A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  As I stare Aki down, I imagine I can feel the wasps buzzing inside me, angry, churning with an acute need to strike. A fitting image. I’m starting to feel in control of my hate again. “I know now,” I say.

  Mr. Onagi’s workers bring out our next courses. Beautiful, fresh fish; vegetables carved like blossoms. I want to enjoy it, but I know it’ll taste the same as everything else these days—ashy and dead, sucking the saliva right out of my mouth. Everything sticks in my throat like a too-large pill.

  “We’ll go to the lovers’ shrine tomorrow,” Aki says. “It’s supposed to be a beautiful place for photographs. Very scenic.”

  Translation: if the photographs don’t serve her purpose, it’ll be my fault. I may not have learned Japanese yet, but I’m getting fluent in Akiko.

  I clench a pale sliver of raw fish, translucent and shimmering like a shell, between my chopsticks. I have to eat. Everyone else is scarfing down rice and shabu-shabu slices of beef, roasted trout, pickled plums and ginger and radishes. I want to eat it all, but I’m so full, I’ve gorged on my anger and hatred, I feel like I’m vibrating out of my skin. I’ve shoved my anger down for so long and there aren’t any pockets of my body left for me to tuck it away—

  The lights flicker overhead. Mariko squeaks; everyone glances up, food dangling from their chopsticks and broth spilling from their spoons.

  The buzzing in the back of my head intensifies.

  Maybe my anger is making me hallucinate, but somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that I made the lights flicker.

  Embrace it, a voice whispers from within me, Chloe’s voice, and I let the buzzing take me over. I am the earthquake. I am destruction. The buzzing in my head grows.

  “Worthless old building,” Kazuo says. “This whole village is lame. What’s the big deal with preserving it anyway? Who cares about the past?”

  Something rumbles behind us, like a truck shoving its way down the narrow street. No—now it’s rumbling into the wooden ryokan building. It’s rolling up through the floor and rattling our plates and sending the pendant lamp bouncing furiously. Mariko scrambles into Kazuo’s lap. The glass bottle of sake crashes off of the table’s edge and shatters. One shard of glass strikes Akiko on the wrist, and she screams.

  I sink back into my chair and pretend I called the earthquake to swallow me up. How wonderful it feels to imagine my body tearing apart, wrenched open by the ground itself.

  But within seconds, it’s over. Everyone’s frozen, waiting for more. When nothing else happens, they all start talking at once, frantic in Japanese. Through the thin walls, we can hear chatter in the other dining rooms as well. Kenji rushes over to Akiko with a damp napkin and twists it around her wrist, then helps her to her feet.

  “Hello? Is everyone all right?” Mr. Onagi is knocking on the door to our dining room. “Anyone hurt?”

  Akiko screeches a reply in Japanese. Tadashi finally stands and rushes to Akiko’s other side, and he and Kenji carry her from the dining room like they’re rescuing her from a burning building.

  I help myself to another scoop of rice, savoring the buzz in my head and the rattle in my bones. The egg of my anger has cracked open, runny yolk spilling out, and suddenly I feel better than I’ve felt in weeks. I take a bite of food. I was meant to come to Kuramagi after all. Maybe, just maybe, it can give me the strength—fill me with enough hatred—to do what I have to do.

  I’ll make them all sorry. I’ll find a way to make them pay for their cruelty, their neglect. I’ll make sure they never forget me or what I’ve done.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Something is hitting the thin window of our ryokan room, tapping like a skeletal branch. I blink, groggy, still feeling pinned in place by the thick vines of my dreams—dreams of lava and steam, of the valley filling with blood as the earth rumbles and I raise my hands up high. But it’s all gone now. Everything is dark and a deeper dark, all swirling together, until finally I spot the square of weak dishwater-gray moonlight coming from the window.

  Plink. Plink.

  I throw off the heavy duvet and force myself to my feet, though my muscles feel shot through with lead. My head is still buzzing, more insistent than ever in the room’s cavernous silence. I stagger toward the window. Plink. I jerk back, startled, as a pebble hits the window again.

  Mariko and Aki. Of course. I glance over my shoulder; their pallets are still empty. It takes me a few seconds to figure out the window latch, then I slide it open and narrowly dodge another pebble aimed right for my head.

  “Took you long enough!” Aki hisses up at me from the ground floor garden. A sheet of fog is tucked tight against the ground, so the girls look legless, floating toward me from the lamp-lit ancient world of Kuramagi. The air tastes heavy with impending rain. I know the souvenir shop is just on the other side of the narrow street from us, but all I can see is the dull halo of its lantern now, the darkness and fog is so thick.

  Mariko hoists Aki up onto her shoulders, then Aki rolls onto the roof of the first-floor porch. I catch her by her bandaged hand, and contemplate letting go.

  It’d serve her right, but I yank her through the window. That’s not how I want to get my revenge.

  The lantern at the souvenir shop quavers; a deeper shadow cuts through the fog, stirring up the smooth butter-spread calm along the road. Let it in, something says from inside of me. Just like the earthquake.

  I frown and lean back from the window. Am I seeing things again? Hearing them? A bitter voice answers me inside my head. Idiot. Of course you are. Just like you think you can cause lights to flicker. Like you can summon earthquakes with your hate. It’s not Chloe’s voice this time but Hideki’s, which never fails to remind me of how worthless I am. The fog has settled once more, except where Mariko bounces, trying to scramble onto the lower roof. I jut my torso out the window again and help her in.

  “You should’ve gone with us, Rei! The club was so cool! They played great music, and Aki convinced these guys to buy us free drinks because they felt bad about her hand.” Mariko shimmies out of her coat. “She should work at a hostess club. She’d make so much money in tips—”

  “I’m not working at a hostess club. I’m a star.” Even in the dark, I can see the knife glint of Aki’s narrowed stare.

  Something rustles in the far corner of the room. I can see it outlined in moonlight against the tatami flooring—the sleek black husk of a Japanese roach. Japanese roaches have shells that look thick as a beetle’s, and I’ve seen ones in the Satoris’ apartment almost the size of my fist. If we were back there, I’d already be reaching for the spray bottle with a label that is a mystery to me save for the massive exclamation mark at the end and the depiction of what looks like a drunken cartoon roach.

  I ignore the roach and give the garden one last look, but the shadows I’d seen have evaporated; the fog is thick and solid. No disturbances, no movement. I latch the window shut again.

  “This place is so boring. Even the earthquake was a letdown,” Aki says. “Only a three, they said at the club. No serious damage.”

  “Yeah. A real letdown,” I say. “Too bad we aren’t all dead.”

  “It’s not boring.” Mariko exchanges a look with Aki. “It’s creepy. That fog … it isn’t right.” The look Aki gives her could pop a zit, but Mariko doesn’t back down. They regard each other for a long moment. Then Mariko says, softer, “I’m not just making it up. I’m telling you, I saw—”

  “You watch too much anime,” Aki says.

  Discussion over. I wriggle back into my pallet, and let sleep drag me under again, swaddling me in the thickness of the buzzing inside my head.

  I wake up again just after six, slip out of our room, and shuffle toward the communal bathroom in my plastic red slippers to empty my bladder. On my way back out of the restrooms, I run into Mr. Onagi as he unlocks the front door to the ryokan. “I trust you slept well after last night’s earthquake?” he asks me in English.

  I nod.

  “I’m very glad. Som
e people your age find our curfew boring. But it’s for the best for everyone.”

  God. Everyone acts like roving bands of vagrants sweep through the town at night, emboldened by the lack of streetlights. “What do you mean, it’s for the best?”

  His leathery face scrunches up. “Well, it’s how we keep the village safe.” Then he smoothes his expression. “But no matter. You are here for the cultural festival, yes? I expect a lot more guests will arrive tonight.”

  “Yeah. Can’t wait.” I grimace and shove my hands into my pockets. “Actually, I thought I might go for a walk,” I say.

  “Sure, sure. I’ll have breakfast ready in an hour. If you like, though, you should visit the historical museum. They open at seven.” He jabs a thumb to the right down the main road. “Might want to get your walking done early. It’s supposed to rain.”

  Poor Aki and her photo shoot plans. I head upstairs to dress, then come back down and sit on the porch steps to lace up my boots, before I head into the narrow streets.

  The fog is gone, though woolly thunderheads sheathe the mountain peaks that pin us in on either side. If I stand perfectly still, I can hear the distant rustle of the river at the valley’s base. As I walk through town, I look over my shoulder after every couple of buildings I pass, just to make sure Kenji—or anyone else—isn’t following me; now that I know about Uncle Satori’s decree, I feel honor-bound to keep them from succeeding.

  The village’s streets are stacked one atop the other like rice paddies, a stair step of dark tile and wood down the mountainside. I climb a narrow, crooked staircase to reach the next tier up and catch my breath at the fiery burst of fall leaves along the opposite mountain’s slope. It really is beautiful here—there’s a dull thump inside of me, that feeling that once compelled me to grab my camera and frame up a thousand shots in hopes that just one might capture the awe that I feel. I wish I could feel that again—like I did at night in the studio at camp with Chloe cheering me on. But I think the weight of my hatred has shattered it. I can never feel that again.

  The buzzing in my head crowds around my thoughts, a tremor like too much caffeine. I pinch my nose to try to clear it out.

  An old woman, humped back jutting through her parka, makes her way down the steps of a Shinto shrine embedded in a gap between buildings. Zigzag paper lightning bolts dangle over the entrance to the shrine, twisting back and forth as a fresh breeze kicks up and whips my loose hair into my face. The woman glances at me, frowns, then begins her slow crawl down the other side of the street.

  The village is more extensive than I first expected. There’s a water wheel alongside the mountain stream at one edge of town; countless tiny shops and cafés, their proprietors just now unlatching the window covers and setting out their signs. Their persistence in keeping the historical feel to the town has been successful. If it weren’t for the occasional Toyota crawling along the road, I’d feel lost in time.

  Finally I pass a sign for the KURAGAMI HISTORICAL HONJIN AND HERITAGE MUSEUM. It’s set back from the road behind a gateway that opens onto a spare garden. A gray-haired woman is polishing the dark wooden doors, but stops and bows to me with an “Ohayō-gozai-masu.” Good morning.

  “Ohayō-gozai-masu,” I reply, then decide to press my luck, “Hakubutsukan, aite-masu-ka?” Is the museum open?

  She tilts her head, momentarily flustered, then answers me in a steady stream of Japanese until I hold up my hand.

  “Sumimasen desuka eigo de hanasemasu-ka?” Can you speak English?

  That flicker of surprise. “Please, come inside. I am just now starting the fire.”

  I follow her indoors. The main chamber of the room is two stories tall, its tatami mat floor raised on a platform, with a massive chain dangling down from the roof and holding a cauldron. She prods the cauldron’s contents with a poker, inviting a gust of smoke into the room. “This honjin was built in 1804 to host imperial and shogunate guests who passed through Kuramagi,” she says. “This is the main room of the traveler’s inn, where the travelers and the family who lived here would gather. Seating depended on a person’s rank. They would sit farthest from the direction of the smoke if they were very important, or in the smoke’s path if they were of low ranking.”

  I laugh in spite of myself. Nothing like a case of black lung to keep those filthy peasants in line.

  “The women of this inn have wiped down the walls every day since it was built in order to clean off the smoke, like this.” She demonstrates with her rag, running it along the gleaming wood. Sure enough, I can see a line out of arm’s reach where the dark wood changes from perfectly polished to smoky and charred, though it’s just barely visible on the near-black wood. “Do you know why we have the wooden slats on the windows?” she asks me.

  I shake my head.

  “They are specially angled. The inhabitants inside the building can see out, but a person on the street cannot see in. In the shogun times, this was very useful!”

  I grin again. “Why? What did they have to hide?”

  “Some people in the town supported the emperor. They did not want the shogunate to rule any longer. So it was good to know if anyone was coming who might hear them plotting against the bakufu—the military government that supported the shogun.”

  History has never been my forté, but Japanese history, even less so. We never got much in school in America beyond what happened in World War II. And Mom and Dad would sooner get a colonoscopy than talk about their lives before they came to college in the States. I run my finger along the length of one of the slats. “Oh. I guess I thought you meant because of … like, swords and arrows and stuff.” As soon as I say it, I wish I could stuff the words back in my mouth. A dumb American tourist, she can probably forgive. But a dumb Japanese-American one? Inexcusable.

  “No, no. Life was peaceful here under the shogunate. Peaceful, but…” She lets the rag dangle limp in her hands. “Stagnant. The bakufu’s warrior class, the samurai, were bored without battles to fight. They caused problems sometimes for people trying to make their lives better.” Her expression darkens. “And a bored samurai, especially one part of the Tokugawa shogunate, could be a very dangerous thing indeed.”

  My grip tightens around the slats. I remember the way Hideki looked on his first home leave from Iraq, before he got his early discharge. A medic without a body to mend. A weapon without anyone to fire it. Once again I can feel the five points on my arm striking a dissonant chord. A fighter will always find himself a new fight.

  “The Tokugawa shogunate ruled everything. The emperor was only a puppet on their strings. We were a military country then, but some people—like the residents of this house—fought to restore the emperor’s right to rule.”

  “And why did people want the emperor to be in power again?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light.

  “The emperor wanted to befriend the West and make Japan a superpower. Not a lonely island. After your American Admiral Perry arrived with his kurofune—the black ships—and tried to force Japan to open itself to trade, the shogunate wanted to close off even further. But the emperor’s supporters wanted to join the rest of the world and gain even more power for Japan.”

  I laugh. Well, I guess I know who won. Emperor Meiji and his grand Restoration and his shrine in Yoyogi Park.

  “If you go upstairs, you can see the secret panel,” she says, bunching up her rag once more. “It’s blocked now, but it leads to the attic room where the emperor’s supporters would gather and plan to overthrow the shogunate.”

  I thank her for the tour and make my way back downstairs. Part of me is itching to have a camera in my hand once more so I can document the weak sunlight filtering through the open rooms, the details carved into the wooden beams overhead, the paintings and scrolls. But I’m done with that life. I lace my boots back up and head onto the streets.

  I collide with Kenji on my way back down to the ryokan’s street level, nearly knocking us both down the narrow stairs. “Rei!” he cries. “Where the h
ell have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere! You wouldn’t answer your phone, and you didn’t say anything to Aki and Mariko—”

  “You didn’t call Uncle Satori, did you?” I make fists inside my hoodie pockets. The last thing I need is him thinking his impromptu “suicide watch” needs to be doubled up.

  Kenji hesitates, Adam’s apple quivering against the collar of his shirt. He smells of warmth and soap; I notice his damp hair slick against his head, and realize he’s just come from the shower. His shirt clings to him in damp patches, revealing more muscle beneath than I would’ve guessed.

  “No,” he finally says. “And I won’t. Not unless you force me to.” He looks me square in the eye. “Don’t force me to, okay?”

  Don’t give him a reason to think I’m sneaking off to hurt myself, he means. Because my parents and Uncle Satori conscripted him to spy on me. I shrug and look away.

  “Reiko.”

  I look up at those deep brown eyes, the fine planes of his nose. I try not to see him as another jailor, another thing for me to hate. But it’s hard. I can’t pull away the red filter that warps every memory I make.

  “I’ve seen what you can do with a camera. The collages you used to make.”

  Shame billows inside of me. “How did you see those—”

  “The ones of Seattle. You know? The black-and-white photos that you painted on and stitched together. I thought it was really cool.”

  Oh—he means the ones from before art camp, before Chloe and the collages that landed me in the psychiatric ward. I forgot those were still online, on that cheesy little ArtSpace site I’d created to serve as my portfolio for RISD. The ones that were only good enough to get me wait-listed.

  “If you have a gift like that, you should use it,” Kenji says. “Pay the bills with Aki’s stuff and Satori-san’s work, sure, but you could do so much more. It must be incredible, to see the world the way you see it.”

  “You mean the way I saw the world.” I smile, sticky as honey. “But that world’s gone, so why worry about capturing it? Let’s give Aki what she wants.”