Islands of Protest

by Davinder L. Bhowmik

  N gave the all-clear signal. We left the susuki thicket and made a dash to safety behind the wooden crates. Suddenly the screen door opened with a loud, scratchy sound, and we could dimly see a white hand behind the steam. I knew instinctively that it was her, but N and the rest were startled and hid behind the crates. She recognized me and, just like before, waved me over with a laugh. When I approached her, N and the others also dropped their guard and showed themselves. We clustered below the window. She then indicated, with gestures and hand signals, that we should wait for a while and disappeared into the dense billows of steam behind her. Before long, she reappeared, her hands full of silver cans of pineapple. These she held out to us while attempting to say something. N and the others cocked glances at each other in hesitation, but I stretched out my hand and took one from her. As before, it was a damaged can, but it had just been made and was still quite warm. I looked up at her in silence. She nodded to me, smiling, and held the rest of her cans out to N and the others. N looked at me and then, somewhat reluctantly, took one. S and Y imitated him. She seemed delighted that her small gifts had passed into all our hands. Seeing her thus, the hatred and fury that had been roiling in my blood ever since the other night rapidly vanished.

  I caressed the sleek surface of the can, gazing into her eyes. Without meaning to, I thought I saw, in her deep, black eyes, a vision of her younger self playing with a little brother. Endeavoring to express my thanks, I began making hand gestures in her direction. At that moment, her face suddenly stiffened as if something had happened. Her eyes dilated, and her gaze receded from me. Astonished, I wheeled around.

  The can that N had hurled away from him traced a silver arc through the air and slowly fell, shattering the mirror-like surface of the water. A dull splash reverberated.

  “Taking something from a Taiwan woman? Don’t take me for an idiot!” N almost spat the words out. S and Y too tossed their cans away, one by one. A series of dull splashes followed. I was taken aback at how utterly unexpected their actions were.

  N and the rest looked at me as if urging me on. “Hey, Masashi! Hurry up ’n’ dump that thing in the river!”

  At a loss, I looked at her. She was staring out across the top of my head at the ripples spreading over the river’s surface. Her face was so still and so expressionless that it seemed as if her heart had utterly stopped. Her gaze met mine, as pathetic as a tilapia’s pupil that an arrow had pierced right through. I could feel the wound in her eye on my fingertip. In the next instant, she mechanically extended her white hand; the screen door was tightly shut.

  “Hey—what’re you doing? Hurry up and run!” N was calling to me. He had sped to the gates while I had remained in place, dumbstruck. Having heard the splashes, the guard was probably on the prowl. Still holding the pineapple can, I made haste to follow the rest. Turning back to look, I saw the screen door once more. White steam still billowed forth from it as if nothing had ever happened. But I knew that the screen door would never be opened again.

  I leapt out from the shadows of the building and veered across the open space, tumbling out from under the gates at the same breakneck speed. We scattered off to take refuge in the field of sugarcane, ignoring the guard who had tossed his bicycle aside and was bellowing, “Wait!” at the top of his lungs.

  In opening the door to my home, I, covered in mud, cut myself with the sharp leaves of the sugarcane. I had spent the long summer afternoon staring at the can in the sugarcane field and still could not bring myself to throw it away.

  “Where’d you get that from?” my father asked, looking at the can. He was sitting cross-legged on our porch repairing his farming tools. “Pinched it from the cannery again, huh?” I remained silent. My father got to his feet and poked my forehead.

  “I got it from a Taiwan woman,” I muttered. A dull pain assailed my wrist; with steely resolve and hard fingers, my father had knocked the can out of my hand.

  The can that had fallen to the concrete floor rolled to the threshold of the door. I arrogantly lifted my head, fixing my gaze on my father. I knew that the corners of his lips were twitching with rage.

  “Are you still going to that kinda place?” my father yelled, throwing a punch at my face. Reflexively, I avoided it. My father’s face colored with astonishment. It appeared my resistance had been utterly unexpected.

  “Ya damn kid, never list’nin t’me.…” My father grabbed me by my collar and dragged me down to the floor. I desperately fought against being forced into the humiliating position of being on all fours; but he was pushing down on my neck, and there was no way I could move. My mother, who had heard the ruckus from inside and had come flying out, was clinging to my father and begging for mercy. However, my father’s grip never softened.

  “Stop, stop, this is pathetic.” My brother said this while standing in the doorway, looking down at our three tussling figures. When had he returned?

  “D’you know this damn kid’s been goin’ round t’see those Taiwan women again?” My father half spat the words out.

  My brother scoffed in his face and said, contemptuously, “Well, it’s ’cause Masashi ’n’ me, we’re your sons.”

  “What … !” My father glared at him.

  With perfect composure, my brother picked up the can of pineapple and retrieved an army knife from his pocket. He said, while opening the can with the knife, “Ain’t nothin’ to worry about, really, since after tomorrow the Taiwan women won’t be here anymore.”

  My father’s grip lost its force. “What, those Taiwan women’re goin’ back already?”

  “Right now they’re already headin’ for Naha,” my brother said, hooking a pineapple ring onto his finger and shoving it into his mouth. My father quickly thrust me aside and got to his feet heavily, glowering at my brother all the while. The latter paid him no heed and brought the can to his lips, beginning to drink the juice inside. The sticky juice accidentally overflowed, slowly trickling down my brother’s thickset neck. My father could do nothing about my brother’s attitude and stomped by him roughly, going to the front of the house.

  My mother was stroking my back and murmuring something, trying to comfort me. I paid her no attention and looked up at the figure of my brother, lit by the remaining light from outdoors. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his work uniform and held the can out to me.

  “We made this thing with the Taiwan women, see. Drink up.” I stood without moving a muscle, gazing steadily at my brother.

  “Hmph.” He pulled back the can and went out. Dragging his tired self over to the well, he began rinsing the dirt off his body. I remained with my two hands pressed to the floor of the porch, listening to him wash up. Then, as if possessed, I got up and raced towards the river, leaving my mother behind on the dirt floor where it was growing dark.

  A hush had fallen over the dormitory, which seemed to be waiting to decay. Just a while ago, I had stood at the corner of the building staring at the light of her window and at the various flotsam of life drifting on the river surface. The pale light of the cannery’s mercury lamps was flickering. I walked towards her room.

  Curtains were lowered over the tightly shut windows, and I could not see inside. I picked up a stone and broke the glass, opened the inner latch, and entered the room. The light of the mercury lamps filtered in from the windows that I had flung open. A lone vinyl mat was spread on the floor of the room; besides that, there was not a single thing that recalled her presence. I pressed my face into the curtains, seeking the traces of her scent, but in vain.

  As if to overlay my body with her phantom self, I spread myself out facedown in the middle of the room and closed my eyes. In the dark, there surfaced an image of the tilapia whose pupil my arrow had pierced, the one that had disappeared into the depths of the river. Its side was sparkling in the setting sun as its body quietly made waves in the water. The arrow, standing upright in its eye, sunk below the water’s surface. The sensation of the fish’s eyeball on my finger was revived, and the fish’s pupi
l overlapped with her bottomless eyes. Like a fish nearing death, I too made waves with my body, sending small spasms through it over and over again. And then, quietly, I disappeared into darkness.

  How much time passed, I wonder? I woke to the sound of a doorknob turning. Raising my head, my bleary eyes began making out the knob in the shadows of the room. I stared at it, holding my breath. Again the metal knob made an irascible grating noise. “It’s the guard,” I thought and made ready to escape through the window at any moment. After some time, a knock sounded on the door. All the muscles in my body went taut.

  “K.”

  That was her name, the first time I had ever heard it.

  “K,” the voice called into the room again. It was a familiar voice. A hush pervaded the air, carrying to my ears the breaths drawn by the man who waited behind the door. At length, he gave up and went away. I leapt out the window, turned the corner of the lodgings, and watched the receding back of the man who was leaving. The glow of the mercury lamps lent him a blurry illumination as he hurried away. Now, with an air of lingering sentiment, he turned to regard her room. The figure of the man was, without a doubt, that of my father.

  The harsh, squealing noise of the pump penetrated every corner of our residence. I covered myself with the water spurting out from it, washing my face and limbs. The water’s coldness removed the excess murkiness in my blood, and I felt refreshed. Inside the house, all was quiet.

  I went around to the yard, intending to wait for daybreak on the lawn. There I discovered an object gleaming silver on the ground. It was the can of pineapple. The juice left at its bottom sloshed as I picked it up, sending a sweet scent drifting into the air. An impulse to beat the can against the ground seized me, but I could not act on it. I imagined the sweet smell to be her lingering scent and softly brought the can to my lips, sipping the juice. The stickiness that clung to my tongue was unpleasant, but I drank it down in one swift gulp. In the next instant, I flung the can away from me and retched violently. Inside the can, a black insect as big as a baby’s fist had surfaced. Its hard shell glistened as it staggered out onto the lawn. For a second, it stopped moving, and then slowly it opened its wings. Lifting its heavy body, replete with pineapple and juice, it set its sight on the light trap.

  The door to the porch opened, and my mother put her head out. “Masashi?” I remained sprawled on the ground, gazing at the spot where the bug had taken flight. Leaving the door wide open, my mother flew out and caught me in a hug, beginning to cry. The light came on in our house, and the figure of my father appeared.

  “And what’ve you been up to till now?”

  I remained silent, looking at him. With the light at his back, I could not make out his expression, but already the part of him that oppressed me had fallen away.

  “Why’re you so quiet?” Hearing my father’s voice grow especially rough, I continued my cold silence.

  “Why’re you so angry, when he could’ve lost his life?” said my mother defensively, caressing me here and there. This irritated me to no end.

  “Oh, he must’ve gone to a Taiwan woman’s place,” my brother said mockingly from behind my father, a remark that got them both started on one of their usual spats. Queer laughter welled up inside me.

  I looked at the empty can that had rolled onto the lawn. It seemed to me that the four of us were completely contained inside, and I laughed at this thought, suppressing my mirth as best I could. Yes, K was in there, wasn’t she? As were N and S too. I sensed that, just as the river poured itself into the sea, so all the things we knew flowed into that hollow cavern, fading away.

  My mother had apparently mistaken my laughter for tears and hugged me still more tightly. I was terribly famished. How I longed to escape from this place and fill my gut with something! The saliva in my mouth was mixed with bile. Aiming for the can, I gathered this nasty mixture together and spat it out. My fingertip ached slightly; my hunger, however, was far more intense.

  Notes

    1. Konerite, or “kneading hands,” is a type of hand and finger movement used in nuchibana, a genre of traditional Okinawan dance usually performed by women.

  TREE OF BUTTERFLIES (2000)

  Medoruma Shun

  Translated by Aimée Mizuno

  THE VILLAGE HARVEST FESTIVAL IS HELD every four years, falling on the same years as the Olympics. Dedication ceremonies featuring martial arts forms, dances, and plays extend over two days at the prayer grounds in front of the sacred forest. The performers are village residents. An organizing committee of representatives from the village council and the senior citizens’, women’s, and young adults’ associations assigned the various tasks in preparation for the event. For the past two months, those who were designated as actors and dancers, as well as the stagehands, musicians, and gofers, had been gathering at the community center every night. On the grounds, groups practiced fencing moves with two-meter-length poles, while those in the main hall of the community center practiced the traditional Ryukyuan dances. Directing the practices were the heads of the karate dojos and traditional dance schools in the village, as well as the elderly and other adults to whom the dances and sword forms unique to the village had been transmitted. Sometimes they stayed after the practices to drink together.

  The families living near the prayer grounds were said to be the first settlers of the village. Yoshiaki, brought up in one of these families, used to go to watch the rehearsals from the time the first strains of music could be heard from the community center right up to the opening night and was often scolded for wandering around so late. Although he’d always hoped that someday he would perform the sword forms and the dances, he had not returned to the village after leaving for Naha to attend college, and even now in his mid-thirties, he had yet to take part in the festival.

  After graduating from college, Yoshiaki became a civil prefectural employee. Except for the four years he spent on Miyako Island, he had continued to live in Naha and the surrounding area. He’d always lived alone, keeping busy on his days off fishing, diving, or hiking the Yanbaru forests with his college friends, something they’d done for the past ten years. Since he spent most of the New Year’s holidays at the beach or hiking in the forests with his friends, other than the midsummer festival for the dead, he returned to his village only once or twice a year.

  Yoshiaki had forgotten completely about the village harvest festival and arrived in time for the festival’s start only by chance. He’d returned the day before, a Friday, after hearing about the death of T, a high school classmate. He decided to use his vacation days beginning that very afternoon to attend the funeral service. He met several classmates at the funeral home in the neighboring town, but they only exchanged nods. He only wanted to talk to Kaneshiro, who had called him with the news. Maybe he couldn’t make it. In any case, Yoshiaki couldn’t find him.

  “Sounds like it wasn’t a good way to die,” Kaneshiro had said weakly when he called the apartment that Thursday night. T had returned two years earlier from the mainland and had been living with his parents but apparently had been physically and mentally unwell. A fisherman discovered T’s body in the middle of the night, floating in a harbor near his home. Kaneshiro told Yoshiaki that the police found that he’d been drinking and declared the death an accident. But Yoshiaki felt from what Kaneshiro left unsaid that he didn’t believe it was an accident.

  Quiet and not good at either sports or school, T had had few friends. He had hung around mostly with Yoshiaki and Kaneshiro’s group, but only by default. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have belonged anywhere. Yoshiaki had never considered T a friend and had not seen him since graduation. He didn’t know quite why Kaneshiro had called him with the date and time of the funeral. But, when he heard the news, he felt pained, and he couldn’t stay away. He was confused by his intense reaction but thought that this inexplicable pain was something Kaneshiro might be feeling too.

  After the funeral service, Yoshiaki went home and ate dinner with his parents
for the first time in a while. Hearing the music from the festival rehearsal, he felt nostalgic and decided to stay for the next day’s performances. But he decided not to look in on the night’s practice to avoid meeting old acquaintances and their questions about his life.

  The next afternoon, a Saturday, he went alone to see the parade after the priestesses’ prayer rites. On a thick, green bamboo pole, the tip decorated with peach and lotus blossoms, hung a flag with the words “Bountiful Harvest” written in large characters. On the tip of another flagpole attached to a three-segmented pike hung two flags, one with a black carp swimming up a waterfall and another a triangular flag with fringe. The two poles supported by men in black costumes headed the procession, followed by three groups of fencers, each with ten young men. Then members of twelve clans of the village each formed a separate line for the dances. In all, there were nearly three hundred people in the procession. They paraded on the prefectural road that cut the village from east to west, toward the community center near the sacred grove. At the crossroad, the villagers displayed their dances, starting in order with the martial arts performers with poles. Many of the clans danced to pop arrangements of modern Ryukyuan folk songs, but there were also nonsensical routines like the “South Sea Island Dance.” Seeing the middle-aged men in loin clothes with their bodies painted black and their heads decorated with green palm leaves dancing awkwardly with spears in their hands, the old men and women and teenagers along the road fell over laughing. “If they were in Naha, they’d be accused of being discriminatory,” Yoshiaki thought. But the scene was so bizarre that he couldn’t help but laugh.

  Turning around as someone nudged his arm, he saw Kaneshiro, with his head wrapped with a purple cloth, wearing a karate gi and black-and-white-striped leggings. He stood smiling, with a two-meter pole in hand. Yoshiaki noticed him while he was performing but hadn’t tried to get his attention.