Black Rain

by Masuji Ibuse

Swiftly, with raw, burned hands, he pulled out his belt and showed it to the young man. It must have been made for him from the leather strap used for fastening a wicker hamper, and it had a crude ring of the same color encircling it by the brown metal buckle.

  “It is!” The young man’s voice choked. “Oh, Kyūzō….”

  He squatted beside the boy to put his belt back on for him, and Mrs. Takahashi and I walked away. Unable to decide where to go, we went back in the direction from which we had come. I myself was in two minds whether to go home or to the works, and Mrs. Takahashi was in two minds whether to go to her spinning-comb factory or to the place with which she did business.

  “I’m going home first,” I said. “Even if the town’s on fire, it should be possible if I go along the railway tracks.”

  “I’m going to go to my customer’s to get my money. If I don’t get it in the bank the materials will stop coming.”

  “What about young Iwashita at your branch?” I said. “Even if there was a fire, he might insist on holding on there, like a captain going down with his ship. He’s that kind of fellow, isn’t he?”

  “I’m sure Iwashita can take care of himself. Either way, if I don’t get the money in the bank, the flow of goods will stop dead.”

  “Don’t go, even so. Don’t, now! I doubt if there’ll be anyone at the bank, at any rate. Or at your customer’s, for that matter.”

  “Whether there is or not, I believe in taking risks. Once a businesswoman, always a businesswoman, I say.”

  “Well then,” I said, “let’s say good-bye here. If you look in at our works, tell the manager I’ll be there tonight or tomorrow morning, will you?”

  We parted company and I went back to Yokogawa Station. Fires had started in a dozen places or more, and were spreading from left to right in the direction of Ujina. (Note added later: I heard no more of Mrs. Takahashi: I expect she was caught in the flames.) Fires were rising in the direction of Sanjō Bridge, too. There seemed little chance of getting through the streets. The only possible route left was to follow the Sanyō Line tracks over Yokogawa railway bridge, then out along the railway embankment in the direction of Futaba-no-Sato. So deciding, I started walking eastwards along the tracks in the direction of the Yokogawa Bridge. Here too, the refugees from the city were comparatively few, but most of them were badly injured or burned. Among them was a small boy of about seven, plodding along all by himself. Catching him up, I spoke to him.

  “Where are you going, sonny?”

  He made no reply, his face blank.

  “Do you think you can cross the bridge all by yourself?”

  Again no reply.

  “Then I’ll stay with you till you’re over the bridge, shall I?”

  He nodded, and started walking by my side. Once he was over the bridge, the hills at Futaba would be close at hand, and he would be all right.

  Afraid that I might grow fond of him, I refrained from asking him his name or anything else about himself. He was a nice little boy, and it was a relief when he said not a word. He walked with his mouth open vacantly, as though preoccupied with something; occasionally, when we came to a place where the railway ties were burning, he would stop and look at them in a puzzled fashion, then go through the motions of throwing stones at the fire before walking on again.

  The burning ties puzzled me, too. As we walked on, we came across more ties smoking and flaring up fitfully, as well as railway poles which were smoking at the top or halfway down. The enemy must have dropped an oil incendiary bomb; to test my theory, I stamped out the fire on one sleeper and got down flat on my face to smell it. It smelt of nothing worse than charred wood. An oil bomb would have had an unpleasant odor. It was most odd.

  As I got up from my prone position, the first thing to meet my gaze was a great, an enormous, column of cloud. In its texture, it reminded me of cumulo-nimbus clouds I had seen in photographs taken after the Great Kantō Earthquake. But this one trailed a single, thick leg beneath it, and reached up high into the heavens. Flattening out at its peak, it swelled out fatter and fatter like an opening mushroom.

  “Say sonny, look at that cloud!”

  The boy’s mouth opened wide as he looked up at the sky. Although the cloud seemed at first glance to be motionless, it was by no means so. The head of the mushroom would billow out first to the east, then to the west, then out to the east again; each time, some part or other of its body would emit a fierce light, in ever-changing shades of red, purple, lapis lazuli, or green. And all the time it went on boiling out unceasingly from within. Its stalk, like a twisted veil of fine cloth, went on swelling busily too. The cloud loomed over the city as though waiting to pounce, and my whole body seemed to shrink from it. I wondered if my legs were not going to give out on me.

  “That over there, underneath the cloud—it looks like a shower, doesn’t it?” said a polite, woman’s voice. I looked, and saw standing near me a middle-aged woman with a good natured expression, accompanied by a fresh-faced girl.

  “I wonder, now?” I said. “A shower….”

  I screwed up my eyes and gazed into the sky, but the impression was less of a shower than of a dense mass of small particles. I wondered if it could be a whirlwind. It was like nothing that I had ever seen before. I wondered, my flesh shrinking at the idea, what would happen if it came in this direction and we were rained on by those particles. The mushroom cloud itself was sprawling out farther each moment toward the southeast. I had been right: my legs were giving way under me.

  Seeing the boy with me, the middle-aged woman told me that it was quite impossible to take a child across the Yokogawa railway bridge. About nine-tenths of the way across, a freight train was lying on its side across the tracks, and hundreds and thousands of refugees were squatting on this side of the bridge.

  “Why don’t they come back this way?” I asked.

  “They’re all resting,” she replied, “so badly hurt they don’t have the energy to come back again. Some of them have collapsed where they are and can’t go any further….But I’m sure you’ll never get across the bridge with a child.”

  “Did you hear, son?” I said. My voice was slightly unsteady. “They say children can’t cross the bridge. Why don’t you go with this lady, along the Kabe Line tracks toward the hills?”

  He turned his gaze on me.

  “So you see, sonny, we’ll say good-bye here, eh?”

  He nodded. The middle-aged woman rested a hand on his head and bowed to me.

  The child, who seemed to have formed some idea of where he was going, set off ahead of the woman in the direction from which he had come. I watched him go. His spindly legs ended in a pair of black canvas shoes, trodden down at the backs. He wore shorts, and a short-sleeved shirt, and his hands were empty.

  —

  The mushroom cloud was really shaped more like a jellyfish than a mushroom. Yet it seemed to have a more animal vitality than any jellyfish, with its leg that quivered and its head that changed color as it sprawled out slowly toward the southeast, writhing and raging as though it might hurl itself on our heads at any moment. It was an envoy of the devil himself, I decided: who else in the whole wide universe would have presumed to summon forth such a monstrosity? Should I ever get away alive? Would my family survive? Was I, indeed, on my way home to rescue them? Or was I seeking refuge for myself alone?

  My legs were so unsteady that I could not put one foot before the other, and I shivered uncontrollably.

  With a mighty effort, I forced myself to get a grip on myself. Catching sight of a stick of the kind used for hulling ration rice that was lying by the tracks—heaven knows where it had been blown from—I beat myself indiscriminately on the calves, buttocks, and thighs. Next, I beat my shoulders and upper arms. Then I shut my eyes and did some deep breathing. I did it by the method we were always made to follow in morning exercises at the factory, breathing in and out very slowly, in almost incantatory fashion. It gave me back control of my legs as well as a certain mental detachm
ent, and I set off eastward along the tracks.

  Although everything in me told me to hurry, I adjusted my pace so as not to overtake other refugees. Since this was not one of those nightmares where one is held back by invisible forces, I probably could have run if I had wished, but a feeling that it was best to leave everything in the lap of the gods held me in check.

  Suddenly, one of a group of refugees who were just then overtaking me cried out, “Parachute! Parachute!” and broke into a run. Then, just as suddenly, he reverted to the same plodding, lifeless gait as before. It was a parachute, no doubt. Ahead of us and to the left, a clump of white clouds floated over the farthest hills, and way up in the sky above the clouds was a single white parachute, drifting gently toward the north.

  I was walking on, still worrying about it vaguely, when there was a sudden, loud boom. The ground shook, and a column of black smoke rose up about seven or eight hundred yards to the northwest. As one man, the refugees on the tracks began to run, but almost at once reverted to their former leaden tread, the tread of men utterly exhausted both physically and mentally.

  There was another explosion, and another. With earth-shaking roars, columns of black smoke shot up a full three hundred feet. At each explosion, the refugees began to run. Finally, someone called out, “It’s oil drums going up. Oil drums!” and their pace became even more lethargic than before. No one made any verbal response to the voice.

  When I got to the near side of the Yokogawa railway bridge, I found over two thousand refugees squatting on the grass embankment below. Almost no one except the young made any move to cross. The bridge must have been more than a hundred feet up, and a glimpse of the river below was enough to make one’s limbs go weak. Even so, it was the only way to get to the other side. The people squatting there, almost all of whom were injured, seemed to be in a state of apathy, without even the will to get across. Some of them simply sat in silence, gazing at one fixed spot in the sky.

  Most of them, however, kept their eyes averted from the mushroom cloud. Quite a few of the injured lay sprawled on their backs on the bank. The one exception was a woman who had her arms stretched out toward the cloud and kept screaming in a shrill voice: “Hey, you monster of a cloud! Go away! We’re nonbelligerents! D’you hear—go away!” Oddly for one who seemed so lively, she made no attempt to cross the bridge.

  Suddenly, I could no longer bear waiting about indecisively. I made up my mind: I would cross the bridge. I set off in the wake of a young man who was bleeding from the shoulder, avoiding as far as possible looking at the waters below. About nine-tenths of the way across, passage was blocked by the freight train lying on its side, but after much difficulty I succeeded in getting past by crawling flat on my face. About halfway along the train, where the river below was shallow, I spied a mass of onions that had tipped out and lay in heaps below.

  The refugees who had got over the bridge were going up the hill from Futaba-no-Sato in a long procession as though being steadily sucked up toward the higher parts. In two or three places higher up the hillside, forest fires were visible. It seems that only those who live in the hills themselves realize the very special horror of hill fires. To walk in droves in the direction of a hill fire reminded me terribly of moths dashing themselves against a lamp at night. I myself knew the fearful danger of hill fires, from having seen them when I was a child; I remembered, too, how many victims they had claimed. I said to a group of four or five refugees as they went past: “Hill fires are dangerous. They may look small, especially in the daytime, but they’re really quite large, and cover a large area. The flames roar downwards, and red-hot stones and rocks come rolling down.” But they went on up the hill without seeming to heed.

  Eventually, I came out at the corner of the West Parade Ground. Here, there seemed to be refugees as far as the eye could see, and the whole great expanse was swamped beneath a sea of humanity. Yet here too, the fleeing crowds were pressing on with the one idea of getting to the hills. I remembered what I had heard of tidal waves—how they ooze on in muddy swirls, on up to the higher ground beyond….

  In accordance with my plan of getting first to Hiroshima Station, I walked along the edge of the parade ground, cutting diagonally across the flow of people going to the hills. Need I say how varied in appearance and condition were the hundreds, the thousands of people I saw on the way? I feel compelled—unnecessary though it may be—to set down here some of my memories of them, just as they come back to my mind today:

  The countless people who had blackish dried blood clinging to them where it had flowed from their faces onto their shoulders and down their backs, or over their chests and down their bellies. Some were still bleeding, but they seemed to have no energy to do anything about it.

  The people staggering along in whatever direction the crowd carried them, their arms dangling purposelessly by their sides.

  The people who walked with their eyes shut, swaying to and fro as they were pushed by the crowd.

  The woman leading a child by the hand who realized that the child was not hers, shook her hand free with a cry, and ran off. And the child—a boy of six or seven—running, crying plaintively, after her.

  The father leading his child by the hand who lost hold of him in the crush. He pushed through the crowd calling the child’s name over and again, till finally he was struck brutally and repeatedly by someone he had thrust out of the way.

  A middle-aged man carrying an old man on his back.

  A man carrying a young girl—an invalid, I should say, and his daughter—on his back.

  A woman with her belongings and a child loaded on a baby carriage, who was engulfed in a sudden wave of humanity that crushed the baby carriage and felled her on top of it, so that twenty or thirty others coming behind her toppled like dominoes in their turn. The cries at that moment had to be heard to be believed.

  A man who carried, held like an offering before him, a clock that emitted a dull, broken noise as he walked.

  A man who carried over his shoulder a fish-basket attached to the cloth case of a fishing rod.

  A bare-footed woman shading her eyes with both hands, who sobbed helplessly as she walked.

  An elderly man half supporting about the waist, half dragging, a woman whose face, arms, and chest were covered with blood. At each step the man took, the woman’s head lolled heavily backwards and forwards or from side to side. Both looked as though they might expire at any moment, but they were jostled mercilessly by the throng.

  A young woman who came along almost naked, with a naked baby, its face almost entirely covered with blood, strapped to her back facing to the rear instead of the normal way.

  A man whose legs were moving busily as though he were running, but who was so wedged in the wave of humanity that he achieved little more than a rapid mark-time….

  * * *

  * One yen was then worth about one dollar.

  CHAPTER 4

  Shigematsu had reached this point in his copying when Shigeko called from the kitchen: “Shigematsu! Whatever time do you think it is? I’d be grateful if you’d call it a day and come and have your dinner.”

  “Right! Just coming.” Getting up, he went to the kitchen. He had been putting off dinner until now, staving off hunger while he copied out his journal of the bombing by munching home-made salted beans. Shigeko and his niece Yasuko had had their dinner long ago, and Yasuko, who was catching the first bus to Shinichi-machi in the morning to go to the beauty parlor, had already gone to bed in the box room.

  Shigeko was dishing out loach soup from a saucepan into his bowl.

  “Well,” he said, “I got through a lot today. I’ve copied it all out up to the place where the West Parade Ground is jammed with people taking refuge from the mushroom cloud. Even so, I haven’t got down on paper one-thousandth part of all the things I actually saw. It’s no easy matter to put something down in writing.”

  “I expect it’s because when you write you’re too eager to work in your own theories.”<
br />
  “It’s nothing to do with theories. From a literary point of view, the way I describe things is the crudest kind of realism. By the way, have these loach been kept in clean water long enough to get rid of the muddy taste?”

  “Kōtarō brought them for us a while ago. He said they’d been in clean water for about half a month. He caught them in the ditch below the temple, and kept them in running water in his hundred-gallon jar.”

  During the war old Kōtarō’s family had given up the great gingko tree that grew by their house, for the sake of the war effort. As they were digging up the stump, they had uncovered the jar, an enormous affair in Bizen ware of the type once used for storing rice. It was broken in five or six pieces, but had been patched up with a liberal application of cement.

  Shigematsu seated himself in front of the small individual table set for him, and picked up a clumsy earthenware cup containing a brownish liquid. This was his regular preprandial drink, an infusion of dried geranium, chickweed, plantain, and other plants. The food on the small table before him consisted of fermented bean paste mixed with chopped trefoil root, an egg dish, and pickled radish, with the bean paste soup with loach floating in it.

  “This is what I call eating in style!” he said as he lifted the lid from the bowl of soup. “There’s always something in the jar at old Kōtarō’s place, isn’t there? Do you know, when I took a look in it one day it was quite dry, but he’d got sand from the river bed in the bottom and was trying to hatch some turtle eggs! Not that they ever did hatch out in the end, it seems….”

  “When I was over there at the end of last year, he had seven or eight live eels in it,” said Shigeko.

  “You never know what’s going to come out of that jar. It’s a kind of cornucopia. Perhaps we ought to follow his example?”

  Shigematsu was only talking for its own sake; their house stood on the higher part of the hill, and it would have been impossible to bring water there by means of hollow bamboo pipes, as Kōtarō did. Kōtarō had built a dam on a stream flowing from one of the higher hills at the back, and got water for the jar from it, via a bamboo pipe. By a fortunate coincidence, just the right amount of water leaked from the jar through the cracks where it had been pieced together. Conditions, thus, were ideal, and it was quite possible to keep fish alive in it—eels, sweetfish, trout, or anything else one fancied.