Islands of Protest

by Davinder L. Bhowmik

  Tearing apart the hardened earth

  An island ablaze with the rage of its people

  Oh, Okinawa! …

  The female workers from Taiwan silently listened to that song. “An island ablaze with the rage of its people …”

  Beside me, S was singing along, a few beats behind the workers. At some point, N had also come to my side to listen to the song. When it was finished, the male and female workers all headed for the gates. By degrees, even the long summer day was growing dark. We too made our way from branch to branch and jumped down to the bank, each running off toward his home.

  When I got back, I received a torrent of abuse from my father for having neglected my household chores.

  “Did you visit those Taiwan women again?” my father asked, glowering at me. “Those women come here just to make money, see? Kids aren’t allowed to go near ’em.” Following this vexed proclamation, he jabbed my forehead with his finger.

  “I only went to the river,” I muttered.

  “Went to the river? Don’t you have any idea how busy we are with work at home? What’ll we do if the pineapples rot, huh? Just whadd’ya think puts food on our table?” bellowed my father, striking me across my face. I bore this in silence.

  “T’morrow we ship stuff to the cannery, so get to the fields right after school’s out!”

  “Okay.” Freedom regained, I went to sit at the dinner table. My mother, who had been watching us anxiously, hurriedly pushed a bowl of rice over to me.

  “Hey, Masashi. Never, ever go to a Taiwan woman’s house.” My father repeated this to me and left, saying something about dropping by the farmer’s cooperative.

  That day, I lay in wait at the foot of the gate to the pineapple cannery. I had snuck through the spaces in the pile of wooden crates stacked high along the cannery wall with the swiftness of a scout. From behind the wall came a low rumble of machinery noise that, in the narrow space, became fine waves of sound that kept reverberating. The reek of an oily puddle in the shade blended with the sticky-sweet smell of pineapples. The commingled odors twined around my sweaty neck, making me feel sick. I quickly grew desirous to exit the place and forged ahead.

  The pale light of the western sun that was leaking through the gaps between the crates flickered and danced in the corners of my eyes. Without warning, a man’s laughter sounded from behind my hiding place. I turned my body around like a fish and hid in the shadow of the crates. Several workers, talking and laughing, passed right by. After making sure that the sound of their footsteps had disappeared, I turned my eyes to the target before me.

  Just a few yards ahead, the barrier made by the wooden crates ended, and strong sunlight illuminated the wall of the cannery. The shadows of the mokumao trees on the riverbank extended right to this side of the wall. Looking at their sharply delineated shadows, I felt as though the way ahead was blocked by a hard sheet of glass. Making sure my surroundings were deserted, I pulled out one of the crates and lugged it to my part of the wall. Standing on it, I peered into a window screen.

  Hot steam blew over my face, where big droplets of sweat instantly formed. Moistened grit stuck to the window screen; inside, an orange lamp bobbed, its light permeating the area. Underneath the light, female workers clad in white work uniforms were bathed in steam, working at a brisk pace. Over and over again, without pause, the women were performing the simple tasks of cutting into rings the peeled pineapples that came down a conveyor belt, putting them into cans and sending them to the next stage of processing. In front of me, silver cans that had been filled and arranged into several lines were on one of the conveyor belts, slowly passing into the midst of the steam. The cans that had been sterilized after emerging from the steam were blown dry by warm air and then packed into wooden crates by the female workers. One of the women failed to handle all the filled cans that were being sent out one after another, and some cans fell from her work stand. This earned her a curt reprimand from the Okinawan supervisor, who threw the damaged cans that had fallen to the floor into a wooden crate in the corner and went to make his rounds at another section. In the dizzying bustle of the cannery, I sought to find her.

  A white face suddenly appeared before me. Startled, I leapt off the crate I was standing on and prepared to flee at any moment. A white, thin hand stretched out, pushing up the screen. Steam spilled out in a cloud, and a female worker leaned out from within it. It was her. I watched her, holding my breath. As if enjoying a prank, she began saying something to me, speaking in short phrases while laughing and beckoning me over. It was the first time I had ever seen her with such a bright expression on her face.

  I went to stand under the screen and gazed steadily at her face. Loose hairs clung to her forehead, which was damp with sweat and steam. She turned round to face the cannery, checking for the supervisor’s absence, and then held out an object wrapped in newspaper. I gingerly accepted it. Upon touching the package, I realized it was a can of pineapple that had just been processed.

  “Masashi.” Taken aback, I looked up to her.

  “Shima-san … his … little brother?” She pointed to me, saying just that one phrase of Japanese. Smiling happily, she hurriedly shut the screen, vanishing into the steam.

  “My brother told her,” I thought as I sprinted to the gate. The warmth of the can I was hugging to my chest lit a fire within me. I shinnied up the gate, jumped over it, and, with another spurt of energy, sped off to the field of sugarcane that spread from the floodplain at the river’s mouth. I crashed headlong across the wide field, mowing down young sugarcane plants left and right as I headed for the sea. Once there, I sat down on the sandy beach, ripping off the newspaper covering on the package and tossing it aside. I caressed the moist can, covered with a thin film of condensation, and turned it around in my hands. It was one of the cans that had been carelessly tossed into the wooden crate for damaged products.

  An image of her being reprimanded by the supervisor for having done this came to my mind, and I felt worried. Taking my army knife from my pocket, I opened the can and put the yellow rings inside into my mouth, eating them whole as though I were a bird. Thus I remained sunk in thought, looking at the sea till dusk descended.

  When my surroundings had become totally dark, I washed my face and neck with the clear water that gushed out from between an opening in some rocks. I dumped the excess liquid in the can onto the sand and used it to scoop up some water from the spring between the rocks, which I drank. The natural coldness of the water cleansed every bit of the cloying sweetness of the canned pineapple that clung inside and outside my body. Doing this briefly made my face appear more grown-up. The muscles in my body contracted, and the heady rush that had filled me till just a while ago seemed like an illusion. Again I scooped up some more spring water with the can and drank it down in one gulp. Then, barely aware of the changed expression etched onto my features, I hurried home along the road by the river.

  N was calling me from outside. I had finished dinner and was sitting at my desk, but now I thrust my feet into rubber slippers and flew to the front door.

  “And just where are you off to in the middle of the night?” my mother asked as she came out of the kitchen.

  “To study at N’s place. I’ll be back soon.” After I tossed off this reply, I joined N in a race to the pineapple cannery. That day, on the way home from school, we had decided to sneak into the living quarters of the female workers.

  Mercury lamps, which were not commonly seen in this area, gave off a pale light that enveloped the cannery in a beautiful glow. It seemed to float up from the darkness like a scene at the bottom of the river. Even at night, the trucks that transported the finished batches of canned pineapple never stopped coming and going from the open space in front of the cannery. On the river’s surface, reflecting the light, the ripples made by the shoal of fish in the water vanished as soon as they appeared.

  From the bank, N gave a finger whistle in the direction of a thicket of susuki. That was our signal. S
and Y emerged, parting the thicket.

  “Let’s go.” With N leading, we ran down the road that followed the river. The living quarters of the Taiwanese female workers were at the opposite bank, some distance from the cannery. They were essentially crude barracks that had been built by clearing a field of susuki. The structure was composed of two one-level buildings that formed an L shape. These were enclosed by a rusted barbed-wire fence, but we slipped in through a gap in the wire that we had carefully made beforehand. In the gravel-covered courtyard, the laundry of the female workers was drying. We bent our bodies and sprinted through the spaces between their laundered clothes like wild hounds. On emerging, we formed a row sideways, pressing our backs flat against the wall of the building. The lights had already vanished from most of the windows. We strained our ears to suss out the situation in the window above our heads.

  “Last time when T and the others came, they said they had lots of fun doing it in rooms all over this place,” N whispered in my ear, edging closer to me. Without replying, I turned my gaze towards the part of the building that formed an L shape where it connected to the other building. After N made sure that no sound was coming from the window above us, he began moving to another window, S and Y in his wake. I went in the opposite direction from them, towards the angle formed by the two buildings.

  There was a tug on my shirt. “Hey!” hissed N, who had returned in alarm. “That building’s completely visible to the guard. Don’t go there!”

  “Just going to peek in the corner over there, that’s all,” I said and started off again. N said no more and went off in search of his own fun.

  I passed by under several windows. Midway, I caught the faint sound of that voice, and unease stirred in my heart. More than anything, though, I wanted to see the light of her room. When I reached my destination, I dropped on my belly under the eaves of her window. On the river’s surface, smooth as a mirror, the shadow of the living quarters was reflected. The light in her room was still lit. The coldness of the concrete felt good against my chest and belly, which were both burning hot. Inside me, black, murky blood was stirring, laced with heat as it flowed to my privates. I quietly wiggled my waist like a fish as I fixed my gaze on the light of her room.

  Suddenly, a shadow appeared in the light. I stopped all movement. It was her shadow. And then another shadow covered hers.

  I closed my eyes. My body was stiffening; my fingertips were numb. When I opened my eyes again, the light had disappeared. My heart was a thicket in the depths of which something was wriggling. I tried to grasp its nature, but I could only hear the rustling of leaves. After a long moment of hesitation, I raised my body, intending to make my way to her window.

  “Run!”

  N’s cry suddenly rang out. I turned around, only to have a dazzling light shine right into my face. “Hold it—you’ll really catch it if you run away!” It was a familiar voice. I could not move, and the light pressed in on my curled-up body, shining above my head.

  “Masashi, what’re you up to?” It was my brother’s voice. N and the rest, who had been caught at the barbed-wire fence, were being dragged over by several young men. One after another, lights came on in the windows. We were lined up in the central courtyard and made to prostrate ourselves on the ground. The female workers were saying something among themselves, but I lacked the courage to raise my head and see whom those voices belonged to.

  “Come on, say you’re sorry!” My brother’s hand shoved my head down, but I stubbornly resisted. He gave my face a fierce slap with the palm of his hand. Sympathetic murmurs rose from the female workers, but my brother only gave me several more blows. Something like red-hot rock chips fell from my eyes. Rage pierced my heart, and I felt suffocated.

  “What’s this—isn’t it your little brother?” One of the men had noticed me.

  “Yeah.” My brother sneered and knocked down each of us in turn. “Don’t ever come here again. I won’t tell your parents about today, and you’d better not say anything about us either.”

  Having made this threat, he promptly sent us packing.

  On the way home, we were all seized by a rage with no outlet and said little. N hacked off susuki leaves with a stick as he called out the names of the men, clicking his tongue accusingly. S and Y did the same. I walked along in dead silence. The two shadows at her window, as well as her figure entwined with my brother’s, were images burned into my eyes. I could not stop seeing them. Like the needle that pierced the eye of the tilapia, those images sunk into my very core, spreading toxins of hatred and fury through my being.

  N, who had gone inside first, signaled to us with his hand from the shadows of the cannery buildings. We slipped under the iron doors of the gate and ran to where he was. Following that, with my guidance, we managed to arrive close to the mouth of the pipe while safely hidden behind the wooden crates. We plunged into the thickly growing susuki, sending startled waterfowl hurriedly flapping off the river’s surface. Creeping right up to the mouth of the pipe, we saw a tilapia shoal of a size so tremendous we could only stare wide-eyed at the sight it made. The black shoal resembled a thundercloud that might well have been five yards in diameter, rising up, up from deep below the river.… The tilapia, which hunted and devoured foul waste, had bred with such speed that already they posed a threat to all other existing species of fish in this place. We were overwhelmed by the terribly forceful vitality these foreign fish possessed and could not help sighing in admiration.

  “C’mon.” Taking the lead, N dropped to his knees at the water’s edge. Licking the point of his needle, he set his arrow to his bow. S and Y too each set their arrows to their bows. Given such a horde of fish, there was no way any of us would miss killing one. But we insisted on our target being the eye, and shooting that was a difficult feat. N and the others released arrow after arrow, which were all repelled by the hard scales of the tilapia. We thought the arrows would float, but they were instantly mistaken for bait by the fish, who dragged them into the water.

  I went to straddle the thick drainpipe that jutted out above the river. Throwing my torso forwards, I readied my bow with my arms stretched out as far as they could reach. The cloying, sugary steam rising from the hot drainage soon made my face and neck break into a sweat.

  “Hey, that’s dangerous!” The tilapia shoal was unfazed by N’s yell; it continued to lie in wait, its mouths agape, to receive the flotsam that flowed out of the pipe. Blankly, I confronted the black, overpowering mass of jaws and pupils before me. Inside myself, along with hatred and fury, I sensed a new emotion awakening. I flattened my belly atop the drainpipe and inclined my body until it was just above the river’s surface. The heat of the pipe, warmed by the boiling water, was intense. In the midst of the black shoal of fish, the light of her window appeared—and then her shadow.

  I closed my eyes. The drainpipe made quaking noises that flowed down its length, and the vibrations acted in concert with the roiling, murky heat of the blood flowing within me. The heat of the pipe made the blood in my lower abdomen boil.

  I opened my eyes and put the pupil of one large tilapia into my line of sight. That was certainly my brother’s eye, as well as my own. The something that was stirring inside me became the flow of a new emotion that gushed outwards. The needle point gave off a pale flash and pierced the tilapia’s pupil; the fish made a great splash and rapidly disappeared into the depths of the water.

  I threw my whole body down, trusting the pipe to hold my weight. Pressing my forehead against the heat of the pipe, I let my hands and legs dangle freely from either side of it. Everything, I felt, had drained out of me, and I was assailed by a sense of apathy that remained in its wake. I longed to sink into a deep sleep, in this state.

  “The guard’s here!” S’s voice finally roused my fatigued body. I got up and tumbled into a thicket of susuki grasses with the others. The sound of the guard’s bicycle receded into the distance. Once again we were in a single transparent membrane, pressed together cheek by jowl.
“Just as I expected,” N murmured into my ear. S, as if wishing to touch that sacred archer’s limb of mine just a little more, no matter how briefly, had entangled our arms from shoulders to fingertips. I let my head rest on S’s shoulder, which seemed to give him heartfelt happiness. Vaguely, I observed the clouds drifting on the river’s surface.

  “H-hey!” Y suddenly pointed to the center of the river. There, a single arrow was bobbing vertically on the water like a mast, slowly drifting against the current. With the arrow pierced deep into the tilapia’s eye, the desperately weakened fish was swimming forwards on its side. It was a solemn voyage towards death. But, as if seeing something that was bizarrely amusing, Y began to make chortling sounds that he tried to stifle. However, this instantly got the rest of us going. I reined in my laughter at the back of my throat and quietly watched the arrow making its way forward. At last, it slowly sank, and the figure of the tilapia disappeared forever beneath the surface of the water.

  Every one of us exhaled a deep sigh in adult fashion, but our sighs contained not a speck of sorrow or sentimentality. Instead, the joy of having been able to see the symbol of our power to the very instant that it vanished, as well as the premonition that something new would come to life, made us burst out in hearty laughter. Each and every one of us had already instinctively noticed his new scent, which hung over the inside of the membrane that surrounded us. From now on, we knew, being inside it would only suffocate us. So we broke through its transparent walls and left the susuki thicket, each pondering this fresh realization.