She heard the distant sound of voices and laughter late into the night, and finally fell into a fitful slumber hours later. When she woke, she didn’t know what time it was but sensed it was morning. She put on her coat and crouched outside in front of the shed, waiting.
“So this is where you spent the night,” Fumi said, peering at the shed. “Actually we weren’t very far away from each other.”
“Where were you?”
Fumi pointed at Hisayo. “I spent the night with her.”
As if this was the introduction she’d been waiting for, Hisayo stepped forward and grinned. She unhooked Fumi’s hand from Aya’s and replaced it with her own. “Hi, my name is Betty. What’s yours? Want to see our room? Come on.”
Tugging Aya by the hand, Hisayo led her to the dormitory. Fumi followed behind. Inside the room, Hisayo used one bare foot to push a rolled-up futon back against the wall and pointed to the space she had created on the tatami mat. “Come in and relax. See, there’s plenty of room.”
Aya looked uncertainly at Fumi.
“We have to go home,” Fumi said.
“Home!” Hisayo snorted. “Why do you want to go home when you can stay in a nice place like this. Come on.” She plunked herself down on the tatami and reached up to grab Aya’s hand. “Sit here beside me.”
Aya tried to resist but Hisayo’s grip was strong and she pulled Aya onto the tatami.
“Good. Now I want to show you some makeup,” Hisayo said cheerily.
“But I’m not sure…” Again Aya looked at Fumi.
“Oh, I guess it’s all right, but not for too long,” Fumi said somewhat reluctantly. “Maybe just for a little while.”
“Of course,” Hisayo said. “Just for a while. You’ll be glad that you stayed.”
They sat on either side of Hisayo at the low tea table and watched as she opened the lacquer box and began applying lipstick just as she had done last night.
“You can try some if you like,” she said, offering the tube of lipstick to Aya.
Aya shook her head.
Hisayo shrugged and shut the makeup box. Leaning toward Aya, she began stroking her arm. “Let’s be friends, okay?”
“Okay.”
Hisayo stood up and gestured for Aya to stand up beside her. “You have a beautiful coat, a real American coat. Can I try it on? Just for a minute?”
Fumi’s reaction was swift. “Don’t you dare!”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You can’t have her coat!”
“I just want to see what I look like in it. What’s wrong with that? Anyway, this is a nice room, isn’t it? I’m sharing it with you.” Hisayo crossed her arms and puffed out her chest.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Aya took off her coat and handed it to Hisayo. She wanted to avoid an argument at all costs. After last night, she didn’t want to fight with anyone ever again.
Hisayo put one arm through the right sleeve, then pushed her other arm into the left. She struggled a bit but finally managed to shrug the coat up over her shoulders. It was clearly much too small for her.
“What a beautiful coat. It’s so soft and warm. I’ve always wanted a real American coat.” She stroked the worn collar and faded lapels.
“It doesn’t fit you at all,” Fumi said.
“Yes, it does.”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s too small. You can’t even do up the buttons.”
“Yes, I can. Wait.” Hisayo sucked in her breath and quickly began doing up the buttons starting from the bottom. The material strained across her chest and shoulders but she managed to fasten all the buttons except the top two. Her arms stuck out stiffly at her sides. “How do I look?”
She was such a ridiculous sight, Aya almost laughed out loud.
Fumi was furious. “Take it off!”
“See how good I look,” Hisayo taunted. “I’m so pretty. In my American coat!” She twirled around in an effort to make the hem of the coat lift in the air.
Fumi reached for the coat, but Hisayo danced out of her grasp. That was when she tripped on a pile of clothing on the floor and went flying backward. As she flung her arms out to break her fall, they all heard the sound of the coat ripping. As loud as a sail snapping in the wind. Aya gasped.
“You ruined it!” Fumi shouted. “I told you not to try it on. Now look what you’ve done.”
Hisayo rolled over onto her stomach to push herself off the floor. There were more ripping sounds. As soon as she stood up, bits of cloth started falling to the floor, as if the coat itself were unraveling from the inside.
“You ruined it,” Fumi repeated.
“I didn’t mean to,” Hisayo cried out. “I just wanted to see what it felt like. I’ve never had a coat.”
She began struggling to wriggle out of the coat but every movement she made caused more bits of material to tumble out. The coat had ripped wide open in the back and under the arms, and the lining had been torn from the seams in several sections. It appeared as if old rags had been cut into small pieces and stuffed inside the lining for added insulation; these scraps of material had fallen out and now lay scattered across the tatami.
Fumi got down on her knees to take a closer look. “What are these things? Aya, this one has your name on it.” She handed Aya a small strip of white cloth.
Aya got down on the tatami, and Hisayo, too, and together they sifted through the bits of fabric.
The strips of white cloth had Aya’s name on them in the indelible ink her mother had used to identify all her clothes. The writing, in Japanese, was in her mother’s neat hand, her careful calligraphy. But there was more than just her name. Each strip also had a short message: Tsuyoku narinasai. Be strong. Yoku benkyo shinasai. Study hard. Many were the same messages written over and over. Grow tall. Respect your elders. Be resolute. Never forget. Don’t give up.
“What is this all about?” Hisayo said. “Why on earth would anyone put these things inside your coat where you can’t even see them. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Aya didn’t even realize tears were rolling down her cheeks until Fumi brought out a handkerchief and began wiping her face. “Come on, Aya,” Fumi said. “It’s time for us to go home.”
Hisayo did her best to dissuade them. “Why are you in such a hurry? Stay one more night with me, please. We can try on more of the big sisters’ clothes.”
“We can’t,” Fumi said. “Our parents are really worried about us. I’m sure my mother hasn’t been able to sleep at all.”
Aya saw how Hisayo stiffened.
“Parents.” Hisayo sniffed derisively. “Who needs parents? You’re still such a baby, aren’t you.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” She turned to Aya. “What about you? You want to stay with me?”
Aya shook her head vigorously.
Hisayo shrugged. “Okay, suit yourself. You don’t know what you’re missing.” Before they left, she tried to make Aya take something to wear in place of the coat.
“How about this,” she said, pulling a satiny blouse off a hanger. “No good? What about that one over there? You want it?”
By the time Aya and Fumi walked out the door, it was late in the afternoon.
Hisayo cheerily waved goodbye, all sign of the earlier discord forgotten. “Come back and visit me. Don’t wait too long.”
The girls walked in silence, sometimes abreast but often single file, with Fumi taking the lead. It would take them a long time to reach home, especially as Fumi was moving more slowly than her usual brisk pace. Aya followed patiently behind. She wore the torn coat over her shoulders like a cape, the strips of cloth with her mother’s writing stuffed safely in the pockets of her pants.
“You were right,” Fumi said halfway through their trek home. “My sister doesn’t want to come home anymore.”
Aya didn’t know how to undo the damage her careless words had done. “I didn’t mean it when I said that. I don’t know what I’m talking about.�
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“But it’s probably true.” Fumi sounded uncharacteristically resigned.
“You shouldn’t listen to me. I don’t know anything.”
Fumi stopped walking and turned around so she was face-to-face with Aya. “No, I think you spoke the truth. I think you’re the only person worth listening to.”
43
Although Kondo had been the one to insist that they search in American Alley, once they arrived at the bustling market, Shimamura was clearly in charge. Kondo was surprised to see him move with such ease through the crowded passageways, clearly used to negotiating the twisting turns and crooked lanes filled with makeshift stalls. It was even more crowded than usual because of year-end shopping. People pushed with their elbows, shoulders, knees, even chins, anything to shove their way ahead of the person in front of them, anything to bring them closer to buying a tiny piece of kazunoko or tai, any kind of traditional treat that would help them mark the end of the year and welcome in good fortune for the new one. To Kondo the atmosphere didn’t feel festive so much as frantic. He was glad he hadn’t brought much money with him. The pickpockets would be out in full force on a day like this, he thought.
They walked past jumbled piles of canned peaches, stepped around baskets of onions, narrowly avoided tripping over buckets filled with live crabs. One man sat behind a dozen brown bottles lined up on a dirty bamboo mat. He was wearing a suit that had wide shoulders and broad lapels and looked too large for his bony frame. A woman was passed out under a tarp next to him. Shimamura was apparently undistracted by these scenes and looked neither left nor right. Kondo thought about how his students had come here on their own; he marveled at their boldness, and then he felt afraid. They were growing up fast and figuring things out for themselves. Book learning, the kind that he was responsible for imparting, was only a small part of the knowledge they needed to live in the new era.
Coming here might have been a terrible mistake, though. There were too many people, too many places to hide or be hidden. And it was all Kondo could do just to keep up and not lose sight of Shimamura’s stiff hunched back, not to fall behind and be swallowed whole into the churning mass of movement and noise and smell that surrounded them. He hadn’t realized until now just how awful he felt. He was very short of breath, his chest hurt more than ever, and his legs felt as if stone weights were attached to his ankles. Every so often he was seized by a coughing jag and they had to pause until he could catch his breath again.
Shimamura abruptly stopped in front of a dark passageway with a piece of black cloth hanging halfway down the narrow entry. Kondo saw him stare at it for a few seconds, clenching and unclenching his fists. He entered, and Kondo followed. They had to turn sideways to squeeze through, and then the space opened up into a small room filled with stacks of boxes.
“Hello, Ozawa-san,” Shimamura said. He didn’t bow.
A man seated at a makeshift desk made out of old ammunition crates looked up and swiveled his toothpick to the side of his mouth. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and Kondo could make out the dense swirling pattern of an elaborate tattoo. “Well, look who’s here. I must say this is a surprise.” The man remained seated and resumed picking his teeth.
“I know it’s been a while,” Shimamura said.
Ozawa nodded slowly. The smile on his face was patently false. “So, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“It’s my daughter. She’s run away, and I wondered if…” Shimamura finally bowed his head. “I don’t know where to begin looking for her.”
“Why come to me?”
“I don’t know anyone else here except you.”
“Yes, we used to know each other quite well, didn’t we. At one point, we had a good business relationship.”
Shimamura hung his head but Kondo saw how he clenched his jaw.
“As you can see, my business is flourishing.” The man gestured to the neat stacks of boxes behind him. Except for a large open box full of syringes, the other boxes were sealed and labeled in English. Kondo’s eye was caught by the medical names, most of which he wasn’t familiar with. “But I am a generous man. If you’re interested in resuming our relationship, I am willing to discuss it.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“You know.”
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. You’ve got high standards, don’t you.”
“My daughter,” Shimamura said. “I don’t know who else to ask for help. She’s missing and—”
“My help?” Ozawa’s voice was cold. “You want my help?”
“I just wondered if you knew where I should look or what to—”
“I don’t know anything about things like that. How dare you. What do you take me for? I’m a businessman, not a—” Ozawa’s mouth curled in anger.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Get out. We have nothing to say to each other.” Ozawa spit his limp toothpick onto the dirt floor.
Kondo and Shimamura left the market and slowly made their way to the busy road leading to Ueno station. By this point Kondo was overcome with exhaustion. He could barely catch his breath, and every so often he found it necessary to put his hand on Shimamura’s shoulder to steady himself.
“I didn’t realize you were so sick,” Shimamura said. “You should have said something earlier. You really need to go to bed. Do you want to stop somewhere for a bowl of hot soup?”
Kondo opened his mouth to say no thank you, but instead he started coughing again. Coughing and coughing and coughing until the stabbing pain in his chest made him double over and still he could not stop. He felt his legs buckle under him, and as he was sinking to the ground, a buzzing sound filled all the cavities of his sinuses and made his entire head vibrate. It felt like his head would explode. The buzzing was fierce and menacing. It sounded just like those bombers they’d all dreaded—the B-29s were coming again. They were coming back. Hurry, hurry! They needed to get to an air-raid shelter. Dive low! Hurry! Stacks of dried seaweed and canned meat and stockings and loose tea spun up into the air and whirled around and around like spinning tops.
Kondo was lying on his back, not sure if it was day or night. He had no clear recollection of going to bed. He could feel every bump in the tatami mat through the wafer-thin futon. Although he wanted to shift position, he had no strength and couldn’t even lift his head. The last thing he recalled was the searching. Pushing through the crowds in the black market with Shimamura. Aya was lost. So was Fumi. Had they found them? Where had they gone? He felt someone tuck a blanket under his chin.
He was burning up and he was freezing cold and then he was burning up again. He couldn’t find his arms, wasn’t even sure if he still had arms. Or legs. All his limbs were plastered to the floor. He was like a starfish, flattened against the sand on the beach. Too far from the water. Flaccid and limp, all dried out, completely unable to move. His chest hurt. Every breath hurt. Every single breath was such hard work, like trying to suck air through a straw.
He tried to remember the last time he was this sick. It might have been when he was a child, when his mother had nursed him back to health, cradling his head in her arms and singing him lullabies. He wished he could rest in his mother’s arms again, but she was long dead.
He felt as if he were adrift on a dark sea. People he knew floated by, appearing out of the darkness and just as suddenly receding back into the shadows. The woman from Love Letter Alley with the broken geta swam toward him, holding a baby between her teeth like a dog. His fellow translators Yamaguchi and Tabata were there, too, laughing and bobbing up and down in the waves.
He became aware of a funny rattling and wondered what it was. Then he realized it was him. The sound was coming from somewhere inside him, a sound like tissue paper being crumpled deep inside his lungs. The stabbing pains were sharper and more frequent. It felt like a giant snake was squeezing his chest, tighter and tighter, pushing out all the air.
He was no longe
r at sea. Instead he had reached a very high place. Not heaven but maybe partway up Mount Fuji. Yes, it was like that climb up Mount Fuji that he had made as a schoolboy. Their teacher had been a bit of a sadist and forced them to climb to the summit in one long march. There was no question of breaking the climb into two days, of resting overnight partway up the mountain. The teacher said it would toughen them up, turn them into real men, the kind of men Japan would need in the future. He remembered how hard it was to breathe, the air thinner and thinner the higher they climbed, and how his legs were so heavy it took all his strength and concentration to lift each foot.
“Keep on going, Kondo-kun. Don’t give up!” his teacher had commanded. “Ganbatte! Don’t give up. Just a little farther.”
He was the last of his group to make it to the top, crawling the last few yards on his hands and knees like a beast. He collapsed on his stomach, not caring that his face was resting flat on the dirt. There was no air, but he strained to breathe.
From far away he heard more voices. Sweet, light voices. This time they sounded like the girls in his class.
Ganbatte, Kondo Sensei! Don’t give up. Ganbatte! Kondo Sensei!
He sank into darkness.
44
Their search had ended abruptly when Kondo collapsed and Shimamura had to turn his attention to the problem of how to bring his daughter’s teacher home. Asking Ozawa for help was obviously out of the question, and he couldn’t very well carry Kondo onto the train by himself. Shimamura scanned the street for a taxi, one of the charcoal-fired cabs that had begun circulating in the city, but none was in sight. Finally he managed to hail a man with a cart attached to his bicycle and for an inflated price got him to agree to take them home. Together they lifted Kondo’s limp body onto the bed of the wooden cart. The last load had been vegetables, and the surface of the cart was slick with bits of damp leaves and stems.
The Translation of Love Page 26