by Ruth Ozeki
Jiko and Muji are awesome party planners, and we spent every Buddhist nanosecond preparing the altars and arranging the flowers and dusting and deep cleaning even the tiniest corners and cracks of the temple so it would be spotless for the spirits and ancestors. We also made different kinds of special food to offer them, because they get hungry after their long journey back, and if you don’t feed them, they might get angry. Food is a big part of Obon. In Japan, there are thousands of different spirits and ghosts and goblins and monsters who can do tatari and attack you, so just to be on the safe side we were going to kick things off with a big osegaki124 ceremony, with lots of guests, as well as priests and nuns from a nearby temple who were coming to help us feed the hungry ghosts.
Muji told me the story behind this, about how back in the old days, Lord Buddha had this one disciple named Mokuren, who got really upset when he happened to see his mother hanging upside down like a side of beef in the Hell Realm of the hungry ghosts. He asked Lord Buddha how to rescue her, and Lord Buddha told him to make special offerings of food, which seemed to do the trick, and which just goes to show that kids have to look after their parents’ well-being, even when their parents are dead and hanging upside down from meat hooks in hell. Old Mokuren was a pretty amazing dude, with lots of supapawa! like being able to walk through walls, and read people’s minds, and talk to the dead. I would like to walk through walls and read people’s minds and talk to the dead. That would be cool. I’m just a beginner, but as you know, I think it’s important to have concrete goals in life, and walking through a wall seems doable, don’t you think?
Anyway, finally we had everything ready, and the night before the first guests arrived, Jiko and Muji and I took a bath together so we would be clean and extra spiffy, and I got to shave both their heads with the razor. Jiko and Muji are superstrict about personal hygiene, and they never let their hair grow for more than five days, which is about an eighth of an inch, and sometimes they let me help. I liked doing it. I liked the way the stiff little stubbles came off in front of the blade, leaving the skin all nice and smooth and shiny. Muji’s stubbles were tiny and black, like dead ants falling off a clean white page, but old Jiko’s stubbles were bright and sparkling silver, like glitter or fairy dust.
There’s a prayer for shaving heads, too, that goes like this:
As I shave the stubble off my head
I pray with all beings
that we can cut off our selfish desires
and enter the heaven of true liberation.
That night I was so excited, thinking about the arrival of the ghosts, I stayed up until Muji finally made me go to bed, but as soon as she and Jiko were asleep, I sneaked out again. I don’t know what I expected. I walked through the garden and went to sit on the top step of the temple, under the gate, to wait. The stone step felt cold and damp through my pajamas, and all I could hear was the sound of the frogs and the night insects, singing.
Some people think that the night is sad because it is dark and reminds them of death, but I don’t agree with that point of view at all. Personally I like the night, especially at the temple, when Muji turns off all the lights and only the moon and the stars and the fireflies are left, or when it’s cloudy and the world is so black you can’t even see your hand in front of you.
Everything seemed to grow blacker as I sat there, except for the fireflies whose tiny pulsing lights drew arcs through the dark summer air. On off . . . on off . . . on off . . . on off. The longer I stared, the dizzier I got, until I felt as if the world was tipping and pitching me forward down the mountainside into the long throat of the night. I put my hand down to touch the step to steady myself, but instead of the cold stone, I felt something prickly that moved like electricity under my hand. I screeched and pulled away, but of course it was only Chibi, who had come out to greet the ghosts with me. He froze like a cartoon cat with his green eyes as round as glowing coins, but when I laughed and petted his electric fur, he pressed up against my knee and pushed his head into my hand.
“Baka ne, Chibi-chan!”125 I said, my heart still pounding. Even though I could barely make out his shape, it felt good to have him there.
A gust of wind rattled the bamboo, and it felt like spirits moving. What would a ghost look like, anyway? Would it even look human? Would it be big and fat like a daikon monster? Would it have a tremendously long nose like a red-faced tengu?126 Would it be green like a goblin or disguised like a fox, or would it be more like a headless man-sized lump of decaying human flesh, with massive slabs of fat for arms and legs and a hideous smell? These ones are called nuppeppo. Muji told me about them. They hang around old abandoned temples and graveyards and they enjoy long, aimless walks after dark. Maybe my dad was turning into a nuppeppo. And there are other ghosts who look like dead human men with bad haircuts, whose bloodshot eyeballs pop from their sockets, and whose skin peels off their bones like lichen. They are dressed in cheap polyester business suits, and they hang from trees in the Suicide Forest, slowly turning. These are the ghosts that scare me the most because they look a little like my dad, and just when I was starting to freak myself out, I felt something settle beside me. I turned, and there he was. Dad was sitting there next to me on the stone step, and even though his eyes weren’t popping and he wasn’t dressed in his business suit, still I knew that he was dead, that he had killed himself at last, and this was his ghost, coming to let me know.
“Dad?” I tried to whisper, but my mouth was so dry that no sound came out.
He stared off into the darkness.
“Dad, is that you?” My voice still wouldn’t make any sound, so my words were only thoughts in my head. No wonder he couldn’t hear me. He stared off into the darkness. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, tried again.
“Otosan,” I said, speaking in Japanese this time. The word escaped through my lips like a tiny bubble. My dad’s ghost turned his head slightly, and I noticed now that he seemed really young, and he was wearing a uniform of some kind, with a cap on his head. It looked like a school uniform, only a different color. He still didn’t say anything. It occurred to me that maybe with ghosts you have to be superpolite, even if they are your parents, otherwise you’ll offend them, so I tried again in my most formal and polite schoolgirl voice.
“Yasutani Haruki-sama de gozaimasu ka?”127
He heard this time, and slowly turned to look at me, and when he spoke, his voice was so soft I could barely hear him over the wind.
“Who are you?” he asked.
He didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t believe it! My dad was dead and he had already forgotten all about me. My throat clenched and my nose started to itch, the way it does when I am trying not to cry. I took another deep breath.
“I am Yasutani Naoko,” I announced, trying to sound bold and self-confident. “I am very pleased to see you.”
“Ah,” he said. “The pleasure is mine.” His words were thin and blue, curling like the smoke from the burning tip of an incense stick.
Something was wrong. I didn’t want to be rude and stare, but I couldn’t help it. He looked like a young version of my dad, only a couple of years older than me, but he sounded different, and the clothes were all wrong, too. And that’s when I figured it out: if this ghost who had answered to my father’s name wasn’t my father, then he must be my father’s uncle, the suicide bomber, Yasutani Haruki #1.
“Have we met before?” he seemed to be asking.
“I don’t believe so,” I replied. “I believe I am your great-niece. I believe I am the daughter of your nephew, Yasutani Haruki Number Two, who was named for you.”
The ghost nodded. “Is that so?” he said. “I wasn’t aware that I had a nephew, never mind a great-niece. How quickly time flies . . .”
We both got silent then. Actually, I didn’t have a choice, because I’d run out of polite phrases. I’m not very good at the real formal Japanese because I grew up in Sunnyvale, and the ghost of Haruki #1 didn’t seem all that chatty, either. He seemed kind
of moody and withdrawn, which made sense given what Jiko had told me about him liking French philosophy and poetry. I wished I’d paid more attention when my dad was reading to me about the Existentialists, because then maybe I could have said something intelligent to him, but the only French poetry I knew was the refrain to a song by Monique Serf called “Jinsei no Itami,”128 which maybe wasn’t the best choice to sing to a dead person.
Le mal de vivre
Le mal de vivre
Qu’il faut bien vivre
Vaille que vivre129
I hummed into the darkness, singing the words under my breath even though I wasn’t quite sure what they all meant. I thought I heard him chuckle next to me, or maybe it was the wind, but when I looked over to where he had been sitting, Haruki #1 was gone.
3.
Stupid Nao! What a foolish girl! There I was, sitting with the ghost of my dead great-uncle, who just happened to be a kamikaze fighter pilot in World War II, and who was probably the most fascinating person I will ever get to meet, and what did I do? Sing some stupid French chanson to him! How idiotic is that??? He must have thought I was just another typical dumb teenager, and his time on earth was precious, so why waste even a moment of it with me? Better to just shimmer off and hang with someone who can think of more interesting conversational topics.
What is wrong with me? I could have asked him about all sorts of things. I could have asked him about his interests and his hobbies. I could have asked him if only depressed people cared about philosophy, and if reading philosophy books ever helped. I could have asked him about what it felt like to be ripped from his happy life and forced to become a suicide bomber, and if the other guys in his unit picked on him because he wrote French poetry. I could have asked him how he felt when he woke up on the morning of his mission, which was also his last morning on earth. Did he have a big cold fish dying in the hollow of his stomach? Or was he filled with a luminous calm that emanated from him so that everyone around him stood back in awe, knowing that he was ready to take to the sky?
I could have asked him what it felt like to die.
Stupid, baka Nao Yasutani.
4.
In the morning after breakfast, when Muji and Jiko were busy greeting the first carload of priests from the main temple who had come to help with the osegaki ceremony the next day, I sneaked off to Jiko’s study. She doesn’t mind me being there, so I don’t know why it felt like sneaking. It’s my favorite room in the temple, overlooking the garden, with a low desk where she likes to write, and a small bookshelf with a lot of fat old religious and philosophy books with faded cloth bindings. Jiko told me that the philosophical ones belonged to Haruki #1, from when he was in university. I tried to read some of them, but the kanji in the Japanese books was crazy difficult, and the other books were in languages like French and German. Even the ones in English didn’t sound like any English I ever heard. Honestly, I don’t know if there are still people who can read books like these anymore, but if you took out all the pages, they’d make great diaries.
Opposite the bookshelf, at the back of the room, was the family altar. A scroll with the image of Shaka-sama hung at the top, surrounded by the ihai130 for all our ancestors and a book with all their names. Below that were different shelves for flowers and candles and incense burners and offering trays with fruit and tea and candy.
On one of the shelves, just off to one side, was a box wrapped in a white cloth and three small black-and-white photographs of Jiko’s dead children, Haruki, Sugako, and Ema. I’d seen these pictures before but I never paid any attention. They were just stiff, old-fashioned strangers, time beings from another world who meant nothing to me. But now everything was different.
I stood on my tiptoes and reached across the altar for the picture of Haruki. In the photo, he looked younger than his ghost, a pale student with a school cap and a poetic expression, frozen under glass. He also looked a little like my dad, before my dad got flabby and stopped getting haircuts. The glass was dusty, so I rubbed it with the hem of my skirt, and just as I was wiping, something in his face seemed to move a little. Maybe his jaw tightened. A tiny spot of light seemed to shine from his eye. If he had turned his head and looked at me and spoken I wouldn’t have been surprised, and so I waited, but nothing else happened. He just kept on staring off toward a faraway place beyond the camera, and then the moment was gone, and he was just an old picture in a frame again.
I turned the frame over and saw there was a date on the back, Showa 16. I counted back on my fingers. Nineteen forty-one.
He was still in high school. Just a couple of years older than me. He could have been my senpai.131 I wondered if we would have been friends and if he would have protected me from the bullies. I wondered if he would have even liked me. Probably not. I’m too stupid. I wondered if I would have liked him.
One of the fasteners on the back of the frame was loose, but when I tried to push it into place, the whole thing came apart in my hands. I was like, oh, shit, because I really didn’t want Jiko to know I’d broken it, so I tried to line the pieces up again, but something was jamming it and getting in the way. I was really sweating now. I thought maybe I could hide it, or just leave it on the floor and blame Chibi, but instead I sat down on the tatami and took it apart again, and that’s when I discovered the letter. It was only one page, folded and tucked in between the photo and the cardboard backing. I unfolded it. The handwriting was strong and beautiful, like Jiko’s, in that old-fashioned way that’s hard to read, so I folded it back up and stuck it in my pocket. I didn’t mean to steal it. I just needed a dictionary and some time to figure out what it said. The frame was still broken, but I stuck the photograph back and bent one of the fasteners, which sort of held it together. Before I put it back up on the altar I held it close to my face.
“Haruki Ojisama!” I whispered, in my most sincere and polite Japanese. “I’m very sorry I broke your picture frame, and I’m very sorry I was such a fool. Please don’t be mad at me for taking your letter. Please come back.”
5.
Dearest Mother,
This is my last night on earth. Tomorrow I will tie a cloth around my forehead, branded with the Rising Sun, and take to the sky. Tomorrow I will die for my country. Do not be sad, Mother. I picture you crying, but I’m not worthy of your tears. How often have I wondered what I would feel in this moment, and now I know. I am not sad. I am relieved and happy. So dry your tears. Take good care of yourself and my dear sisters. Tell them to be good girls, to be cheerful and to live happy lives.
This is my last letter to you, and my formal letter of farewell. The Naval Authority will send it to you along with the notice of my death and my auxiliary pension to which you will now be entitled. I’m afraid it won’t be very much, and my only regret is that I can do so little for you and my sisters with my worthless life.
I am also sending you the juzu you gave me, my watch, and K’s copy of the Shōbōgenzō, which has been my constant companion these last few months.
How can I express my gratitude to you, dear Mother, for struggling to raise such an unworthy son? I cannot.
There are so many things I cannot express or send to you. It is too late. By the time you read this, I will be dead, but I will die believing that you know my heart and will not judge me harshly. I am not a warlike man, and everything I do will be in accordance with the love of peace that you have taught me.
Soon the waves will quench this fire
—my life—burning in the moonlight.
Listen! Can you hear the voices
calling from the bottom of the sea?
Empty words, you know, but my heart is full of love.
Your son,
Navy Second Sub-Lieutenant Yasutani Haruki
Ruth
1.
“Le mal de vivre,” Benoit repeated. He was a short man, wide-faced and barrel-chested, wearing a pair of filthy Carhartts held up by red suspenders over a torn flannel shirt, and a toque jammed down over his curly bla
ck hair. His wiry beard was streaked with grey. He held a cluster of wine bottles in one large hand and gripped a Tanqueray bottle in the other. He stared past Ruth’s head into some middle distance where French verse seemed to reside. The din and clatter of the recycling center seemed to quiet down just long enough to let him speak.
“Yes, of course it means the pain of life,” he said. “Or the sickness, or perhaps the evil of living, as in ‘les fleurs du mal.’ Or, simply, the sorrow of life, contrary to la joie de vivre.”
He paused for a moment to savor the sound of the words before tossing the bottles into the square hole of the crusher. The clatter of shattering glass was deafening. “Why?” he shouted.
“Oh, nothing,” Ruth said. She felt suddenly unsure about how much she should tell Benoit, how much she would be able to convey over the racket. “They’re just the words of a song I heard.” How to explain the circumstances: that they were lyrics from a song being sung to a ghost; that she’d read them in a diary she’d found in a barnacle-encrusted freezer bag on the beach? She wanted to ask him for help translating the French composition book, and she had brought it along with her, but it all seemed too difficult. The dump wasn’t a great place for nuanced conversations on a Saturday morning.
In the parking lot behind her, pickup trucks sloshed through the mud to the Dumpsters or backed up into the bays. Even though the transport center had recently introduced a garbage pickup program, islanders still liked to do things the old way. They liked to come to the dump to dispose of their waste personally. They liked to haul their sodden boxes of cans and plastic bottles to the recycling table, sort their paper from their cardboard, and hurl glass into the crusher. They liked to browse through the racks and shelves at the Free Store, which was the closest thing the island had to a department store. A trip to the dump was like a trip to the mall. It was what passed for entertainment on a Saturday morning. Children ran around outside, pretending to play World of Warcraft amid the dripping wreckage of rusting cars and doorless refrigerators. Dreadlocked punks scavenged for chains and derailleurs in the tangle of bicycles. Crows and ravens and bald eagles circled overhead, fighting for territory and meat scraps.