Aya pictured her body plunging down, straight as an arrow, toward the bottom she could never reach. Down through an unending shaft of icy blackness. Would she encounter other falling bodies along the way, all of them seeking a place to stop, to rest?
On the day of the crossing, Midori came for her. They went to the lake, to their usual spot on the shore. It was a cold crisp morning, and their breath left their mouths in fat white puffs like smoke from cigarettes. They hurried, pursuing their breath. Bobby and Tom were already there. They wore thick lumber jackets and had scarves wound around their necks.
“Where’ve you been! Girls are always late. I’m sorry I said you could watch.” Bobby’s voice was changing, and every so often it crackled like something was broken inside his throat.
Tom laughed. He was a year older, with a deep voice and a thick neck that looked even fatter with his scarf on. “Let’s go,” he said.
The boys began taking deliberate steps toward the lake, their feet making crunching sounds in the snow. When they reached the ice, they had to steady themselves. The snow had blown off the surface in many places, and it looked slippery. Midori and Aya stood on the shore watching. The boys walked slowly, sliding their feet forward and holding their arms out to the side like tightrope walkers. When they were about thirty feet out, Tom turned around and yelled, “This is fun! Why don’t you come with us?”
“Baka,” they heard Bobby say to Tom. “Midori, you stay where you are.”
Don’t go any farther, Aya wanted to shout. It’s dangerous. Abunai! Instead she looked at Midori, whose gaze never left the boys. It seemed to take forever until they reached the middle of the lake. Aya thought for sure they would turn around and come back, but they kept on walking. When they reached the other shore, they waved their arms and jumped up and down, and the sound of their hooting echoed across the still lake. They disappeared into the forest behind them.
“What should we do?” Aya asked.
“Just wait, I guess.” Midori had scrunched up her face, out of worry or cold, or maybe both.
In about fifteen minutes the boys reappeared several yards farther down the shore and began walking back across the lake. It seemed to Aya that they were moving faster than when they first crossed, either in a hurry or simply more confident in their balance. Midori and Aya walked down the shore toward the point where they were approaching.
“Nothing to it,” Bobby said when he stepped off the ice. “It’s frozen solid.”
“Yeah, we could go back and forth as many times as we want,” Tom said.
“If we wanted to.”
“Yeah. Back and forth.”
“Were you scared?” Midori asked brightly. “When you were way out in the middle.”
“Baka. Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing to be scared of. Only girls would be scared. Anyway, there’s nothing on the other side. It’s worse than here.” Tom pulled his scarf tighter around his thick neck. His hands looked like they were trembling.
Bobby swung his gaze from Midori to Aya then back to Midori. “You two, you better keep your mouths shut about this.” He shook his mitten in front of Midori’s face, so close that crystals of snow flew onto her cheeks and eyelashes.
By late spring, an elementary school had been started in the camp by the Nisei women who were high-school graduates. They would teach the younger children all the same subjects taught in a regular school; they didn’t want them to fall behind. Aya was doing composition exercises when Bobby burst into the room, sweaty and breathing heavily.
“There’s a body floating on the lake! They’re gonna haul it in any minute,” he shouted, his voice equal parts excitement and terror.
The teacher ordered him to sit down, but he ran back outside.
“We’ll continue with our lesson,” she told the class. “Whatever it is, it’s adult business. Nothing to do with you.”
Two minutes later, though, a group of women rushed in, including Aya’s aunt, and the teacher quickly ended the lesson. Everyone except Aya was free to go.
Her mother had been wearing her winter coat. That’s what pulled her under, some said. Poor thing couldn’t swim in a bulky coat like that. Nobody wanted to point out the obvious, to ask why she had gone into the lake wearing a heavy wool coat. It was almost summer. At least in front of Aya, they pretended it was an accident.
But she heard their secret whisperings everywhere.
She was lonely.
She was afraid.
She was weak.
She was selfish.
She was foolish.
She was worried.
But we’re all worried.
What’s going to happen to Aya now?
How could a mother do this to her daughter?
Aya didn’t ask any questions. Nobody had the answer to the only question she wanted to ask, to the only question that mattered: Why did you leave me behind? Why didn’t you take me with you?
Aunt Yae took care of the funeral. She was the widow of Aya’s father’s uncle, and the closest relative Aya had.
“There’s no telling when my letter will reach him,” Aya overheard Aunt Yae say of her father. “I can’t wait. I’m responsible. I have to take care of her body. I have to take care of things.”
After the funeral people came up to Aya and said how sorry they were and what a terrible accident it was and how the lake was a dangerous place and if there was anything they could do. But Aya was numb and hardly heard a word, nodding but not listening.
She didn’t find out about the coat pockets until several days after the funeral service. Old Mr. Takeda, who had built the pine coffin, came to the door.
“Is your aunt here?”
She shook her head. She was the only one at home.
He stared at her through his thick old man’s glasses, his eyes so magnified he reminded her of a bug. He blinked several times, then very slowly he moved his head from side to side. He did this for a long time until at last he spoke.
“Well, let me return this to you. Your mother’s coat.”
He held the coat toward her and she raised her arms to receive it. Suddenly he grabbed her hand and pushed it toward one of the pockets. Immediately she felt the resistance. The top of the pocket had been sewn shut.
Mr. Takeda regarded her again with his solemn bug eyes. “Kawaiso,” he murmured. So pitiful.
After he left, she spread the coat on the floor and examined the pockets. Although the opening of each pocket had been sewn securely shut, the pockets themselves were made of thin material and the bottom seams had ripped wide open. Presumably the contents of the pockets had been heavy. Through the material Aya could feel a few lumps. When she pulled them out she saw they were small stones, the ones that had not fallen out. The shore of the lake was covered with stones, and when she and Midori had played their game of prospector, they collected only the most colorful ones. Aya knew that her mother had not been so picky.
Without asking anyone, she instinctively understood what had happened. How the strong underwater currents would have easily torn the sheer pocket bottoms which were already straining with the weight of the stones. It was thus that the stones would have been released. Even now a cascade of stones was falling. Falling toward a bottom they could never reach.
She sat for a long time with her mother’s coat on her lap. The coat was gray and shabby and still damp in places. It gave off a peculiar musty odor like a sick old dog, and it seemed to Aya that it would never dry out. She pushed her hand against the tops of the pockets, the openings that had been sewn shut, repeatedly testing how much pressure the seams could take. But they had been sewn with tight, close stitches, stitches that were meant to hold. Her mother had always been a good seamstress. Only six stones remained, six small ugly stones barely larger than pebbles. They weighed next to nothing. Aya wondered how many of them her mother had pushed into those pockets, filling them to bursting, before sewing them up. She wondered how long she had spent in contemplation and planning.
She gave the coat to her aunt but kept the stones for herself.
After her mother’s death, Aya lived with Aunt Yae.
“She could have talked to me,” Aunt Yae said to the adults who dropped by. “She was stubborn. She never wanted any help. But what she did…How could she be so selfish?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What about Aya? What’s going to happen to her? As if things weren’t bad enough for all of us.”
Three months later they received word that Aya’s father and other married men would be released from road camp and allowed to join their families in the internment camps. The single men, however, had to remain. When her father arrived, the first thing he and Aya did was to go to the small cemetery on the hill behind the apple trees where her mother’s grave was next to Mrs. Negita, Mr. Okada, and the baby who had died last summer, a row of Japanese Canadian graves that was set apart from the much older graves of the white prospectors. Her father did not cry but he closed his eyes for the longest time and clenched his teeth so tight and so hard, she thought his face might crack. Then she observed the bones in his jaw begin to saw back and forth and she knew he was grinding his teeth. Grinding whatever he was feeling back down into himself.
He didn’t want to talk about her mother’s death except to berate Aunt Yae.
“Why did you bury her?”
“I didn’t know what to do.” Aunt Yae always broke down in tears. “You weren’t here. I did my best. I had to take care of her body.”
Sometimes Aya saw her father return from the cemetery, his hands covered in dirt as if he had been pawing the soil on her mother’s grave.
Time passed and shortly before they were to be shipped to Japan, Aya’s father approached Mr. Takeda.
“Are you sure, Shimamura-san?”
“I can’t leave her in the ground here. Not this ground. Not all alone.”
The grave was dug up, the cremation performed. The ashes were placed inside a small wooden box that was sealed tightly and wrapped in a square of white cloth, knotted twice.
The box was very light, almost weightless. It struck Aya that the soul was a compact thing indeed.
30
Even after Baker’s departure, Matt continued to work on the weekends. He accomplished a lot when he was by himself. Today, for instance, he quickly finished off a letter requesting assistance with a license to export worms to the United States. Japanese worms have superior qualities, the writer stressed. It wasn’t clear why exporting these worms halfway around the globe would be of any benefit, except the author of the letter seemed to be under the impression that Americans loved fishing and had a shortage of bait. Another letter was taped to a folding fan with MacArthur’s face printed in the center. If the general found it to his liking, the writer of the letter pleaded, would he please consider putting in an order? Maybe for enough fans for each member of the Occupation forces? Please! Yes, work was therapeutic. At times like this, Matt thought he understood his father’s attitude—forget about the heart. Forget about nonsense like what made the heart happy, what made it skip a beat or pound hard as a hammer. What made it thrash inside your chest like a wild salmon caught on a hook. Concentrate on work, his father would say.
Baker had been gone a month, but his desk remained vacant and so far no one else had been assigned to sit there. Lieutenant Duncan, who was currently in charge of their section, seemed content to issue his commands from an office down the hall. Whenever Matt could, he would steal a glance at that empty desk, and today, with no one else around to observe him, he had even tried sitting in Baker’s chair for a few minutes. He felt very silly. The top of the desk was completely clear and the drawers were empty.
Work! Concentrate on work. He forced himself to go over to the mail table to pick up another letter to translate. No matter how hard he and everyone else worked, the mountain seemed to grow higher each day. It was frightening how many people were writing. Awe-inspiring, but frightening. Such faith in the power of written supplication, such faith in the power of words. There it was, a gigantic mountain of hope. Suddenly he felt overwhelmed and bent forward to bury his face in the letters. Instead of the smell of ink and paper, he felt he was inhaling the scent of human sweat and desperation and desire. He wished he could crawl into the very center of the pile.
“Matt?” It was a female voice.
He snapped to attention.
“What the heck are you doing?”
It was Nancy. He stared at her. She never worked on the weekend. What was she doing here?
“I was looking for a letter.” It sounded stupid, but he had to say something.
“Did you find it?”
“No. But that’s okay. I don’t really need it.”
Nancy gave him a quizzical look and then headed over to her typewriter. She took off her jacket, hung it over the back of her chair, and plucked off her typewriter cover.
“What are you doing here?” Matt said.
“I asked Lieutenant Duncan if there was any overtime I could do. He arranged it. I’ve decided I need to save more money in case I can go back to the States.” Nancy made a face. “Sorry, when. When I go back. I’m going to think positively. I just heard from a Nisei girl I know who lives in Kyoto. She recently got her citizenship reinstated, and her case was even more complicated than mine. Oh, by the way, you won’t mention this overtime business to Yoshiko or Mariko just yet, will you? I don’t want to stir up any resentment.”
“Of course not. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks. Say, I didn’t know you’d be here. So you have to work on the weekends, too?”
Nancy didn’t seem to expect an answer, for she bent her head over her typewriter and began rolling a fresh sheet of paper into the carriage. She and Matt worked for an hour and a half without talking or taking a break. As Matt listened to her type, he realized that she’d improved. While she still hit the keys in an uneven rhythm, there was a steadiness to her pace that he hadn’t heard before.
“It’s one o’clock. Aren’t you going to the canteen for lunch?” Matt asked.
“I brought something from home. Why don’t you have some? I made plenty.”
He knew it was a lie. “I can’t do that. I can’t eat your food.”
“Please. Think of it as a thank you. Remember how you helped me pick up some things in the black market?”
“That was nothing. Anyway, it was a long time ago.”
“Well, never mind that. You helped me, and I’m not the type to forget. Please have some. It would make me feel better.”
They fell into a comfortable routine of working quietly together in the office on weekends. One Saturday Matt walked Nancy partway home at the end of the day.
“I like to walk.” Nancy started talking without any prompting. “I used to go for long walks by myself whenever I could. I would think about everything I missed. My sisters, Mom and Dad. My friends. But you know what I kept thinking about more than anything else? A good old-fashioned bologna sandwich! Sounds crazy, huh? I guess that was the height of my homesickness. Anyway I had no privacy, so being outside was the only way I could be by myself. It was the only way I could think.
“I’d head to the Sumida River after work. I was trying to figure things out, I guess, trying to fathom how I had ended up here and wondering if I would ever see my family again. I would go before twilight, and although I wasn’t supposed to be out after dark because of the blackouts, sometimes I just couldn’t bear to go inside. I would walk along the riverbank until it got so dark I couldn’t see in front of me. Even then, I’d keep going. One foot after the other. That’s usually when I got asked. Ikura ka? How much? The first time a man asked me, I thought he was trying to sell me something. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was. I kept smiling and saying sorry, I didn’t have any extra money to spare. He kept offering different prices, going slightly higher each time. When I finally understood what he was driving at, I got so mad I yelled at him in English. ‘Go to hell!’ Sometimes it even happened in broad da
ylight, and it got to the point where I recognized that sick lewd smile men wore when they approached me. I always told them to go straight to hell. It didn’t do any good, but it made me feel better for the moment. Of course, as soon as I got home, all the tears would come out. I’d just cry myself to sleep.”
She gave Matt a crooked smile. “Sorry, I don’t know what made me tell you that! What a maudlin story.”
“It’s not maudlin. Being here during the war must have been terrible.”
“Well, it wasn’t easy. I make it sound like I was wandering around like a woman of leisure, but I had to work in a parachute factory, and half the time I was jumping in and out of bomb shelters. At first I thought, Hooray, the Americans are coming and they’ll rescue me. Then I realized I better duck for cover because they were dropping bombs all over the city. I can still hear the drone of those B-29s. It’s something you can never forget.”
She shuddered and looked away.
31
Sumiko was the last to leave the dance hall, and even though her dormitory wasn’t far, her feet hurt more than usual so she was walking slowly. Her shoes were tight and blisters had formed on the backs of her heels. Once again Harada had refused to pay her for the tickets she’d collected tonight—he said the till was empty and he would have to reimburse her another time, but she knew it was a lie. She hobbled on. A rickshaw pulled up beside her.
“Need a ride?” The driver, a gaunt wrinkled man of indeterminate age, set the arms of his rickshaw on the ground and put his hands on his hips. She recognized him as one of the regulars who waited outside the dance hall hoping for a fare. He looked her up and down, smiling broadly. Even in the dark she could see the glint of his shiny yellow teeth.
“No, thank you.”
“Come on. It’s a slow night for me.”
She did her best to ignore him.
The Translation of Love Page 18