Mr Two Bomb

by William Coles

  “Shorten the string and jig your arm back and forth. A Nagasaki kite-master would never run backwards.”

  “And if it gets windier, I let the string out?”

  “You let the string out as far as it can go.” I smiled at her. I was so happy to see her enjoying the kite. “When I was a boy, I had a kite which I used to send up over 800 metres into the sky.”

  “That would have been higher than the mountains.”

  “It certainly was,” I said. “My father once climbed the highest hill, Mount Inasa, and my kite was way over his head.”

  “I want to try that!” said the girl – and on such small things do our lives depend. Because of that, I have lived to tell my tale – and if it had not happened that way, if the girl had decided to keep her mouth shut, then we all of us in that garden would have been burnt to a crisp.

  The wind was getting fresher and gradually the girl let out more string. She laughed as the kite danced higher and higher and my spirits soared with it. For me, there is no more uplifting sight in this world than that of a kite flittering in the sky. I could feel the wind and the sun on my face, and, after all the misery of Hiroshima, I could only close my eyes in the most perfect ecstasy.

  My son was in my arms and my face was upturned full to the sky. What bliss. I had no thought for anything but the sun and the warmth of Toshiaki in my arms.

  I do not know how long I stood like that, but eventually I came to open my eyes and as I did so, I found myself looking not at the kite, but at a thick bank of cloud, shaped like a hand, that was high overhead.

  I would never have noticed it otherwise. It was so high up, that it was barely more than a silvery black dot as it ducked through the clouds.

  I watched and I watched, now oblivious to the kite. Though it was just a lone plane, it had triggered some switch inside me, for I already half-suspected what it was going to do next.

  For ten or twenty seconds, the plane continued drifting on its course. Suddenly it shanked away. This change of direction was not immediately obvious, but as I continued to stare at the plane it became apparent that it had executed a sharp banking turn and was now pulling away hard from Nagasaki.

  And unlike almost all the other wretched city folk in Nagasaki, I was one of the few people who realised exactly what had just happened; an aeon ago in Hiroshima, I had seen this peculiar aircraft manoeuvre once before. I had been standing in Akiba’s office at the warehouse as three planes had trawled across a clear blue sky. As I had peered out over Akiba’s shoulder, each of the planes had seemed to bank sideways. It is, as far as I know, the calling card of the atomic bomber.

  It took some moments – precious, precious moments – for me to understand the full import of what I had just witnessed. Had that plane really changed course? Had it? It was difficult to tell as I squinted up into the sky. And then the clangour of alarm bells going off in my head as I realised that it had changed course, definitely, and that I had seen it all before. I had seen it before! But it could not... it could not be another atomic bomb; not after all I had endured in Hiroshima.

  The plane, so tiny, so innocuous, drifted away into the haze of clouds. So easy just to have ignored it. But in a single moment of astounding clarity, I realised what was happening: the bomb was already on its way.

  The last few sands of fate were fast dribbling out, and every one of us would be judged on what we were doing in exactly 20 seconds’ time.

  “Not again,” I whispered to myself, before screaming at the girl. “Take cover! Run! They’ve dropped another bomb!”

  I was screaming, shouting, at the top of my lungs. The girl was busily trying to wind up the string of the kite. “There is no time for that!” I shrieked, swatting the winder out of her hand. “Take cover! Get into the shrine! Go right to the back! Lie down, face on the floor, head in your arms! Quickly! Now! Now!”

  Adrenalin was coursing through me as I barked orders at the girl. I was barely even aware that I still had the boy clutched to my chest. As I charged across the garden to the sanctuary of my father’s rocky shrine, I glanced over my shoulder.

  Mako was still standing in the doorway. She had her arms crossed, a cup of tea in her hand – and was staring at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.

  “Mako!” I screamed at her. “Take cover! It’s the bomb! They have dropped another bomb! Please, please listen to me! Take cover!”

  I flung myself into the shrine. It was small, with barely room for me and the girl, with coarse rock walls and a little niche in which had been placed a black and white photo of my mother. I crouched over her, with little Toshiaki sandwiched between the two of us.

  I looked across the garden. Mako was still in the doorway. “Mako!” I called out. “Please! It’s the bomb! Please!”

  A moment I will never forget. Mako had one arm cocked onto her hip, effortlessly elegant. Now that I think of it, she cut rather a dashing figure as she leaned against the doorframe. “You are mad!” she called out.

  I bury my head into the crook of my arms, with thumbs in my eye-sockets and fingers tight into my ears – and I wait, and I wait.

  And what I am thinking is: not again. I cannot believe this is happening again. What sort of ill-luck had drawn me back to Nagasaki for this?

  While all these outraged thoughts swirl through my head, nothing is happening. I can hear the wind sighing against the side of the shrine. I can feel the girl squirming beneath me. My son starts to wriggle, kicking his leg out, whimpering as my chest presses down on him. I count to ten.

  Have I got it wrong? Had the plane’s change of course been pure happenstance?

  Is it possible that my mind has been playing tricks with me? Had that little dot of a plane really banked away like the three planes over Hiroshima? Or had Hiroshima made me completely paranoid?

  After all – what were the chances of being hit by not one but two of these freakish new bombs? Just what were the chances? I was starting at shadows; what an idiot! And just as I was about to lift my head and slope back into the house for another cup of tea, the last grains of Nagasaki’s life trickled out and Armageddon had come again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Even with my thumbs pressed tight in my sockets, I could still sense the flash, along with a warm pulse that singed through my body. I was far closer to the epicentre than I had been at Hiroshima; this time the flash and the booming shockwave were almost instantaneous.

  The three of us were bodily hurled against the wall of the shrine; I took the brunt of the blow on my back, cushioning the girl and Toshiaki. With the rolling blast came a fusillade of shrapnel-like debris, clattering against those solid rock walls of the shrine.

  I must have been stunned after clouting my head against the wall. I lay there not moving, sending delicate probes out over my body. I could actually feel the ground vibrating beneath me, like the surface of an immense drum. Bits of me ached. I was too shell-shocked to tell if it was anything serious.

  The girl and Toshiaki were lying cradled in my arms. I thought they might have been killed outright, but then Toshiaki screamed in pain and the girl started to cough from the heavy dust. The shrine’s open entrance had been almost side on to the blast.

  We had been saved by those wonderful rough-hewn walls that had been built by my father.

  I gently extricated myself from the two children and crawled out to inspect Nagasaki’s new world order. And even though I knew what to expect and had seen the like only three days earlier, it was no less shocking.

  Nagasaki, my home-town, my favourite city on earth, had been razed to the ground. Already that thunderous mushroom cloud, iridescent with every hue and colour of the rainbow, was soaring into the sky. It seemed to be emanating from almost directly above the ruins of Urakami cathedral.

  The air was thick with dust and will-o’-the-wisp flames, burning like bright glow-flies in the haze. Across the horizon, the whole of the valley had been transformed into a swathe of flaming pyres as thousands of wooden houses had s
pontaneously combusted. There were so many fires that they stretched from end-to-end across the valley, sending a broad blanket of smoke up into the sky.

  And my house? My home was no more. It had been blown clean off its foundations and lay smeared across the garden in a welter of tiles and wood that was so splintered it could have been nothing more than ragged flotsam washed up on the shore. I had expected it, but I was still numbed by the violence and astonishing swiftness of the destruction.

  I poked my head back into the shrine. The girl was lying on her side, with the boy cocooned in her arms. “Are you injured?” I said.

  She shook her head sadly and could only peer out at the slate grey cloud that was blossoming overhead. “I don’t think so.”

  My hands fluttered over Toshiaki’s body. From head to waist he seemed fine, but one of his legs felt hot – hot like a piece of cooked meat and when I looked, I saw that it was already red and puffy as if he had been branded. A large splinter of wood, a hand’s width in length, had been driven through his thigh. I have often wondered how he came by that injury. I can only imagine that when the bomb exploded, he had somehow kicked his leg out from underneath me and it had been exposed to the blast.

  For the first time, I noticed my own wounds. The pain was not excruciating, by any means. I felt remarkably detached. It was more like the tingle that comes after you have skinned yourself on a rock – though I could tell that as soon as the adrenalin wore off, the pain would be terrific. The sleeve of my shirt had been wrenched off at the shoulder. Somehow my left arm had been exposed and from bicep to wrist had turned an angry red. It was a burn that was to give me much hurt over the years. But despite all the pain and the surgery, in a way I am glad that I sustained some form of injury, however slight. It has given me some inkling of the pain that all those other Abomb victims went through; it is a sign, also, that I was there. I wear my scar with pride.

  I looked at the girl again. Still dazed, she was gaping at the mushroom cloud.

  “Can you look after Toshiaki?” I asked. “I must search for Mako.”

  “I’ll help you,” she said, trying to get up.

  “That’s kind. You’re very thoughtful.” Without even being aware of it, I bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “It would be better if you looked after Toshiaki. His leg is badly hurt. Could you?”

  “Yes,” she said, and hugged the mewling boy tight to her chest. “I’ll wait.”

  Already my mind was ticking over what I had to do. First I had to try to rescue Mako from underneath the ruins of the house – and quickly too. If I found her alive, I would need to get her and Toshiaki up to the Urakami hospital, which was on the higher hill slopes about a kilometre away up the valley. How would I get them there? Could I carry them both in my arms?

  I jogged over to what had once been my home; there was far less wreckage than there had been at Sumie’s house, but then my home had only been a bungalow.

  Sumie. The name of my lover flashed through my mind. I realised that since she had been burned alive three days ago, I had hardly given her a thought. And as I started to call out Mako’s name and work my way through the debris, I did appreciate the awful irony that once again I was trying to dig up the woman that I loved. Did I love Mako? Well, there was still a glowing ember for her in my heart, and I hoped that I might yet coax it into flames.

  “Mako!” I shouted. “Can you hear me? Mako! Where are you?”

  From probing haphazardly about the ruins, I took a few steps backwards to try and gauge where she might have been standing. It was hopeless. I could not even tell the front of the house from the back.

  “Mako!” I called again. “Mako!”

  I stood quietly on the ruins, listening for a sound – and what struck was that, for the first time in my life, there was no noise. Everything in Nagasaki had stopped and all about me was nothing but void and eerie silence.

  Again I shouted her name. Nothing but the sound of the wind. I cock my ear slightly, trying to discern a hint of a noise that might be coming from underneath the rubble. It is so faint that it is like the light knocking of a death-watch beetle. I move to one of the larger heaps of debris – is that a piece of the chimney lying on the top? – and as I squat down, I can hear the tap-tap-tap sound of something knocking against wood.

  I had a metre of debris to get through but having learned my lessons from Hiroshima, I shifted it methodically, starting wide at the top and tapering down. I would grab a tile or piece of wood and without even looking would sling it away. Occasionally I would come across bits of smashed furniture, which I would look at for a moment and wonder, ‘What in the world was that?’, before realising it was part of a table leg or one of the kitchen cupboards. There was even a trace of one of my old kites, the bamboo and red mulberry paper sandwiched between two broken tiles.

  As the hole grew, I would pause every so often to give a shout. I could get a better sense of direction on the sound of Mako’s taps. I shifted my aim.

  Such a glut of thoughts as I dug, all completely random, one after the next in no sequential order. I had just survived two of these freakish bombs; how many more were coming my way? Surely we had to surrender now – or would Japan keep on fighting until these new bombs had been targeted at every city in the Motherland?

  And of course I came to dwell on that eternal question I have been asked so often over the past 60 years: was I blessed, or cursed? And in fewer than 30 minutes, I had already made my decision. I was blessed, blessed beyond belief, to be given not a second, but a third chance.

  My second chance, in Hiroshima, I had completely wasted. Yet now, through fate’s ineffable grace, I had been given a third opportunity. And what surprises me most of all is that I had the wisdom to see it.

  I would make amends. I would make amends for my wastrel life. And I would start with my wife Mako, the woman whom I had treated so abysmally over the years. First I would find her and then I would do everything in my powers to save her. When that was done, I would find more work to do – and there would be no shortage of that in Nagasaki. My arm might be injured, but for as long as I was capable, I would embrace every last flicker of life that was left in Nagasaki.

  My left arm was already beginning to throb. It must have been protected a little from the blast by my grubby white shirt, but it was already lobster red and swollen. Every so often I might cuff it against a piece of rubble, and the jarring shock would wring through my whole body. I did my best to ignore it. I did what I have been doing ever since when my arm causes me pain: I gave thanks for the very fact that I was alive at all; and gave thanks that my injuries were not considerably worse.

  It had started to rain, that oily black rain that I had first encountered in Hiroshima, leaving cold ink stains on my skin and clothes. Although I didn’t then know anything about radiation sickness, I had already conceived the infernal origins of that black rain. But I ignored it and continued to shift the debris. I did not have any option – for there were many more pressing matters. Now that I was in the smouldering ruins of my second atomic bomb, I already had a fair idea of what was coming next.

  The firestorm.

  The wind was blowing hard in from the sea and the whole of downtown Nagasaki was already a sea of flame – and the Urakami valley, with its high hills on either side, was the perfect wind-tunnel. The firestorm was coming at us like a runaway train and nothing in that Godforsaken city was going to stop it.

  Amidst the clatter of the tiles and debris that I was shifting, I noticed some whimpering behind me. The girl had come out from the shrine and was standing a few metres away, cradling Toshiaki in her arms. The poor boy was all shrieked out and all he could do was whimper this unending sob.

  I nodded at the girl as I tossed another piece of wood into the garden.

  “Can I help?” she asked.

  I was about to tell her that there was no room; that I could do the job twice as quickly without her in the way.

  But as I looked over at her one more time
, I saw she was desperate to join me. “Very well,” I said. “Clear a space for Toshiaki and put him on the ground.”

  Toshiaki, for all his pain, was not going to be any worse off for being left by himself for a few minutes. The girl smiled as she joined me.

  “She must be close,” I said. “I can hear her knocking.”

  The girl took a turn down in the hole, worrying at the tiles that were trapped beneath her before passing up bits of wreckage to me.

  And it was she who found Mako and that pleased me.”Here is an arm!” she shouted.

  I swapped places with her. The arm was bare and covered with dust and flecks of stone. It was deeply charred. I cleared away a couple more tiles and found her hand. Very delicately, I took her clawed, burnt fingers in my own and gave them a gentle squeeze. She pulsed back. It was the first time in two years that my feelings had ever been reciprocated.

  Little by little, we unearthed more of Mako’s body. Her other hand still clutched the pebble that she had been blindly tapping against a piece of wooden beam. Then a shoulder, before finally we came to her face. And thank God she could not see me, as I winced at the sight of her and had to turn my head away.

  Her hair, that wonderful black shock of hair, was frazzled and coming out in clumps. Skin was peeling off in strips to reveal raw flesh underneath. Her face was flecked white with plaster, but was so puffed up it was unrecognisable. Her eyesockets were swollen shut while a thin dribble of mucous oozed between the lashes. There is no pleasant way to describe what had happened. Her eyeballs had melted.

  As gently as we could, the girl and I cleared the rest of the wreckage from Mako’s body. I could have saved a few minutes by grabbing hold of her shoulders and dragging her out, but I was quite certain that her skin would have torn off in my hands.

  Eventually, there she lay before us, as weak and vulnerable as a new-born; she did not even have the strength to cry out, but could only lie there immobile on her side, head nuzzled on her shoulder. The bomb had clean stripped away her black top and the whole of her front from head to waist had been flashfried like a piece of steak on the griddle. Oh, but she was savagely injured, with black blood already oozing through the strips of burnt skin. Some wisps of her mompei trousers still adhered to her hips and thighs, though her legs had also been severely burned.