A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

  The first thing they taught us was how to kill ourselves.

  The words were quiet but clear. I looked around but there was no one there, just the late-afternoon sunlight casting shadows across the garden, and the bamboo rustling in the breeze. I recognized the voice, though.

  Maybe you think that’s strange? We were soldiers, but even before they showed us how to kill our enemies, they taught us how to kill ourselves.

  A small wind blew through the garden, causing the water in the pond to shiver. A dragonfly, resting there, flew away.

  “Is that you?” I whispered as softly as I could. “Haruki Ojisama . . . ?”

  They gave us rifles. They showed us how to use our big toe to pull the trigger. How to lodge the tip of the barrel in the V of our jawbone so it wouldn’t slip . . .

  My hand rose to my face, and my fingers brushed the underside of my chin.

  Here.

  My fingers folded themselves into the shape of a gun, thumb up, index and middle fingers pressing into the spot right beneath my jaw. I couldn’t move.

  That’s right. We were supposed to kill ourselves rather than allow ourselves to be taken prisoner by the Meriken.134 They made us practice this over and over again, and if we hesitated or didn’t get it right, the officers would kick us and beat us with batons until we fell down. Well, they would beat us anyway, no matter if we did it right or wrong. It was to build our fighting spirit.

  He laughed, a ghostly chuckle.

  My hand dropped to my side.

  The wind died then and the air was still and silent. Inside the room, the old guy was still kneeling, and I could tell by the way his body shook and his head hung down like a broken tulip that he was crying. Jiko just sat there in the corner with her eyes closed, patiently waiting, and for the first time I heard the faint rhythmic sound of her juzu beads, tapping out their tiny blessings.

  When the voice spoke again, I could barely hear it. That box on the altar. Next to the photographs. Do you see it?

  On the altar was a box wrapped in a white cloth. I’d seen it there every day. It looked like a present.

  “Yes.”

  Do you know what’s inside?

  One day when I was helping Muji clean the altar, I’d asked her the same question. She said the box contained the remains of Haruki #1, but when I thought it over, it didn’t make any sense. The word she used was ikotsu,135 but if Haruki #1 died by crashing his kamikaze plane into a battleship, how could there be any leftover bones? I mean, even if there were any, who would have picked up them up? And where would they have picked them up from? The ocean floor? But Muji wouldn’t answer my questions, and I couldn’t ask Jiko because it wouldn’t be polite to upset her. Was this a good question to ask a ghost?

  “I think . . . they’re your ikotsu, right? That’s what Muji told me, but it doesn’t make sense . . .”

  I heard the sound again, like an old wooden door makes when it rattles in the wind.

  No sense. No sense at all . . .

  And then he was gone. Don’t ask me how I knew. I could just tell by the absence. It was hot, but I was shivering and the little hairs were standing up on my arms, and I was afraid I’d pissed him off again with my stupid question. Inside the room, the old soldier took a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes, and then he slowly pivoted on his knees so that he was facing Jiko, and the two of them bowed to each other. It took them forever to stand up again after all that bowing, which gave me plenty of time to run away.

  3.

  Obon lasted for a total of four days, and it’s a crazy time for a couple of nuns. After osegaki was over and all the visitors had left, old Jiko and Muji and I got busy making the rounds of danka houses to do Buddhist services in front of all the family altars. Back in the old days, they used to walk to all the houses, but when Jiko finally turned one hundred, she said it would be okay if they drove in a car instead. Muji had to get her driver’s license, which is really tough in Japan and costs a lot of money and takes a long time, even if you’re good at driving, which Muji isn’t. In fact, she is really bad at driving. The temple has an old car that one of the danka donated, and I sat next to Muji in front, and Jiko sat in back. Muji gripped the wheel with both hands so tightly her knuckles turned white, and leaned forward so far her nose almost pressed against the windshield. She stalled the car twice trying to start it, and even when she got it going, she was so nervous she kept hitting the brake. I could see why. The mountain roads were twisty and narrow, and every time we saw another car coming, she had to pull off onto the nonexistent shoulder to pass. And whenever that happened, old Muji would start bowing politely to the oncoming driver, bobbing her head up and down and almost plunging the car off the side of the mountain. I’ve never been so scared in my life. One time I looked behind at Jiko, figuring she must be having a heart attack or something, but she was fast asleep. I don’t know how she does it. Once we got to the parishioner’s house, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to help them, so mostly I just stayed outside and talked with people’s cats.

  I still had Haruki #1’s letter in my pocket. By then I’d borrowed old Jiko’s kanji dictionary from off her desk and had pretty much read the whole thing, except for a couple of words I didn’t understand. At night I sneaked out to the temple gates and waited in a cloud of fireflies, hoping he would come once more, but he never did.

  4.

  After Obon, it was just the three of us again, but before we could settle back into our routine, summer vacation was over, and I only had a few days left before my dad came to pick me up and take me home. I was really bummed, so Jiko and Muji decided to make a little going-away party for me. Not that I’m a big fan of parties, but we decided to make pizza, which came out pretty badly because none of us knew how to make crusts, but we didn’t mind. We had chocolates for dessert, because old Jiko really loved chocolates, and we also decided to sing some karaoke.136 It was Muji’s idea. By then one of the danka had given us an old computer and helped us get online, and I found a pretty good karaoke website where you can download songs, and even though we didn’t have a microphone, we were still able to sing and dance and make a lot of noise. We took turns, and then we voted on which song each person sang best.

  My best hit was the old Madonna classic “Material Girl,” and I did my dance number on the engawa, framed by the sliding doors, which looked like a stage. I translated the words for Jiko and she thought the whole thing was hilarious. Muji sang an R. Kelly number called “I Believe I Can Fly,” but when she sang it it sounded like “I Bereave I Can Fry,” which totally cracked me up. But Jiko won the all-around best hit of the evening with “Impossible Dream,” which is a song from an old Broadway musical. I’m not a big fan of old Broadway musicals, but Jiko really liked this song, and even though her voice isn’t so strong anymore, she sang it with real feeling. It’s a sentimental song about how it’s okay to have impossible goals, because if you follow your unreachable star no matter how hopeless or far, your heart will be peaceful when you’re dead, even though you might be scorned and covered with scars like I am while you’re still alive. I could really identify with the lyrics, and Jiko’s quivery old voice was beautiful to hear. She really put her heart into it, and I think maybe she sang it for me.

  That night, she came to my room to say good night, slipping along the engawa and in through the sliding doors like a breeze from the garden, so quietly I didn’t hear her coming. She knelt next to my futon and put her hand on my forehead. Her old hand was dry and cool and light, and I closed my eyes, and before I knew it, I was telling her all about Haruki #1’s ghost, how he’d visited me on the temple steps on the first night of Obon but he left because I couldn’t think of any interesting conversational topics and I sang him a dumb French chanson instead. And how I felt so stupid and disrespectful, I had to visit his photograph on the altar so I could apologize, and while I was holding the picture his face seemed to come alive, but then I broke the frame and his letter fell out, so I took it. An
d how I begged him to come back, and he did, and he told me about how when he was a soldier the officers used to beat him up to build his fighting spirit, and he showed me how to shoot myself in the throat using my toe rather than be taken prisoner by the Merikens, but then he went away and I never saw him again.

  I had my eyes closed, and it was like I was talking to myself in the darkness, or maybe not even talking, maybe just thinking. I could feel Jiko’s hand on my forehead, drawing my thoughts out of my mind and holding me down to earth at the same time, so I wouldn’t fly away. This is another one of old Jiko’s superpowers. She can pull a story out of anybody, and sometimes you don’t even need to open your mouth, because she can hear the thoughts that are going through your crazy mind before your voice can even find them. When I finished my story, I opened my eyes and she took her hand away. She seemed to be looking off into the distance, out into the garden, where the frogs were singing in the pond. Over and over their croaking voices swelled like a wave and then fell silent.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s how they were trained. They were student soldiers and very bright. The military men despised them. They bullied them and beat them every day. They broke their bones and crushed their spirits.”

  The word she used was ijime, and hearing it, suddenly I felt very small. Me and my stupid classmates. My little pricks and pokes and stabbings. I thought I knew all about ijime, but it turned out I didn’t know anything about it at all. I felt ashamed, but I wanted to know more.

  “But it didn’t work, right?” I asked. “They didn’t crush Haruki Ojisama’s fighting spirit, did they?”

  Jiko shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe they did.”

  I thought about it some more. “Americans were the enemies,” I said. “That’s so weird. I grew up in Sunnyvale. Does that mean I’m an enemy?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Do you hate Americans?

  “No.”

  “Why not?

  “I don’t hate anybody.”

  “Did you, before?”

  “No.”

  “Did Haruki hate them? Is that why he wanted to be a suicide bomber?”

  “No. Haruki never hated Americans. He hated war. He hated fascism. He hated the government and its bullying politics of imperialism and capitalism and exploitation. He hated the idea of killing people he could not hate.”

  It didn’t make sense. “But in his letter, he said that he was giving his life for his country. And you can’t be a suicide bomber and not kill people, can you?”

  “No, but that letter was just for show. It was not his true feeling.”

  “So why did he join the army then?”

  “He had no choice.”

  “They made him go?”

  She nodded. “Japan was losing the war. They had drafted all the men. Only the students and little boys were left. Haruki was nineteen when his notice came, calling on him, as a Japanese patriot and warrior, to report for battle. When he showed it to me, I cried, but he only smiled. ‘Me,’ he said. ‘A warrior. Imagine that!’ ”

  A single frog croaked, and then another. Jiko’s words dropped like stones into the silence in between.

  “He was poking fun at himself, you see. He was a kind boy, so gentle and wry. He was not the warrior type.”

  The frog voices began to gather and rise. Jiko kept on talking, and now her words were steady, a low drumbeat under the shrill croaking.

  “It was late October. There was a pageant. Twenty-five thousand student draftees marched into the compound outside Meiji Shrine. They were given rifles to carry on their shoulders like children playing soldiers. A cold, dull rain was falling, and the red and gold colors of the shrine looked gaudy and much too bright. For three hours the boys stood at attention, and we stood there, too, listening to the fine words and phrases in praise of the fatherland.

  “One of the boys, Haruki’s classmate, gave a speech. ‘We, of course, do not expect to return alive,’ he said. They knew they would die. We had all heard about the mass suicides of soldiers at a place called Attu. Gyokusai,137 they called it. Insanity, but by then there was no stopping. The prime minister was there. Tojo Hideki. It is not true, what I said before, because I hated him. He was a war criminal, and after the war, they hanged him. I was so happy. I wept for joy when I heard he was dead. Then I shaved my head and took a vow to stop hating.”

  The frog chorus fell silent.

  “That boy who gave the speech survived,” she said. “Every year at Obon he comes here to apologize.”

  It took me a moment to understand. “You mean that old man?”

  She nodded. “Not a boy anymore. My son would be an old man, too, if he had survived. It is hard for me to imagine.”

  I lay on my back and pictured the old soldier’s face. I tried to imagine him as a young man, as young as Haruki’s ghost. Impossible.

  “They were our finest students,” she said. “They were the crème de la crème.” She used the French words, pronouncing them in Japanese, but I knew what she meant. Her eyes, cloudy with emptiness, stared into the past. I was afraid to say anything to disturb her, but I had to know.

  “I’m sorry I took the letter,” I said. “I’ll put it back.”

  She nodded, but I don’t know if she really heard me.

  “What’s in the box?” I asked.

  The question seemed to bring her back for a moment. “What box?”

  “The one on the family altar.”

  A shadow crossed her face. Maybe it was a cloud passing in front of the moon, or maybe it was my imagination.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?” I asked, and when she didn’t answer, I prompted her. “You mean it’s empty?”

  “Empty,” she repeated. “So desu ne.”

  She looked at me as though I was a fading memory. “Forgive me, Nao dear. I go on and on. You must sleep.”

  “No,” I protested. “I like your stories! Tell me more!”

  She smiled. “Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao.”

  “Good night, my dear Jiko,” I answered.

  In the moonlight, she looked tired and old.

  5.

  The next day, my dad came to pick me up, but before he arrived, I went back to Jiko’s study one last time. I had promised to put back the letter, and the box was still sitting on the little shelf, tied in its white cloth, next to the photograph. I didn’t want to disturb him again, but I really needed to see what was in that box. Jiko said there was nothing, but the way Haruki had laughed his ghostly laugh made me think there was something inside. Maybe his baby teeth, or his glasses, or his high school diploma. You can call it superstition, but I wanted to see some piece of him that really existed in order for him to be real.

  I stood up on my tiptoes and reached for the box, pulling it off the shelf and into my arms. I sat down on the floor and untied the white cloth. It was like unwrapping a Christmas present. Inside the cloth there was a wooden box with some writing on it that said, “The Heroic Soul of the Late Second Sub-Lieutenant Yasutani Haruki.” I felt my heart start to pound. The box was about 40 centimeters tall. I gave it a little shake and thought I heard something rattle inside. What would a soul sound like? I really wanted to look, but suddenly I was afraid if I opened the box, his heroic soul would fly out. Would it be angry at me? Would it fly in my face? I almost wrapped the box up again and put it back on the shelf, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I lifted up the lid.

  It was empty.

  Jiko was right. I couldn’t believe it. Just to be sure, I turned it upside down and shook it. A small slip of paper fell to the floor.

  “The Naval Authority sent me that,” Jiko said.

  She was standing in the doorway, dressed in the faded brown robe that she wore for morning service and leaning on her cane. I swear, she can appear out of nowhere. It’s another one of her superpowers.

  “They sent us a box with the remai
ns of our beloved children. If the bodies weren’t found, they put in a piece of paper. They couldn’t just send an empty box, you see.”

  I looked at the paper in my hand. There was one word written on it:

  138

  “I opened it just like you did,” she said. “And just like that, the paper fell out. I was so surprised! I read it and then I laughed and laughed. Ema and Suga were in the room with me. They thought I had gone crazy with grief, but they didn’t understand. My daughters were not writers. To a writer, this is so funny. To send a word, instead of a body! Haruki was a writer. He would have understood. If he had been there, he would have laughed, too, and for a moment that’s what it felt like, like he was there with me and we were laughing together.”

  She chuckled to herself and wiped her eyes with her crooked old finger. Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren’t tears. She wasn’t crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.

  “It was the nicest consolation,” she said. “Given the circumstances. But I could never bring myself to put it into the family grave. That last word was not his, after all. It was the government’s.”

  She was still leaning on her cane, but now she started looking for something in the deep sleeve of her robe, and she swayed a little like she might lose her balance, so I jumped up to help her. When I reached her, she held out her hand.

  “Here,” she said. She was holding one of Muji’s freezer bags with some papers inside. “These were the letters that Haruki wrote to me before he died. Perhaps you’d better have them, too. You can keep them together with the one you found.”