Above the East China Sea: A Novel (52 page)

“Tamiko, I don’t know what fearsome lord I thought I would find there, but I didn’t expect to see the photo of a small man with weak eyes, a weak, petulant mouth, and ears that poked out like the handles on a jug. A man whose shoulders sagged beneath the weight of all the medals, and badges, sashes, braids, and epaulettes pinned to his uniform. Resting on the table next to him was his hat with what appeared to be a feather duster implanted at its front. He looked like a boy playing soldier. Before the weight of all that had been taken from me by this silly man with his feather-duster hat could crush me with treads heavier than those of any tank, I made my wondrous discovery, the one that will please you.

“Next to the emperor’s photo that Father, loyal to the end, had sought to protect was the list he’d begun reading that day of all the students in Madadayo who had been admitted to high school. And guess what, Tami-chan? Your name
was
on that list! The expression we saw on Father’s face that morning at breakfast that we took to be disappointment at your rejection was preoccupation; he was consumed with thoughts of the coming war. Tamiko, your name was on the list. You were always a real Princess Lily girl.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

After cousin Mitsue had watched the ambulance carrying Hatsuko make its blaring, halting way through the crowd of stumbling drunks, then turn down the first open street and speed away, the wail of its siren warbling like an angry cat, she had rejoiced: It was time to put the plan they had so carefully worked out into action. Today, after more than seventy years, she would finally repay her cousin Hatsuko in full not only for saving her from starvation after the war, but, even more generously, for forgiving her cursed betrayal with Nakamura.

With an authority she’d never accessed before during her long life, Mitsue had ordered Hideo to take her to the hospital; his wife could meet the girls after the parade and wait with them for him to return. Mitsue impressed upon him that his first obligation was to his great-aunt. Hideo had then gestured to the crowd pressing in on them and told Mitsue that her request was impossible; he couldn’t possibly leave his family. In answer, Mitsue merely smiled and observed how surprising she found it that he would risk endangering himself and his family by failing to honor someone so close to joining the spirit world.

Overhearing this threat, Saori had hectored her husband. “You have to go. All the Kokuba women are known to be very spiritual. Priestesses, healers, shamans.”

“So what?”

“So, they have the ear of the
kami.
We’re already dealing with so
much. Your setbacks at work. Your headaches. My dizzy spells. Which, by the way, are getting worse. My head is whirling even now. And don’t forget the girls’ school problems.”

Though Hideo had scoffed, “I’m certain that the
kami
aren’t responsible for our daughters’ poor performance in algebra,” he knew that his wife was right. Given what superior students he and Saori both had been, there could be no explanation other than interference from the next world for their daughters’ embarrassing marks. Or for his failure to get the regional manager position that had gone to that idiot Ota last month. Another humiliation. Massaging his temples, Hideo surrendered once again to the conspiracy of women plaguing his existence. He told Saori that he would meet her and the girls back at the parking lot after he dropped the old lady off.

On the drive to the hospital, while Hideo fumes and mutters about not getting any of the footage he’d wanted, Mitsue ignores him and meditates in preparation for the fulfillment of her life’s most important task. First she has to order her memories. She sorts back through and smooths them over until they form a single stream that flows into this fateful moment.

She starts when Hatsuko found her at the Americans’ camp in the far north end of the island, took her in, shared all she had, and never once said a single harsh word about her betrayal. Hatsuko had been changed, and she showed the same generosity to dozens of others. Distant relatives. Former residents of Madadayo. Orphans no one else claimed. She welcomed them all and, sharing her family’s land, and the Americans’ money, they rebuilt the village and their lives. Once the starving years ended, Mitsue had time to realize that her cousin’s forgiveness had come too quickly; she hadn’t truly atoned for her sin. It was clear to Mitsue that unless she properly discharged this debt, she would be denied entry to the next world. Therefore, shortly after the Day of Shame, September 8, 1951, when Japan signed the peace treaty that sacrificed one-fifth of Okinawa to the U.S. military, she journeyed to Sefa-utaki to seek true absolution.

At the entrance to the island’s most sacred grove, she climbed the steep, slippery steps upward into the dripping green velvet that cloaked the mystery within. Her head bowed and senses alive with the palpable presence of the
kami
humming in the silence about her, Mitsue had
entered that hushed and hallowed spot where the
noro
priestesses, once the island’s undisputed spiritual leaders, had received their powers. Where for centuries the only men allowed to enter were the ancient kings of the Ryukyuan islands, who left hundreds of horses and thousands of servants waiting when they ascended these very steps to beg the
kami
to bless their reigns.

Pausing in the path trodden by high priestesses and princesses, Mitsue knelt beside a bomb crater that vine and fern had not yet healed. She brushed her fingertips across the wound and was greeted by the dead who gathered there. After honoring them with an offering of a papaya and three American pennies, she continued on her way. At the top of the stairs, she beheld the sacred cleft created by two immense slabs of rock leaning together. Sefa-utaki was a reverse canyon wedged into the side of the black cliff, open to the blue sky above the sea at its far end. Hundreds had gathered beneath its triangle of safety when the Typhoon of Steel raged outside and there they had begged the
kami
to save them. Mitsue dipped her hands into the jugs placed beneath the twin stalactites, Amadayuru Ashikanubi and Shikiyodayuru Amaganubi, that stood sentry beside the opening, and wet them in the drops of heaven’s rain that collected there.

Her dripping hands steepled into a form that matched the angle of the rock slabs, Mitsue entered the holy space the slabs formed. At the altar of Chonuhana, she knelt and gazed to the east. With the cathedral of stone framing the fabled ocean view, Mitsue beheld Kudaka Island, floating like a mirage on the horizon between sea and sky. She sent prayers to the goddess Amamikyu, who had created the first Ryukyuans on that holy island where all women from the ages of thirty-one to seventy still served the gods. Mitsue clapped her hands to fully capture the
kami
’s attention and told her story.

“I wronged my cousin grievously by having sex with the man she loved. Nakamura pursued me and, though at first I scorned him, gradually I came to depend upon his attention. Then to crave it. The times we were together in secret when he whispered to me of how I inflamed his desire and he touched me with a gentleness I had all but forgotten were the only moments when I was not tortured by fear and despair and loneliness. The other girls, Hatsuko and the rest, had never known a man’s caress. But I had. I knew what I had lost, and for a few blessed
moments I could pretend Masaru hadn’t died and we were together again. I didn’t think it mattered, since I was certain we would all perish on the march to Makabe. I had no feelings for Nakamura. And he had none for me. His love for himself was so great that it left no room for any other. In fact, his self-regard was what gave the lieutenant the confidence to approach me when no one else dared. All the other soldiers were too intimidated by—and I only say this to present the truth—my beauty.”

Even as the
kami
guided Mitsue to utter the word “beauty,” she understood the penance they desired of her before they would grant absolution. And from that day forward, Mitsue put her great beauty on the shelf like a garment she had outgrown and had no further use for. She stopped wearing a hat and her skin turned dark as old tea. She no longer smiled in a way that dented her cheeks with the dimples of good fortune that men found so fetching. She threw away her Kissupurufu lipstick. Somehow all these outward measures dimmed Mitsue’s radiance enough that, for the first time in her memory, heads did not automatically turn toward her like flowers seeking the light. Though she missed being admired by men, Mitsue found it a small enough price to pay to honor her cousin’s magnanimity.

Over the years, more and more surviving relatives and residents of Madadayo or their descendants returned to their village. Hatsuko continued to welcome them all. Even her father’s once-grand relatives wormed their way in, though they were worthless at anything other than calligraphy and numbers. Still, with Hatsuko guiding them, they rebuilt Madadayo just as it had been on the day before the sea had gone gray with warships. Mitsue devoted her life to helping Hatsuko prepare for her sister’s return, which, as time passed, they both came to understand would have to be as a spirit.

Working side by side every day for years, then decades, Hatsuko and Mitsue grew as close as a pair of Mandarin ducks, one never going anywhere without the other, until the stroke that the scheming Hideo had used as a pretext to shuffle Hatsuko off to that unbearable nursing home. Though Mitsue tried to convince her old friend to return to Madadayo with her, Hatsuko knew that she could no longer care for herself. Besides, with the minutes lasting for an eternity and the days, weeks, and months disappearing in two blinks, it wasn’t worth the trouble while she lived. No, it was what was to happen to her after
she died that concerned Hatsuko. And on that score, she left very clear, very insistent instructions with her cousin. Instructions that Mitsue was now determined to carry out. If only the toad Hideo could get them to the hospital in time.

“This is impossible,” Hideo spits out when he finds that the hospital lot is already crammed full not just with parked cars, but with vehicles slowly orbiting in search of a space to snap up. “I’ll never get a spot.”

“Don’t worry, Hideo-san,” Mitsue suggests, making her voice the birdlike chirp of supplication that weak men like him so enjoy. “You can just let me out, and I’ll go by myself.”

Hideo doesn’t even make a pretense of objecting. Happy to be relieved of his burden, he pulls up beneath the portico leading into the emergency room, and asks in a perfunctory way, “You have my number?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Mitsue hastens to answer.

“Call if there’s a problem. Tell dear Hatsuko that I did everything I possibly could to come visit. Make sure she knows that.”

“Don’t worry,” Mitsue assures him. “Your great-aunt won’t go to the next world bearing you any hard feelings for not looking after her tonight.”

He nods and Mitsue hides a smile, thinking of all the other offenses that Hideo has committed before this night that Hatsuko will most certainly recall when accounts are taken.

“I must get back and pick up my family.”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course, your family,” Mitsue chimes in a soothing way that disguises the contempt she feels for this silly man’s puny, isolated idea of what a family is.

“We’ll return for you and my aunt as soon as we can.”

“Please take your time. We’ll be fine.” Mitsue must hide how delighted she is to be rid of the unpleasant little man; what she must do this night will be so much easier without him. Right before alighting from the van, Mitsue turns to Hideo and says with as much cheerful innocence as she can pretend, “Just two old ladies in a hospital. What could be safer?”

Hideo gives a grunt of something approximating agreement, Mitsue gets out, slides the van door shut, and he drives off without so much as a glance back.

Mitsue’s tread is brisk and determined as she marches into the hospital.
She asks the attendant on duty to direct her to Kokuba Hatsuko. As she makes her way through the crowded waiting room, her lips stretch into a smile so wide that her dimples make a rare appearance.

FIFTY-NINE