money. How can you mail the letter if you don’t know his name?”
“He told me where he lives. He’s in the barracks downtown. If you write the letter for me, I can stand outside the barracks until I see him. I can hand it to him personally.”
“Do you have any idea how many GIs there are? It would be almost impossible to find your fellow.”
The woman narrowed her eyes.
“Save your money,” he said brusquely.
He worried constantly that one of the women who came to him might start crying. What he feared most was a scene, the kind of desperate sobbing that would force him to comfort the woman, tell her everything would be all right. Her Joe would come back. Her Johnny or Harry or simply Honey was a decent man who would do the decent thing. But so far, no one had broken down. They were strong, the women who came to his booth. They came for a transaction: a letter for a fee. They were tougher than he was, he had to admit, but they were stubborn, too. He’d almost given up trying to convince them that “Joe” or “Private Pete” might not be real names. Some even thought they could address a letter to “Charlie, USA” or “Roger, California” and that it would get to their intended. Even when he explained, even when they believed him, they still refused to be discouraged. They opened their purses and pulled out more cash. “What do you need?” they asked. “If it’s not enough, I can get more. I can make more.”
The woman hadn’t moved. “How much?” she asked, fishing in her handbag and pulling out a wad of neatly folded yen with a string around it.
Kondo looked up. “Do you know what you want me to write?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said, gesturing to the wooden tangerine crate beside his stool. He reached between his knees and pulled out the box where he kept his paper and pens. “Sit down. Now, tell me what you want to say.”
7
Just when Aya thought she was starting to understand the strange routines at school, something would happen that would throw her off. The spraying took her completely by surprise.
It began with the principal’s unexpected appearance at the classroom door.
“Kondo-kun, the Hygiene Patrol is here,” he said, sounding a little short of breath as if he had run down the corridor.
“I thought they were coming tomorrow.” Kondo stood at attention in front of the principal. “Didn’t the notice say tomorrow?”
“Well, they come when they want to, don’t they? Anyway, they’re setting up in the yard, so get your students out there now. We’ll have them do the older grades first.”
“And what about us?”
“The teachers will go last.”
“I don’t mind getting it with my class.”
“Kondo-kun, at our school the teachers go last. That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
As soon as the principal left, the students turned their attention expectantly to Kondo, who still stood facing the doorway although his posture was no longer erect. He swiveled toward the class and took a deep breath. “We’ll continue the dictation later. The Hygiene Patrol is here. I think you all know the procedure.”
Aya quickly shot a glance at Fumi but she seemed to be completely unperturbed by the announcement. After tucking her precious pencil stub in her pencil case, Fumi got up and stood at attention beside her desk. Aya copied her. By now all the other girls were standing, too.
The class lined up and followed Kondo Sensei outside. Three GIs were waiting for them in the middle of the school yard where they had set up a small table on which they had placed their equipment. Two of the men stood listlessly scuffing the tips of their boots in the sand while the third sat perched on the edge of the table, one foot planted on the ground, the other swinging back and forth in the air.
Beyond the mesh fence that enclosed the school, Aya could see the military jeep, a gigantic green metal bug. A group of small children, those who were too young to go to school yet, had formed a circle around the jeep, curious but afraid to get too close.
Led by Kondo Sensei, the class marched across the yard toward the table. As they got closer, Aya noticed that the soldiers’ jaws were moving although they were not talking. They seemed to be chewing gum. The soldier who was half sitting on the edge of the table held something that looked like a large spray gun.
As soon as the girls had lined up in a single row in front of the table, the GI with the spray gun walked over to Kondo. “Excuse me. So, we can start the spraying, okay?” He made a pumping motion. “Okay?”
Kondo nodded and moved away.
The soldier approached the first girl in line. It was Akiko. “Okay, sweetheart, close those peepers tight,” he said, motioning with his hand for her to shut her eyes and lean forward. He held the applicator up to his shoulder and began spraying a thick cloud of white powder over her hair and shoulders. Suddenly the air was pungent with a sharp chemical odor. The GI went down the first line of girls, and as he moved, each girl bowed her head forward in anticipation of being sprayed. He had almost reached Aya.
He was so close she could see a small piece of pink chewing gum between his front teeth and a few bubbles of clear spittle in the corners of his lips. When he opened his mouth to speak, the chewing gum disappeared. “Your turn, girlie. Now shut your eyes tight. Bend your head down.” He raised the spray gun and pointed it at her. “Close your eyes!”
Aya didn’t know what came over her, only that she didn’t want to be sprayed by the soldier. She felt a hot rush of blood in her ears, and then she turned on her heels and started to run. She had barely taken a few steps when she tripped and went flying face-first onto the hard-packed dirt. Her chin hit the ground and she felt her teeth bite down on her tongue. Her skirt blew up over the back of her head.
She heard loud laughter, and then Kondo Sensei was kneeling beside her. “Daijobu desu ka? Are you all right? What are you doing? You have to get sprayed. It doesn’t hurt, I promise.”
He grabbed one of her arms and tried to help her upright, at the same time tugging her skirt back down and slapping the dirt off.
Now the principal was here, panting and out of breath. “What’s going on, Kondo-kun? We can’t have any fuss, not in front of the Americans.”
Aya hung her head and felt her face flush. She should have known there was no easy escape. She was aware of a buzz of voices, everyone in the school yard talking about her. She’s not clean. She’s afraid. She’s stupid.
“Holy cow. Now what’d you want to do that for, honey?” the man holding the spray gun said when Kondo led her back to him. He had a look of genuine bewilderment on his face. “Don’t be scared. This is for your own good,” he said as he raised the spray gun up to his chest.
Aya squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath. A cloud of chemical powder settled over her head and shoulders.
“Okay, you’re done! See, that wasn’t so hard, was it,” the man said. “It’s just a bit of DDT. Orders are orders. Every pupil has to be sprayed. It’s for hygiene, don’t you know.”
“Kills all the lice, every last one!” one of the other men chimed in and guffawed loudly.
Aya opened her eyes. The soldier was motioning for her to get out of the way so the next girl could be sprayed. The lower grades were already lining up for their turn, and when Aya walked by, some of the boys jeered.
“We saw your underwear!”
“Panpan stinky pants.”
Aya tried to keep walking in a straight line past them, but she felt her legs weakening, the world in front of her starting to blur. Suddenly someone clasped her hand in a tight grip and led her forward past the other pupils. It was Fumi.
Without saying a word, Fumi took her back inside the school.
It wasn’t the first time Aya had been sprayed with DDT. That had taken place as soon as they got off the ship at Uraga and a tea
m of American soldiers had herded them toward the side of a large wooden building.
“Pick up your bags. Let’s go! Okay, set them down over there. Please form a line. That’s it.”
Aya remembered the look of panic on her father’s face.
“Shut your eyes!” one of the soldiers barked. “Shut them tight.”
There was no time to talk, no time to ask what was going on. The soldier was upon them in an instant. She closed her eyes and felt a powdery mist fall over her hair, her neck, her shoulders, her chest. It didn’t hurt but she didn’t dare open her eyes for fear of being blinded. She stood on the spot trembling like a mouse.
“Turn around! You’re done. Get a move on. Pick up your suitcase.”
Later they would learn that they had been sprayed by mistake. As passengers from an American ship, they hadn’t needed to be deloused, but it was too late and no one ever apologized.
The repatriates were housed in barracks that had formerly belonged to the Japanese navy. Here they waited to be processed. Everyone seemed to be heading in a different direction, and it took weeks for arrangements to be made for them to leave for their final destinations. The barracks were run-down and filthy, and the food was worse than anything Aya had ever eaten in her whole life. The rice was gray and filled with so many tiny bits of stone, it was like eating a bowl of gravel. The miso soup smelled fetid. The thin hard pieces of dried fish gave off an odor like unwashed socks, as did the thin hard slices of pickles. One day they received dessert, and she brightened at the sight of a plate of cookies sprinkled with white powdered sugar. She took a bite and gagged—the white powder was mold. The food turned her stomach so much that she refused to eat anything, but after two weeks she was starving. In desperation, she wolfed down whatever she was given, even when the bowl was full of bugs.
One day Aya’s father caught her looking at her stones. She’d brought them out when she thought he wasn’t around.
The Translation of Love Page 5