by Неизвестный
“I think I understand,” I said, studying his profile.
“So, whenever I see a cafeteria in the evening I can’t help remembering that painful moment in my life—my long rite of passage. Though I suppose that still doesn’t explain anything.” He looked down and kicked another pebble.
The cafeteria window had begun to darken. Everything had been carefully dried and neatly arranged: the nozzles on the showers, the dish baskets stacked in the corner, the pots on the shelves. I could almost hear the sound of the rain on the tin roof of the swimming-pool changing room. I pictured the slender legs fluttering along the bottom of the pool like so many ailing fish, and the boy with dyed red hair, wrapped in a towel, trembling quietly. One after another, these images floated up in the cafeteria window.
“At about the same time, another thing happened to me,” he said. “I stopped being able to eat.”
“But why?”
“There were probably a lot of reasons. My various complexes, my timid personality, my family . . . lots of things. But the direct cause was the cafeteria.”
“So we’re there at last.”
“Yes. You see, the problem was that I peeked in the cafeteria one day before lunchtime. I can’t remember why I was there at that hour—why I wasn’t in class—but for some reason I stood at the back door and watched the commotion as the staff got ready for lunch. I’d never paid any attention to the cafeteria before. This was more than twenty-five years ago, so the kitchen was completely different from this one. It was in an old wooden building, cramped and dark, more like a barn. I can still remember every detail. The menu that day was cream stew and potato salad, and the first thing that struck me was the smell. It was heavy and suffocating, like nothing I’d ever smelled before. There are lots of foul odors in the world, but this one was different and unsettling because it was linked to the food that I would soon be eating. The smells of the vats of stew and the potato salad were mingling in the cafeteria, fermenting, denaturing.”
I leaned back on the box. Juju twitched his pointed ears. The child remained wrapped around the dog’s neck, perhaps asleep.
“The scene in front of me was all too real, but at the same time it was so far beyond anything I could have imagined that it seemed fantastic. The women who worked in the cafeteria were fat, and their flesh bulged from the elastic cuffs of their uniforms and the tops of their boots. They seemed buoyant, as if they would float when tossed into water. One of them was stirring the stew with a shovel—the sort of metal shovel you’d use in construction. She was flushed, and she kept one foot on the rim of the enormous pot as she worked. And, as she stirred the thick white liquid with her rusty shovel, chunks of fatty meat and bits of onions and carrots churned up before my eyes. The salad was in the next vat. Another woman had climbed into the vat and was crushing the potatoes with her black rubber boots. Each time she lifted her foot, I could see bits of potato clinging to the sole. The more she worked, the more intricate the potato pattern became.”
He coughed once and then continued.
“I couldn’t look away. I wish I could explain how I felt at that moment, but I can’t. If it were a feeling you could sum up with some common word like ‘horror’ or ‘disgust,’ then I’m sure I would have forgotten all about it long ago. But before I was overcome by emotions my mind was imprinted with these incomprehensible images—globs of stew dripping from the shovel, boots buried in mashed potatoes.”
“And after that you couldn’t eat?” I asked quietly, trying to guess where the story was going. He nodded.
“Even now, the rattle of plastic dishes or the footsteps of someone reporting for kitchen duty can bring back every detail of that scene. It was that awful; and, after that, cafeterias had the same effect on me as pools did. I knew that no matter how hard I flailed I was still going to sink to the bottom, just as I knew that every time I tried to take a bite of cafeteria food the fat ladies with their shovels and boots would be there to make sure that I choked. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I left the house one morning with my backpack, and instead of going to school I wandered through town. Of course, it was a day when my class was scheduled to go to the pool. As I walked along, I kicked the bag with my swim-suit and red bathing cap, keeping it aloft with my knees. It felt as though I wandered for a long time, but in reality my grandfather found me after a couple of hours.”
“So you were back in school by lunchtime?”
“No, I was lucky. My grandfather wasn’t angry at all, and he didn’t seem anxious to take me back to school. He had been a skillful tailor in his day, but when he retired he took to drinking and got into all sorts of trouble. To the point that no one in the family wanted to have anything to do with him. He’d get into fights, sleep in the street, destroy traffic lights, that kind of thing. In fact, I’m sure he wasn’t out looking for me that morning; he was probably just drunk already and staggering around town. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Fancy meeting you here. It’s not often we have an opportunity like this, so I’m going to show you a secret spot.’ Then he took my hand and led me in the opposite direction from school.
“I wasn’t usually very comfortable around my grandfather, with his saké breath and his sandpaper palms, but that day I clung tightly to his hand and followed him. In his other hand he held a can of beer, and he occasionally took a sip as we walked. Eventually, we came to a warehouse district at the edge of town, to the ruins of a concrete building. ‘That’s it,’ my grandfather said, pointing with his can. It looked like the remains of a factory that had closed long ago. The doors were off the hinges and there were holes in the walls. When we went inside, we could feel the wind blowing straight through. Looking up, I saw patches of sky in the ceiling, as if they’d been cut out with scissors. On the floor was a deep layer of dirt, tinted red with rust, which made a gritty sound at every step. And everywhere were piles of junk: nuts and bolts, springs, batteries, empty soda bottles, a plastic hair band, a harmonica, a thermometer, all sleeping quietly in the dust. There were several solid-looking machines, also thickly coated with dirt and rust, and a ‘Safety First’ sign that had fallen off the wall.
“My grandfather led me to a machine with rows of switches and levers and told me to sit there. It looked like a printing press or perhaps an old-fashioned dryer, but whatever it was it definitely didn’t work anymore. I hung my bag over one of the levers.
“My grandfather must have been nearing the end of his beer, because he started peering into the can between sips and the pace of his drinking slowed. ‘Do you know what they used to make here?’ he said. When he spoke, the beer foam on his lips flew off in all directions. Relieved that he still hadn’t asked me why I was skipping school, I shook my head encouragingly.
“ ‘Chocolate,’ he said, almost as if he were boasting.
“ ‘Chocolate? Really?’ I asked.
“ ‘That’s right. They’d put cocoa beans and milk and sugar in that machine over there in the corner, and mix it up good, and out would come liquid chocolate. By the time it reached the next machine, it had cooled a bit and looked more like thick brown syrup. Then when it finally got to this roller here it was turned into a big sheet of chocolate.’ He poked his foot at the machine I was sitting on. ‘A huge chocolate bar, as wide as two tatami mats and as long as you wanted it to be, so long as you let the rollers go!’
“ ‘Are you sure?’ I said, excited by his description of the fantastic chocolate bar.
“ ‘If you think I’m lying, just take a whiff.’
“I stood up on the base of the machine and brought my nose near to the roller, half closing my eyes to get a better scent. I was overcome with a pleasant sensation, as if I were being wrapped up in something large and comforting. Somewhere far off, the cicadas were humming. At first I smelled only iron, a metallic, dry odor. But as I stood there I began to catch a faint hint of a sweet, familiar scent, like a glimpse of a dream.
“ ‘Well?’ my grandfather said.
“ ‘You’re right,’ I
said, lingering for a moment, my hands resting on the rough roller.
“ ‘If you ever get the urge for chocolate, you can always come here. This roller has made so much chocolate that it’s not going to mind if you come and sniff some of it from time to time.’ Having finally finished his beer, he threw the can on the floor. It made a sad, hollow sound as it rolled away. I realized that he probably had no more money to buy alcohol. In order to stop him from drinking too much, he was kept on a tight budget. I reached into my backpack and pulled out the envelope with the money I was supposed to give to my teacher for a school trip.
“ ‘You can buy some more with this,’ I said.
“ ‘Thanks,’ he said, and I saw the corners of his red eyes wrinkle with delight.”
By the time the man’s long story ended, the evening had covered us in shadow. The outline of his face seemed to be vanishing into the darkness. The boy, still sprawled on Juju, lay motionless in the gloom.
I wanted to tell him something, so much that it felt like a weight on my chest. If I didn’t, it seemed that his face might actually disappear.
“Is that the end of the story?” I said, taking great care with each word.
“It is.” He gave a slight shake to the hair on his forehead.
“But what happened with your swimming class and the cafeteria?”
“There isn’t much to tell. I learned to swim, and my grandfather died of a malignant tumor. That’s all.” We sat for a moment staring out at the twilight and then stood up. Time had been suspended as he talked, but now it resumed.
“Time to go home.”
At the sound of his father’s voice, the boy opened his eyes. He blinked for a moment, as if trying to recapture his dream. Juju’s tail wagged, rubbing against the child’s cheek.
“I suppose I’ll see you here again,” I said, taking Juju’s chain in my hand.
“We move on to a new area tomorrow. A bigger town, closer to the mountains.” The boy ran over to him, and he took his hand. “We’ll have to say goodbye to the cafeteria.” On the other side of the window, the kitchen was slowly vanishing, as if sinking into a swamp.
“I hope there’s a nice one in your new town,” I said.
He smiled without nodding. “Goodbye,” he said. The boy waved to Juju, and the pompom on his cap shook.
“Goodbye.” I waved, too.
They walked off in the fading light. Juju and I stood watching them until they became a tiny point in the distance and then vanished. I suddenly wanted to read my “Good night” telegram one more time. I could feel the exact texture of the paper, see the letters, feel the air of the night it had arrived. I wanted to read it over and over, until the words melted away. Tightening my grip on the chain, I began to run in the opposite direction.
SHIMA TSUYOSHI
Shima Tsuyoshi (b. 1939) is one of several pen names used by the native Okinawan writer, playwright, and historian Ōshiro Masayasu. It literally means “the island is strong.” Many of Shima’s works focus on the brutal fight for Okinawa at the end of World War II. In this story, “Bones” (Hone, 1973), which was published just a year after the United States returned control of Okinawa to the Japanese government, he turns his attention to the continuing repercussions of that struggle.
BONES (HONE)
Translated by William J. Tyler
The work crew had arrived at the construction site and was taking a break when a yellow safety helmet swung into view at the foot of the hill. The man in the helmet was moving at a fast clip as he made his way up the dirt road that cut through the pampas grass. Right behind him was an old woman. She relied on a walking stick, but she dogged him like a shadow.
The construction site was situated atop a stretch of foothills from which one could see the entire city of Naha in a single sweep. Long, long ago the area had been covered in trees, and many a tale had been told about the ghosts who resided in the dark, densely wooded hills. But that was until the war. The heavy naval bombardment from offshore had leveled the akagi forests down to the last tree. And then came the postwar expansion of the city that had altered the way the land looked down below once and for all. It was as though the whole area had been painted over in colors that gave it a bright, gaudy look.
The denuded slope was like a half-peeled papaya. The top had been lopped off, and from there to the road a quarter of the way down the hill, the red clay was exposed to the elements. According to the notice posted at the construction site, the hilltop was slated to become the site of a twenty-story luxury hotel.
The five men in the work crew were from Naha City Hall. Sitting under the shade of a giant banyan tree, they gazed at the city as it stretched before them. The plain was flat and dry and looked as though it had been lightly dusted in a silvery powder. The August sun had risen to a point in the sky where it was now almost directly overhead.
As the light danced over the whitecaps that broke against the coral reef lying offshore, it seemed almost playful. It was as though the sun had come to make fun of the men and the bored, fed-up expressions they wore on their faces. Meanwhile, some forty to fifty feet from the tree sat a big bulldozer. It was resting quietly for the moment, but the prongs on the shovel were pointed this way. It was just about there, too—the spot where the bulldozer was parked—that the bones had turned up the day before.
The man in the yellow safety helmet nodded in the direction of the assistant section chief as he approached the work crew from city hall. He was the man in charge of the construction site, and the company name, “TOA ELECTRIC,” was embroidered on his breast pocket in fancy gold letters. They glittered in the sunlight.
“Well, where are the bones?” asked the assistant section chief, a round-shouldered man. He had grabbed a shovel and looked as though he was ready to get to work right away.
“I hate to say it, but there’s been a new hitch.” As the construction boss turned and looked behind him, the metal rims of his glasses seemed to flash as they caught the light of the sun.
There was the old woman—her neck thrust forward, her withered chin jutting out prominently into the air. She was out of breath from keeping up with the man in the yellow safety hat as they had climbed the long incline.
“So where is it, this spot you’re talking about?”
There was a razor-sharp edge to the man’s voice as he turned to address the old woman. With that, she lifted her walking stick and pointed it at the men from city hall.
“That’s it there. I’m sure of it. Because the tree marks the spot. Any place from the tree to where you’ve got your bulldozer parked over there is where you’ll find’em. Yes sir, underneath it’s nothing but bones. I know’cause I saw it all with my own two eyes. There’s no mistake. I’m absolutely certain of it.”
The construction boss could hardly believe what he was being told and turned to the assistant section chief with a look of total incredulity. “I never thought I’d have a mess like this on my hands. It wasn’t until this morning that these people let me know there was a graveyard up here.”
The construction boss introduced the old woman to the assistant section chief. She was the former owner of the property, and her family name was Higa. Higa Kame. Her given name sounded the same as the word for turtle, and the boss could not help feeling there was something tortoise-like about the old woman’s appearance.
The turtle woman cut him short. “No, Mister, this is no graveyard. We just dug a hole and threw the bodies in. That’s all there was to it. We were in the middle of a war here on the island, and nothing more could be done.”
“But that’s exactly what I needed to hear from you. Why in hell didn’t you say something about graves before now? Letting heavy-duty equipment sit idle even for one day costs a fortune. We’re taking a big loss.”
The anger in the man’s voice was countered by an equally furious look from the old turtle woman. Her aging, yellowed eyes had peaked into small triangles, and her lips were tightly pursed. The assistant section chief tossed his shov
el aside. He knew trouble and could see it coming now.
“What kind of numbers are we talking about here?” he asked uneasily.
“Thousands. The mayor had us gather up all the bodies from around here and put them in a pile. There were so many you couldn’t begin to count’em. . . .” The old woman waved her stick in the air as if to make her point. Doubtless she was having trouble expressing herself in standard Japanese and felt the need to emphasize what she had to say.
“That many, huh?” A look of despair crossed the assistant section chief’s face.
“There were so many bodies they wouldn’t fit in the hole. Later on we used gasoline to burn them and then buried the ashes. The mayor said he’d look after the upkeep of the site, but then we never heard another word from him. Poor souls. There was no one to care for them when they died, and now their bones have been completely abandoned.”
“That’s not how I heard it. No siree, that’s not the story I was told.”
The frustration and anger in the construction boss’ voice was almost palpable as he spat out the words in his own local Osaka dialect from mainland Japan.
No, that was not the story.
It was a line from the script recited to him by the people down at city hall. But the line was supposed to be delivered by them to him, not by him to someone else.
It was yesterday when he had phoned them from the construction site to say unmarked graves had been uncovered on the hill and that the company was asking city hall to step in and deal with the problem.
“Unmarked graves are the responsibility of the Health and Physical Education Section,” he was told. “They’re the ones to handle it.”