by H. K. Bush
“Here’s the Leaves of Grass, Sensei. There are lots of other things in there. What would you like me to do with it all?”
With his free arm, he actually handled the leather-like covering of the volume, admiring it one final time. “This is for you.” He breathed in sharply, and actually pushed the book at me. “There are other first editions in the safe, all for you. Fanshawe, some of the others I’ve shown you, the Stowe, Emerson, Dickens, the rest. Old Man and the Sea. Of course, Pound’s copy of Moby-Dick, Yu-san. Don’t leave that one. Take as many of them as you can save.”
He winced, his breathing labored. “Since our previous meeting, there are some … new materials on Pound and …” He stammered, his voice still firm, but growing faint. “They are in one of the green boxes, in the safe. Do you remember those strange haiku?” He grimaced. “The blood moons? From Joel.”
I was amazed that, pinned underneath debris from his fallen roof, on the very edge of death, he felt it necessary to speak in detail about these treasures, but he did. “Take those files, Yu-san. And don’t forget about … Nook Farm. There’s a large binder of … materials there. Very … crucial. Perhaps some day you can … solve the puzzle. It may be part of some … occultic formula. Save those, they are original and unique. Very valuable!” He actually chuckled at this last comment. “You must try to solve that mystery, on your own, I’m afraid!”
“Yes, Sensei, of course,” I assured him. I had no clue why he referred to Nook Farm just then—the genteel neighborhood in West Hartford, home to Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Isabella Beecher, and others. Maybe just his mind wandering.
“And I want you to have the Hemingway files also, Yu-san. They are in there, marked, as I showed them to you last year. And be sure to take the Hemingway valise, as a memento of our times together. It must be here among the clutter somewhere.” Another smile. “Perhaps you can play the joke on someone else, the one I played on you!” A weak chortle. “I wish I had those other books, On the Road and Howl, here for you; the ones you ‘borrowed’ from the library. I know how much you fancy them. But anything after the War is not so valuable to me.” I also now laughed, with tears in my eyes. Still razzing me, right to the end.
He drew in a ragged breath. “Everything else in the safe should go to Mika-san. There are some files in Japanese, look for those. Find the materials on Mishima. And there is … much cash, and some jewels, and other documents of value.” More strained, raspy breathing. “Yu-san. I must tell you, I regret … interfering in your … friendship with Mika. I know how … seldom one can approach … true romance. Yes, I do regret that.” He was growing short of breath. “But my brother … he would never allow such a thing. And he is … quite ruthless, as you must know. I am sorry for that.”
He was running out of time. “Don’t bother talking, Sensei. You’re losing strength.”
He even smiled again. “We must have our meeting, Yu-san, remember.” He breathed in and out, laboring now. “I must insist. As for the other documents in the cabinets— well, I had hoped to give them to the university. For now, I can only say that I leave it all to your discretion. They are for the Americans, I should say. The most important things are in the safe. Is there more water?”
I held the bottle to his lips again. He drank slowly, finishing the bottle. Again, it strengthened him for the moment. “You know of my obsessions with Hemingway, Yu-san. But he is not the author of my favorite book in America. Do you know what that is?” As he quizzed me one last time. I tried to hold back the tears, but failed.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “No, Sensei. What is your favorite American book?”
Again he reached out and touched the green volume. “You are holding it in your hands.” It seemed to give him considerable pleasure to inform me of this.
“Leaves of Grass? Why Sensei, you surprise me! It turns out that you’re a hopeless romantic, after all!” By then tears were streaming down my face.
He noted my attempt at gently mocking him, and faked surprise, his eyes growing wide for just a moment. “Hopeless? Me? No, Yu-san. Once again, you have misunderstood. True romantics are of all people the most hopeful. That silly phrase—‘hopeless romantic’—is a sign of a weak mind. Have you learned nothing from me?” he joked, instructing me to the very last, but it was nearly over. He grew silent for a long while. I took his hand, and he did not resist.
His voice was now a mere whisper, but he kept talking. “Whitman knew some things, and his words ennobled people. He forced us to think about what we might be in the world. Without words, the people remain powerless. Without beauty, life becomes ugly and unlivable.” A brief moment passed. “It is why both of us ‘romantics’ became teachers of literature, I’m sure. Sowing in hope. Otherwise, the words are just … scratches of ink on paper.”
His face tightened, he gasped for breath, then exhaled. “Is it too late to say that I’m sorry we lost this last year together? You have been … yes, I think, a good friend to me. And I am sorry to think you felt I lied to you, or mislead you.” He stammered. “In fact, I did.”
“No, Sensei. I understand it all now.” And in that moment, I did understand.
He was losing steam, but still he kept on. “Yu-jin. A companion. I recall the day I named you. Do you remember?”
I choked back a sob. “Yes, Sensei. I remember everything.”
A long silence ensued. “Perhaps you could read to me from that book, Yu-san.”
I nodded. I could barely speak, but I took a deep breath and opened the volume to the first page and began to read:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you….
Sensei grabbed my arm with what little energy remained. “No, not that one. Read to me from ‘The Sleepers.’”
It happened also to be one of my favorite poems. But since the first edition does not have the titles of poems included, or a table of contents, it took me a minute to find it. And so I began to read aloud again, the meticulous, loping lines casting a spell on us both, like a hypnotic trance.
I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly
stepping and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.
Sensei, his eyes now shut, was mumbling something to himself. He flinched fitfully, then seemed to settle down. A wan smile formed itself on his dry lips. I continued reading from the poem.
I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.
Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.
I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers.
I stopped another moment, and looked down at Sensei now. And I could tell that he was gone. It was finished, and I knew it.
I closed the book and placed it gently beside him, and wiped the tears away from my eyes. Suddenly I realized that the fire was raging, out of control in a nearby room. I tried to figure out how to leave this gruesome scene, and the only thing I could think of was to cover him up somehow. I stumbled to my feet, swung the flashlight around and into the hall, and noticed a light green curtain on the floor. I pulled it into the room and covered the rema
ins of my teacher, my friend.
The smoke was thickening, and I knew that my time at Sensei’s house was quickly coming to an end. The first thing I grabbed was the copy of Leaves of Grass, just within the reach of his right hand. I looked for the old valise, which I figured should be across the room somewhere. Hemingway’s valise, as Sensei liked to call it. Hunting through the debris, I noticed its faded leather gleaming from beneath a table. It had been badly scratched but was in working order, so I pulled it free, and threw the old volume of Whitman inside. Archivists would faint with horror to see how I treated Whitman’s treasure that day.
Locating the valise had eaten into the window of opportunity I had remaining in the house. I looked down the hallway and saw the glare of fire from another room at the other end of the house. I understood that it was now a matter of rescuing as much of the materials as I could, in whatever time might remain. I took the valise into the room with the safe, drew out the Hemingway files, and threw them in with the Whitman, with a few of the other books—Fanshawe, Moby-Dick, Representative Men, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. There was the heavy green library box, with the Pound materials he had mentioned: a thick file folder, which I took out and put into the valise. I rooted around and located one marked “Nook Farm”—Sensei had made special mention of that one as he faded away. On top I placed Hemingway’s signed copy of The Old Man and the Sea. Being full, I now closed it, clasping the locks of the case. I set the valise outside the doorway, and went back to the closet.
I needed to rescue whatever I could from the safe, first of all, to present to Mika. It took several minutes. I located a few boxes, and filled them with the contents of the safe, then carried them out towards the back. First, I cleared the path of the fallen screens, to create a safer passage out to a back door, which I managed to twist open. It led into the garden, which was now surprisingly peaceful. All of this took even more precious seconds. Then I carried out the boxes for Mika, stacked them near the back of the garden at a safe distance from the building, and headed back inside. The hallway was passable, but I knew I had only another trip or two into the recesses of the house before I would need to abandon ship. My eyes stung, and I was coughing from the smoke. A fire was now raging in the kitchen and back apartment where I had spotted Omori’s body.
I went back to the storage closet and started going through the cabinets and boxes frantically. I figured I owed it to Sensei to rescue whatever I could, and especially to find the most valuable and the most rare of his items. This was a considerable task, and ultimately impossible: the heat was gathering, and Sensei had many wonderful possessions. The things in the safe were simply his favorite items; many other treasures were in those neat green boxes. There were letters written by Edith Wharton, a diary of a Civil War general from Missouri, a volume of autographed poems by Yeats, the manuscript of an unpublished essay by Mark Twain. Thankfully, many of the boxes were labeled as to contents, so I scanned quickly through a couple stacks and pulled out the ones that seemed most promising.
Given a day of leisure to go through the stuff, perhaps I might have chosen other things than what ultimately was salvaged from the flames. But time was running out, and black smoke and heat began filling my lungs. I decided it was time to cut my losses, so I started dragging the boxes I had set aside into the hallway. On the polished wood floor, now cleared of the screens that had earlier been in the way, I could easily drag out most of the things I had set aside, and so now began doing it. But suddenly, as I looked up at the back door, a human figure appeared in silhouette. I froze.
“What are you doing?” a voice asked, in a broken, yet familiar English.
It took a few confused seconds for me to realize that it was Miyamoto. “Put those things back where you found them,” he shouted, moving into the house.
I did drop them to the floor, and then stood my ground and faced him. “Sensei gave me these things. He’s dead now, killed in the quake.”
“Is he? And you expect me to believe that he has given you these valuables that you are now carrying out of his house? How convenient.” He was now moving slowly toward me, with his arms held at both sides, menacingly I thought.
“Yes, he did. What are you going to do about it?” It was hard to think, hard to talk.
The blaze intensified. Miyamoto glanced into the kitchen, then the room with Omori-san. “You should have known your place, Jack-san. You should have stayed away. Now, I cannot allow you to leave.”
I suddenly recalled that Miyamoto had once boasted to me that he studied the martial arts. He did not have the appearance of a very intimidating fighter, but I also knew that my own prowess was fairly limited. Anyway, the house was on the verge of total collapse, due to the growing fire, and I knew we were now in grave danger.
“Help me get these things out of here. Let me take what Sensei has given me, and you can have the rest, I don’t care. Just move out of the way!”
“I will NOT move out of the way. If you will kindly move away from those boxes now, I will permit you to leave.”
We were now less than ten feet apart. Flames were literally leaping out of the room just behind Miyamoto, and I knew there was no other way out. I put myself instinctively into a defensive posture. “Get out of my way,” I told him.
With that he leaped toward me, and to the best of my ability I thrust him to one side, into the wall. He scrambled up and punched me, sending my head snapping back. Stunned, I stood there letting him hit me again. But then my anger rose. He awoke within me the slumbering animosity that I held, not only for Miyamoto himself, but for all the rat fink nonsense he represented, all the repression of institutional Japan. And for his threats, and for getting between me and Mika. I remembered the creepy night he showed up at my place, with his henchman, Endo, looming behind him. I didn’t give him a chance to hit me again. I reared back and struck him in the nose. I felt his blood spray as his nose cracked sideways. And then I smashed my first into his face again, this time for Guido, I guess. Then the third time, I caught him square on the jaw with a powerful left. I would have kept pounding him, but he fell to the ground and the back of his skull cracked against the doorframe leading into the hallway. His eyes opened wide momentarily, and he jerked upward. I saw his tongue jut wildly out of his mouth for a fraction of an instant. Then he fell backward again, eyes open and mouth closed, motionless now but for one strong exhalation.
I figured he was just dazed and resumed pulling the boxes out the back door and into the garden. Flames from the kitchen singed my hair and jacket, but I decided to make one last pass through the rooms. Several boxes remained that I desperately wanted to save, but I just couldn’t do it. The walls would surely be coming down any second. Then I realized the safe was still standing open. Though it was by now nearly empty of its treasures, instinct told me, weirdly, that I must shut and lock it, to remove any suspicions that might linger in the minds of curious investigators whenever they would get around to Sensei’s property. Maybe it would preserve the remaining valuables, I thought. So I quickly closed and locked the safe.
Finally, though I had second thoughts, I knew I had to pull Miyamoto to safety outside. I shook him, trying to revive him. He was out cold, barely breathing. I saw around the back of his head a pool of what looked like black blood, swelling almost imperceptibly. As much as I disliked the guy, I knew I had to get him out of the house so he wouldn’t burn to death or suffocate in the smoke. Turning his body headfirst toward the back of the building, I towed him down the hallway. I had to pick him up to get him out the door, but I managed to do it. In the garden, I laid him out on his back. I pulled a few of the curtains off the back windows, and covered him up in the January chill—and yes, I left him right there in the cold. He was nearly lifeless, and blood was still seeping from his head wound.
Now outside for good, I could see that other homes in the area were facing similar emergencies. I had many opportunities to be a hero that day—to help Sensei’s neighbors, most of them old folks like him. And as I lef
t the yard with the first load, heading for my car, I thought I even heard Miyamoto say something. Maybe he yelled out in agony, or maybe it was a neighbor, or just my imagination. But I imagined later that I could hear him calling for help. “Taskette! Jack-san, tanomu yo!”
But I had to get the boxes and other items out to my car, which was a big job since I’d had to park on the other side of that boulder, a good way down the hill. So I started going back and forth, lugging stacks of boxes. It took four or five trips, but I finally managed to get everything into the car.
On the last trip, I checked Miyamoto. He was dead. Another large puddle of blood had formed around his skull; the clumsy fall into the door jamb must have fractured it. I shook my head, stood for a moment with palm on my forehead as if considering my options, then decided there was nothing I could do for him. I had made my choice about what was valuable and what was not. So I turned and left the property. Back at the car, I got in, started it up, and headed back down the road out of the neighborhood.
As Kobe burned, I decided to get as far away from it as I possibly could. With a car full of precious documents, I made another decision, and headed up into the Rokko Mountains that looked down upon the vast area of destruction below. I drove north, toward central Japan, and away from the coast.
It’s funny, the things I remember about that day and the things I don’t, or the many things that remain blurry. I remember every word of Sensei’s last lesson, and the sad look in his eyes as he lamented the time we’d spent angry and apart. I remember the voices calling for help. I remember the rage that washed over me as Miyamoto launched himself at me. I remember the impact of my fist connecting with his face. I remember telling myself it was not really my fault that he was dead. (Maybe that’s true, maybe not.) And I remember the cold, logical decision to close and lock the safe. The decision not to recover Miyamoto’s dead body. And how I valued, instead, the boxes of letters and manuscripts above the men and women in the damaged, smoldering houses surrounding me. All “for the words,” as Sensei might put it. Shouldn’t I feel some remorse?