For days, in pursuit of Daisuke’s dream and indulging their new love, they risked passing through unfamiliar territory and ended up traversing several mountain ridges, both inflamed with a zeal verging on self-sacrifice, as if neither cared whether they ended up on the wrong side of a Tayal man’s spear, or bitten by a forest snake, as long as they had the pleasures of recording flora and fauna, bathing in the river, exchanging the little money Daisuke carried for food staples when they came upon gentle elder farmers, and sometimes simply plucking the odd vegetable from the edge of a terraced field.
Laqi was many days beyond the farthest limits of any territory she had ever seen when at last they broke out into a forest of ancient trees. Among these, one towered above the others. Daisuke had succeeded in finding his grandfather tree, an ancient specimen near the peak of a high mountain. The tree, Daisuke explained, was not the deity itself, but the place where the deity, or spirit, or kami dwelled. He felt its liveliness immediately, he said.
“Is it a good spirit?” Laqi had asked him, because they had found the tree just before sunset and she didn’t relish sleeping near a malignant specter of any kind.
“It has a tender soul, and a violent one. Like all things, like the weather or anything in nature or anything man creates, it can be helpful or harmful.”
He felt its bark with his fingertips and tried, without success, to wrap his arms around its trunk. He gazed up at its highest branches, head tipped back, mouth open, as if drinking in the light beams that ran in shafts through the forest. He bowed down, forehead to dirt, praying among its roots. He attempted to dress it in a long strip of knotted cloth torn from a shirt in his rucksack, but there was not enough cloth, no matter how thin he ripped it. He would’ve had to give up everything he was wearing.
In the end, he laughed and took Laqi’s hands, and they knelt down together at the tree’s broad base, and then reclined. Some minutes later, he touched a finger to her face and ran his hands through her hair, saying, “Perhaps someday we will conceive a child in a place like this.”
Little did either of them know that a baby was already growing in Laqi’s belly.
Daisuke had no fear of the tree kami and was eager to spend the night under its boughs. She was willing to do whatever pleased him. In the morning, she woke up first and gazed at the tree trying to feel the presence of its spirit, but could not. In the familiar territory of her own people, she’d had no trouble hearing the clack of bamboo and sensing the presence of ghosts near abandoned huts, but here, on this high, cold ridge where Daisuke felt a Japanese god, she felt nothing, or worse than nothing: a frightening emptiness. It felt like a premonition.
Daisuke must have seen it in her face when he awoke. He did not mind, but only looked at her and said, “Everything on this earth is alive, more than we can know.”
He had already taught her how to see things in nature that she had overlooked, so she trusted him about this. Whatever happened, she would try to keep her heart open to possibilities beyond what her traditions had taught her. And anyway, it did not matter. For her, the grandfather tree was less important than the adventures they’d had. They had spent what felt like a lifetime together, and she had never been happier than she’d been walking the narrowest game trails with him, spearing fish and making fires, living the life that the young men led when they left the villages for days on end.
His greatest hope achieved, Daisuke became restless and more aware that so many days and nights had passed. If he didn’t return to his camphor station in the lowlands soon, they would be alarmed, thinking he’d been slain by headhunters. He’d have no more money to spend and no paying work in the months to come.
Daisuke convinced Laqi that there was only one route to their future happiness. They would walk back most of the way, then each divert to their separate destinations, to tell their own half-truths. Arriving at her village, she would explain that she had trekked with him a single day, then intentionally lost him in the woods, and then unintentionally lost herself. No matter that so many farmers in distant valleys had seen them together and even given them the occasional winter vegetable or bamboo tube of rice; they were addled by their romantic inclinations. She would return at last, claiming to have been stranded, starving and desperate. They would take her in, and as soon as Daisuke could—six months or twelve, whenever he could find a home and a position in a bigger city that would allow a Japanese man and a Tayal woman to live together—he would come for her.
“And if it’s not on the island, but in Japan?” he asked her.
“I will go.”
On the final walk back toward the village, Laqi felt the first spatter of rain on her forehead just as she touched a hand to her still-flat belly. The rains were coming, and so was the future, including the one reminder of her adventure with Daisuke that could not be suppressed.
At home, even from Grandmother, there were surprisingly few questions. Laqi tried to tell the story she and Daisuke had agreed on, and Grandmother only listened to the broad outlines: Laqi had been lost, and she’d found her way back. The saga, half-true as it was, was eclipsed by the chaos that had enveloped the village upon Tendo’s return. The police chief had arrived with several military officers and a construction crew intent on building a bigger substation, aware of the rebellious atmosphere spreading among the local clans. Six Tayal men were arrested and all but one had been set free. No one bothered to ask where the strange visiting naturalist had gone.
But things were not so easy four months later, when the swell under Laqi’s tunic became noticeable to those who knew how to look: women only, at first.
For Daisuke, it was easy to conceal his past activities. For a girl of fifteen years, such concealment was impossible. This is the way it has always been, for men and women. Why must women remember the things men would have us forget? Because our bodies have always forced us to remember. We are overwritten with stretch marks, with broken capillaries and with scars. We bear the traces for all the choices we have made, and even more, for the choices that have been made for us, by biology and by history, the advance of men and machines from one place to another.
By the time Laqi’s protruding belly was undeniable, Tendo’s Tayal house girl, who had reverted to her traditional tunic while Tendo was gone, was properly dressed in a kimono once more. School was back in session. Tendo was even doing his official part, teaching once again about the power of the empire. This time, Laqi paid closer attention, memorizing the shape of Japan with its four major islands, listening closely to the descriptions of its cities, wondering if any of them would be her future home, studying black and white photos of women in kimonos, searching for anyone who looked like her or like Tendo’s house girl, a convincing hybrid of some kind.
Laqi’s Japanese had accelerated far beyond any other student’s, and Tendo noted this, though he and Headmaster Takeda also noted the widening of her hips, the filling out of her breasts and the awkwardness of her gait. Well, she was a barbarian, and these things happened. No one asked Laqi directly, which did not surprise her. Silence was a greater shame. Daisuke, long gone from the area, was not suspected, to her relief. Instead, blame was first cast on the village boys—boys who seemed more restless than ever, with the hunt so unsuccessful of late and the life of a warrior so restricted. Children who can’t become men find other outlets for their frustrations. This, too, is the way of the world.
Nothing was openly said, not even by Grandmother. Nothing needed to be said. It was a tale that wrote itself, in a language that needed no translation: every stomach upset, every pelvic pain, every shortened breath, every sleepless night a message from our ancestors, who could read the future and would provide no comfort. Grandmother and Laqi did not weep. The skies would weep for them, providing the earth what was needed: sometimes sacrifice; sometimes sorrow.
Puddles formed. Mold grew. Laqi’s belly bulged like a plum, but she took no joy from it, wondering if Daisuke wo
uld send for her, if he would make good on his promise. She struggled to hold in her mind the memories of those blue-sky winter days—so fresh and untainted, the trails open to their passage, the forest understory alive with metallic wings. It was warmer now, but with the constant wet she felt cold all the time, and with the heavier cloud cover, it was dark in the huts, even as spring advanced into summer. The skin on her damp toes turned white. A rash developed at the top of her thighs. Between her legs she itched.
Laqi hid during that rainy season in her damp hut, accepting the daily assignment of kitchen chores from Grandmother, not even bothering to work on her weaving anymore. The rain beat day and night on the bamboo poles of the roof, drumming the sense out of her, until she could scarcely remember her schoolroom math or her geography and even lost interest in practicing her hard-earned Japanese. She felt as dumb as the frogs who croaked incessantly at night, complaining about their wet skin, the ache of their curved backs, the clamminess of the skin between their toes. By the time the winds started, she no longer attended school. And finally, during typhoon season, on a night when the wind howled loud enough to cover Laqi’s screams, a baby was born.
“I will take you in,” Lee Kuan Chien said the first time he saw Laqi with her baby swaddled over her chest, on her way to the tram terminus.
She ignored him.
“The child will never go hungry,” he called out from his stool at the door to his shop.
“That’s a promise no man can make.”
“What’s his name?”
She didn’t reply. And she couldn’t reply. The baby had no name yet. It was becoming the style to use Japanese names, as the headmaster had done for years, and to discard Tayal names altogether. But she did not want to name the boy formally until Daisuke knew he existed. Privately, whispering into the little boy’s ear, she sometimes called him “Ryo.” Depending on the kanji used to write it, that name could mean “dragon,” “cold” or “lightness,” “distant” or “forgiveness.” The spelling and the meaning could come later.
“Last offer,” Lee Kuan Chien shouted. “It’s not too late for him to have a father.”
The old merchant had never seemed so pathetic. He already has a father, she thought, and then felt a pang of anxiety: did he? She hadn’t received any messages from Daisuke. He should have written to her by now.
It was at that moment, with her back turned to Lee Kuan Chien’s shop and her eyes fixed on the message board at the hand-cart terminus, that she saw the notice. It was printed on official government stationary and advertised something that seemed too good to be true: free, guided field trips for indigenous villagers wishing for a glimpse of more sophisticated cultures. They had offered these trips, the notice read, from the time Japan gained Taiwan from China, but only in the last years had the trips become an annual occurrence. Highland aborigines were transported to Taipei and some lucky few were sent even farther, to Tokyo.
The goal was twofold: one, for the people of Japan to be educated about aboriginal nature and culture, and two, for the aborigines to see the allure of cities, the power of civilization, and the awesome authority of the emperor, in order to return to their remote homelands and share this news, and to bring its pacifying effects to villages that had recently been less than peaceful.
Laqi didn’t have to think twice. Others might go to see the sights of Tokyo, but she was going to find Daisuke, with their baby in her arms. A year had passed since she’d seen him last. The chances of him returning precisely while she was gone worried her, but inaction was the more painful option.
Ten days later, in bustling Taipei, she began to fret about the challenges of finding a particular person in a major city. Later, on the crowded, smelly ship to Japan, as little Ryo cried and fussed and arched his back against the discomfort building in his lungs, she began to question her judgment.
But only in Tokyo was she certain that she had made a grave error. She had simply never pictured human beings gathered in these numbers: entire streets filled with bodies, packed like fish in a net. On their first day off the ship the group of thirty-six aborigines and three official guides got lost in a traffic jam of cars and people all waving Japanese and American flags and shouting “Bay-bee! Bay-bee!” at foreigners passing in a caravan, hanging out the window, all wearing matching white outfits. Laqi wondered if a local revolt was happening in front of her eyes, or if some war was breaking out between Japan and America, until the guide explained, “Baseball. That’s the American, Beibu Rusu.” The foreigners had come to play eighteen games against a newly formed Japanese team and were winning every game, but the locals were no less enthusiastic.
“How many people do you think are gathered here?” the guide asked Laqi.
She tossed out a word she’d learned in school. “A thousand.” She could visualize five of something, ten or even thirty of something. But not that number which meant ten times ten times ten.
The guide laughed. “Hundreds of thousands!”
It meant nothing to her. Or rather, it meant only noise, chaos, and so much traffic that their tour would have to miss one of its stops that day. One less cannon or statue to visit, and a chance to find somewhere to sit with Ryo nestled within her shawl, alternately nursing and napping. Thank goodness.
The crowd that turned out to honor the baseball stars suggested that the Tokyo people were friendly to visitors—even to foreigners who looked nothing like the Japanese. They loved the United States of America, even when the US of A was beating them. This was not a side of Japanese culture Laqi had ever seen: exuberant, spontaneous, friendly and most definitely loud.
But when the baseball crowds thinned and the aboriginal group continued on their own itinerary, the reception changed. This was late fall, cool and overcast. The visiting natives stood outside one government building or temple or gate or munitions plant or department store entrance after another, listening as the guides droned on and the police escorts made no effort to conceal their bored expressions. Meanwhile, local residents, passing on foot or in their giant cars, stared and pointed. They shouted at them too: not “Bay-bee!” or “Beibu Rusu!” but rather “Barbarian! Raw barbarian!”
A quarter of the people in their group, mostly people twice Laqi’s age, had facial tattoos. These women bore the brunt of the catcalls. Laqi’s unmarked face had always been to her regret, but now she saw how it saved her from the abuse suffered by the other women. They noticed, too.
In response to the shouts, the proud, older Tayal women had looked around, confused. Who were these people laughing at? Who were they calling names? It took them more than one encounter to realize the supposedly reserved citizens of Tokyo were gesturing and shouting at them. To the Tayal, the difference in manners was astounding. When the Tayal women walked into kimono shops, they did not express shock at the astronomical prices. When the Tayal women passed geishas with white face powder, scarlet lips, and blackened eyebrows, they did not laugh and point. When the Tayal women were served inedible food, they ate it, and when they were served weak and flavorless tea, they drank it. But they were not granted such courtesy in return.
From these women’s perspectives, and from Laqi’s, the behavior of the Japanese was clearly unacceptable, and yet, something in the rude comments had stung. The Tayal women who had walked tall now turned their chins into their shoulders. The free tour had been successful in one way: it had made the tourists cower in the face of the civilization they had seen.
Laqi had brought a simple parasol from home, but in the bustling of the baseball crowds, the paper parasol had torn and now offered only partial protection from the drizzle that began to fall. She did her best to keep Ryo wrapped in the sling over her chest. The tour was eight days long. By the third day, Ryo was miserable, his nose clogged and his breath wheezy. But the group had to stay together; the itinerary was fixed; no one could return to the hotel before the others, not even sick tour members. Quite a few of the
m had upset stomachs by then, from the unfamiliar food and conditions but everyone had to wake each day and be ready for the next display of military, economic, and cultural superiority.
She had imagined walking into some shop and seeing Daisuke. Or entering a police station and making an inquiry. She had no trouble being assertive, but she saw, as they toured the underground railway that threaded through the city that this was no place to find anyone. And when she merely hinted to the guard that she would like an afternoon alone, to seek medicine for her baby, he assured her that such an outing would not be safe. The inflexible itinerary and police escorts were in place for a reason. On previous guided trips, crowds had thrown things at the aborigines, or worse.
“On my own, I would not be recognized,” she said, though she knew that her clothes stood out, if not her features.
“Perhaps,” he said, scrutinizing her face for the first time. “Still, we have rules. You have no permission to wander the city.”
In Tokyo and on the boat back to Taipei, subdued conversations took place among the Tayal women about everything they had seen, and how they had been treated, took place. Quiet disagreements brewed. Information was shared. The Japanese government had not only outlawed tattooing but was now strongly encouraging tattoo removal. Two women from Laqi’s village and five other women from villages down the coast all accepted the government’s invitation to visit a doctor in Taipei before returning to their homelands.
Ryo’s lung condition had worsened on the boat home, and on the last night before arrival in Taiwan, he writhed with fever and vomited up the milk she gave him until he turned away from her breast altogether. When Laqi asked an official to help her get him to a doctor, he told her that she could go with the group having the skin procedures.
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