Mr Two Bomb

by William Coles

  I told her about the kites and the kite-makers; and I told her about the port, far more cosmopolitan than Hiroshima. Once, before the war, it had been Japan’s hub for the merchants of the world.

  In this way we passed our time until we arrived at another bridge – though I use the term loosely. Most of the structure had been blown into the river and the remnants of its pilings lingered like rotten stumps in the water. The only part of the span that still remained was a single frail girder. It was, as I remember, about a foot’s width across and traces of masonry and metal still clung to it, dripping off the girder like singed black ivy.

  Shinzo was immediately dubious. He walked from one side of the girder to the other, weighing up his chances, scratching, always scratching. “Can we find another bridge?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” I said. “There may be one. There may not.”

  “It makes me nervous just looking at it.”

  “Come on!” said the girl. She had already climbed up onto the girder and was prancing back and forth, just as I had once seen her do, a lifetime ago, on the roof of her own home.

  Shinzo turned to the river. The current was flowing fast out to the inland sea. Swirling eddies, spumed with white water, bubbled round what was left of the pilings. A snagged body, partially submerged, had caught on one of the metal stanchions, its legs fluttering in the brown water.

  Shinzo grimaced as he shook his head “I’ll see you at the station.”

  “Feeble!” said the girl. “It’s easy. Watch me!” By now she had pranced out right over the river which coursed five metres beneath her. First she did a pirouette, as comfortable as if she had been on stage, and then she leapt with both feet off the girder. “I’ll go first. Shinzo you follow me. We’ll look after you.”

  “You know he can’t swim?” I asked.

  It was so unlike Shinzo to be goaded. Like a bull that sits in the sunshine, he was generally content to chew the cud. But, for some reason, that jibe irked him.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  And up he went, fat buttocks straining against the seat of his blue trousers as he climbed onto the girder.

  The girl was clapping her hands with delight. She was encouraging the oaf on, like a mother raving over the first few steps of her infant son.

  I was not quite so overjoyed at the sight of Shinzo clambering onto the girder – because if the idiot fell in, there was only one person who was going to save him.

  He started off well enough, shuffling forward on all fours, his fingers gripping the edges of the girder. I warily followed a few metres behind. It was perfectly practicable – so long as you didn’t look at the river that seethed beneath. But the moment your eyes drifted off the girder, the sheer pace of the river left you feeling giddy. It was like a back screen lurking in your peripheral vision that was perpetually on the move. Even though you tried to resist, your eyes were forever drawn towards the water. A body might catch the corner of your eye and you could not help but watch as it flicked by.

  The girl, who was all but over the river by now, was urging Shinzo on. “This is the only difficult bit,” she said. “There’s a large piece of concrete in front of you. Stand up and go round it. You can hold onto the metal rod in the middle.”

  I had come to a halt. There was an uncomfortable piece of concrete digging into my leg, but I ignored the pain to observe how Shinzo edged round the obstruction. It was a clump of concrete, about a metre wide, which was completely blocking the girder. He could have tried going over, but it seemed easier to go round.

  With infinite ponderousness, he got up onto his hind haunches, like a bulky walrus begging for a fish. Now he was on his knees, clinging to the masonry in front of him. I heard a sound which I could not readily identify. High-pitched, with little snatched pants of breath.

  Shinzo was whimpering with terror.

  He was upright and clutching onto the metal stalk that protruded from the concrete when he made the mistake of looking down. Directly beneath him was a body snagged in the water, its legs paddling up and down. From up above, it looked as if the corpse was desperately trying to swim against the current.

  Shinzo whinnied with fright and with an effort of will dragged his eyes from the water and back to the concrete block in front of him. It was not easy to climb round. You had to hold tight to the metal rod and then slither round the side before your flailing foot could step back onto the girder.

  The girl had come back out and was sitting a short way from Shinzo, legs swinging either side of the beam. She was smiling, encouraging Shinzo on. “You can do it!” she said. Oh, for that sweet ecstasy of youth that is ever the optimist and has yet to be sullied by disappointment. I was so nervous I could barely watch.

  Shinzo had both hands on the metal rod and had started to squirm round the block. He still had one foot in contact with the beam and appeared to be in control.

  A slight noise from beneath him, an eddy of water gurgling the wrong way. The snagged body slowly turns in the water to reveal a face of exquisite horror: one side is black and swollen, while the other has been sliced away clean.

  In my bowels I knew exactly what Shinzo would do. “Keep your eyes in front!” I yelled. “Eyes front!” But he couldn’t possibly resist. He peered over his shoulder; shifted his bodyweight to stare at the mangled body; and at that very moment the spike of metal sheared off in his hands.

  It was like watching a tower block being brought down in a controlled explosion. First there is the crump of noise, the puff of dust and then, slowly at first but picking up momentum, the whole building crumples to the ground.

  Shinzo’s stomach seemed to be melded into the concrete, but began to slip. Shinzo, shocked, staring stupidly at the useless lump of metal in his hands. His foot paddling for a purchase. And backwards he falls, arms and legs all clawing at the air to save himself. It is all happening so fast, but the adrenalin has kicked in and I miss nothing. The girl screaming and screaming. Shinzo falling flat on his back into the river, disappearing beneath the surface. His head pokes up above the surface, his hands thrashing uselessly at the water as he struggles for air. I’m already getting to my feet – I will need a huge leap to clear the rubble beneath me. I glance briefly at the girl, over her mouth. She cannot believe Shinzo has fallen in.

  I stand up on the girder, swing my arms backwards and then jump as far as I can into the river, landing sort of feet first in a shallow flop. My foot jars with pain as it crunches against something solid beneath the water. Hurts like hell. Might be something broken.

  When I draw breath, Shinzo is already five, seven metres downstream from me, screaming like a stricken animal. I strike out after him in a clumsy crawl, the current sweeping me along. Breathe once to the right, once to the left. A few panicky seconds before I catch up with him. He’s like a mad thing, arms flailing on the water, fat head gasping for air.

  I make the classic mistake that every rescuer is warned about. I try to save him.

  The very moment I get within touching distance he has grabbed hold of me, first one fat hand on my shirt, then the other. I have one single moment to grab a lungful of air and then he’s onto me, smothering me, locking both arms around my neck. The great fat bastard is drowning me! He has an elbow hard beneath my chin, pressing against my throat. I catch glimmers of sunlight as we roil together in the water. The more I try to get him off me, the tighter he clings. I do the only thing that can possibly save me: I go absolutely mad. I am a berserker.

  My mouth is suddenly snapping at his fingers, my legs are kicking. Somehow I manage to wind him with an elbow in his gut, which gives me a little more leeway. Then I punch him as hard as I can, a withering right hook to the head, numbing my knuckles and sending shockwaves up my arm. The blow may have been blunted by the water, but Shinzo’s grip slackens and now he’s drifting away in the current.

  “Get off me!” I scream, still mad with rage. “Imbecile!” His whirling arms are lying limp on the surface. I’m not even s
ure he can hear me.

  I warily approach him again. “No grabbing!” I said.

  He lies limp in the water as I cup my hand beneath his chin and I make for the shore with an ungainly backstroke. It’s hard to make much headway, but now that Shinzo has calmed – is he even conscious? – we make slow progress. His bulk would keep us afloat for hours. It is soothing to look up at the blue sky while finning through the water. We’ve travelled a long way, well over a kilometre and the girl and our makeshift bridge are long out of sight.

  We come to a bend in the river and, with a couple of hard pulls, we coast into the bank. My feet touch the bottom and I haul Shinzo out of the river and onto the mud. Blood oozes from his nose. I roll him onto his side into the recovery position, and after a time he vomits, over and over again, heaving up every last drop of the brackish water that he has swallowed.

  I sit there on the mud, elbows on knees, basking in the morning sun. After the sudden action, my hands are shaking, though not from the cold. My foot is also throbbing, but I decide to leave the boot on until we’ve reached the train.

  Shinzo heaves himself up into a sitting position and fingers his nose, delicately moving it from side to side with the tips of his index fingers. He pats down the rest of his face, searching for other injuries, before spitting out the last of the vomit.

  “I think you broke my nose,” he said.

  “You’re lucky that’s the only thing I broke.”

  “Did you have to hit me so hard?”

  “You were drowning both of us, you idiot. It was the only way to get you off me.”

  Shinzo pondered for a while as again he fingered his nose. It looked swollen, but not broken. “Ouch!” he said, after giving it too much of a tweak.

  “Leave that nose alone. We still have to cross the river. Do you want another try at that bridge?”

  “No, I do not.” He was hurting, though I think it was more dented pride than anything else.

  “We will find somewhere else then.”

  We hauled ourselves out of the mud and wandered through the ruins towards the sea – and if only that were the end of this little interlude. If only I had included the bridge incident as another example of Shinzo’s cack-handed ineptitude. But I include it because, as you know, in the land of the atomic bomb, it is the trivial little matters of everyday life that decide whether we live or die, and Shinzo’s near drowning was one such.

  After another kilometre or so, we found a part-destroyed bridge that served to get us over the last river. It was only then that Shinzo could relax enough to thank me.

  “I’m grateful for what you did,” he said.

  “What are friends for?” I said, pleased at least to have evened things out a little. I had not forgotten the grace with which he’d handled my explosive anger the previous night.

  “I think I should learn to swim.”

  “Good.”

  “My brother threw me into a river once. I’ve been terrified of water ever since.”

  “You may find you enjoy it.”

  “That’s what we shall do,” he announced, pleased with himself. “When we get back to Nagasaki, you can teach me to swim.”

  I laughed at the thought. “Maybe we could get to do it all over again.”

  “Though without the hitting.”

  “And without the strangling either.” We were both sniggering at the banter, as we each sought to trump the other’s put down. What a pleasure it was to be with that man, affectionately teasing each other as we wandered on the final lap through the western outskirts of Hiroshima. The buildings were as much of a wasteland as every other part of the city that we had visited, but we were so inured to the destruction that it no longer registered.

  It was Shinzo who brought up exactly the subject on which I had been dwelling.

  “Where will the girl be?” he asked.

  “I hope she goes to Koi station.”

  “She knows we were going to that station?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I think so. Did we specify a station?”

  Shinzo pulled a face. “We didn’t. I’m sure she’ll find it.”

  “Will she stay at the bridge?” I asked. “Will she wait for us there?”

  “She’s a bright girl,” said Shinzo, with all his usual complacency. “She’ll find us.”

  After he had said something like that, I absolutely knew the girl would not be at Koi station – and so it proved.

  Our Hiroshima journey finally came to an end in the early afternoon, when we wandered in to Koi station. I know that in retrospect this sounds astonishingly naïïve, but it really felt like journey’s end. But it’s only journey’s end on the day you die, and for the rest of it, the end of one journey is merely the beginning of the next. And we always hope that after a tragedy in our lives, the next journey will provide a little light relief. We almost feel hard done by if we go straight from one disaster to the next. That, however, is very often how it is in life.

  The station had been knocked about by the bomb, but was still very much standing. What a relief that was. Many people were milling around, but it took only took a cursory inspection to know that the girl wasn’t there.

  I cannot say that I missed her – not then. But it felt odd not having the girl beside us. Without the unceasing prattle of her voice, an unusual silence hung in the air. We had been through so much over the previous two days. Two days! How astonishing that figure still seems; it’s no great length of time at all to get to know a person, but for the three of us, it was more than enough to see each other at our very best – and worst.

  Shinzo had loose bowels. It came on quite suddenly. One moment we were sitting peaceably outside the station and the next he had got up without a word and was tearing off to find a private spot to relieve himself.

  I went to look for food and to see about the trains. Within two minutes, I had found a woman at a nearby stall and had bought almost half of the wares that she had to sell: rice-balls and raw red onions. I bought enough food to get us to Nagasaki, paying with the cash from my money-belt.

  It was just as easy finding out about the train. There was indeed a train running to Nagasaki, the last that day, and it was leaving, as I remember, just after 5pm, arriving around 9am on the morning of 9th August. After my labours of the previous two days, everything suddenly started to fall into my lap. I wanted food – and I found it. I wanted a train to Nagasaki – and there it was.

  And I wanted the girl to arrive before the train departed – and there she was, with just minutes to spare, a ragamuffin wandering up the road and quite bursting into tears at the sight of Shinzo and me eating our rice-balls in the dust. It was a grand reunion, a quite lovely reunion, with the three of us hugging each other as the girl planted a kiss on Shinzo’s cheek – but he was always her favourite.

  If I could end my story there I would. The struggle is seemingly over; our happy band could finally quit Hiroshima with heads held high and full of good cheer at the prospect of our new life in Nagasaki.

  But looking back, I find it difficult to square my emotions of that moment with how events turned out. That joyous reunion now seems like a little fizzle of light set against the overwhelmingly bleak backdrop of a thundering typhoon

  But did I see it? Did I know what was to come?

  I had not the slightest inkling. I only had eyes for that little spurt of light that flickered between the three of us, the smile on Shinzo’s face and the shining tears of the girl – and I never thought to look at the storm-clouds gathering overhead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The irony of our last minutes in Hiroshima was exquisite; there is no other word for it.

  If only the girl had tarried a little longer at the bridge, where she had waited for a full two hours before following us to the station; if only she had got lost not once but twice along the way; if only she had not been personally led to the station by a kindly old woman...

  If any of those eventualities had occurred, we would have
missed the last train out of Hiroshima that evening – and there would be no more story left to tell.

  But the girl did arrive. Of course she had to arrive; you knew that she had to arrive. We would never have boarded the train without her – and if I was not on the train, then how ever was I going to keep my date with Fat Boy, which was due to explode over Nagasaki approximately two hours after my arrival there?

  In hindsight, all my actions seem to have a prickling sense of inevitability about them.

  It is like that fabled story from the Middle East, ‘An Appointment in Samarra’.

  A rich man is with his servant in the marketplace in Damascus. They are browsing through the stalls, looking for food and oddments, when the rich man rounds a corner and with a shock realises that he is staring Death in the face. The Grim Reaper, dressed in ragged black, appears to be stunned, even wrathful; the servant is so awestruck that he swoons to the ground in a dead faint. Without waiting another moment, the rich man races back to his mansion-house and takes two horses. He rides and he rides all through the heat of the day, until eventually it is quite dark and he arrives into the little town of Samarra.

  The man is tired but elated at how, through his quick-wittedness, he has managed to cheat Death. He goes to a little tavern to celebrate – and there, waiting patiently for him in the corner, is the Grim Reaper. The rich man is dumbfounded, almost aggrieved. “What were you doing in the market-place this morning?” he demands of Death. “You pulled such a forbidding face that my servant collapsed with fright.”

  The Grim Reaper stands up and stares placidly at the man – for death is never unkind. “I was shocked to see you,” replies Death. “I knew that we had an appointment in Samarra this evening. I never thought that you would arrive in time.”

  No matter how much a man writhes and turns, he can never cheat fate.

  And I was that man.

  For over two days in Hiroshima, I had scurried hither and thither, ignoring victims here and brutalising girls there. But always in the background there was this clock ticking away, clicking down the seconds until my appointment in Nagasaki.