Fire Flowers (11 page)

“The fire raids?” Ward asked.

My scalp prickled. My map of Tokyo hung on the wall of the Quonset two weeks later, the wards marked in varying shades of grey according to their population. By then we had fire jelly and white phosphorus that would stick to skin, paper or wood and burn like hell until everything was gone. To the west of Tokyo, the new suburbs were blank white. To the east, the old wards, Fukagawa and Asakusa, were shaded jet black.

“The Tokyo Raid,” I said. “Lord God. You could see the flames from two hundred miles away.”

Pillars of smoke rising to 18,000 feet. A sheer of heat, the sky blasting bright outside the windows of the plane. My hand pulling hard on the camera crank, over and over again.

“Next week, Nagoya,” I said. “Osaka. Kobe. We were going to burn the whole damn country to the ground.”

By July we were running out of places to bomb. My face in the mirror was twitchy, my body listless and unkempt. My CO ordered me to take a week's leave, which I spent swimming around the reef at Tumon Bay, trying to shake my throbbing headaches and chronic dysentery, convinced that a stink of soot and burning flesh had ground into my skin. Floating on my back in the water, staring up at the planes in the sky. The day I returned to duty, I was told to prepare for a photo mission. We were to map out a bombing approach. To identify primary targets around the naval base out in the eastern city of Hiroshima.

Ward was standing over by the window. He hurled out the remains of his cigar, and it flew into the night in a shower of embers.

The next day at thirteen hundred, operations staff were hunched over my prints. LeMay suddenly turned, desperate with impatience, and hollered for a bona fide
 
primary target.

“Sir?”

He stared at me.

“You see a white, T-shaped bridge, sir?”

“Show me.”

I walked over and pointed. “See? Right in the centre of the city. Clear as day. Couldn't miss it if you tried.”

Ward shoved up the window. He turned to me in the darkness as I wiped the clammy perspiration from my forehead.

“Are you bothered by what you did up there, Lynch?”

Floating over that charred plain one week later, eerie and desolate. The rivers trickling slowly through the char.

“You were just an observer, Hal.”

“That's right.”

The train came out from behind a hill and curved around a stretch of coast. Black waves in the distance rippled with moonlight.

Ward gave a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn.

“Okay, Lynch. Maybe we should get our heads down.”

I rubbed my eyes. “You're probably right.”

He looked up at the miniature berths, wincing. “Oh, my aching back . . . ”

When we woke, the ruins of Tokyo were visible in the grey light of dawn. Naked children stood outside hovels at the bottom of the embankment, waving up at the train as we passed. At the station, we slung our kit bags over our shoulders and made our way through the departing crowd. Ward held out his hand.

“It was good talking to you, Lynch. Look me up at the press club sometime. There's some folks you might be interested in talking to.”

“Okay, Ward. Thanks.”

“Well then. I'll see you.”

He held up his hand and shouldered his way through the crowd, off to write up his story about procurement scandals and Allied corruption. Eugene and I wandered blearily back to the
Stars and Stripes
office to file our own piece: “The Touristic GI visits Historic Himeji Castle.”

I
woke up in the cavern of the ticket hall, my breath puffing in icy clouds. Wisps of vapour floated from the men and women slumped on the floor, as if they were a horde of sleeping dragons. I stood up and picked my way around their mats, dodging the pools of milky vomit that stank like rotten soybeans. At the foot of the concrete staircase, an old man shivered, clutching wretched fingers to shield his eyes from the dawn sunlight. I edged around him warily.

Smallpox
. The tunnel people had complained of splitting headaches at first. Then they started to shiver and moan. The rashes came soon after that, bubbly freckles that crusted into sores and spewed white pus all over their faces, as if they'd been stung by a swarm of wasps. The skin of the sickest ones stayed smooth as glass though. Eerie patches of purple welled up and raced across their bodies like patterns on a naval map. They died soon after, mouths gaping, as if something had taken them by surprise.

The children wore rags over their faces and stayed well away from the sick. But Koji had come to me a few days earlier, complaining that he was exhausted and that his mouth stung. When he held up his shirt for me to examine him, I was sure I could see a mark on his chest, like a shadow on a snowy field.

Outside, a frost had covered the city with a sheet of glittering white. It lay crinkled on the wasteground behind the station and on the jagged mounds of scrap metal in the yard. For just a moment, the city was silent, transformed into a secret, sparkling fairyland. I held up my hands, making a frame with my fingers.
Wouldn't it make a good photograph?
, I thought.

The Americans are savages and demons!
That's what we'd always been taught. During the war, I'd gazed for hours at the murderous coloured double-spreads in
Boy's Magazine
, picturing myself in the midst of a desperate suicide charge at Guam, firing a submachine gun at those monsters on the beach.
Chun-chun-chun!

The American in the trench coat hadn't looked like a savage though. He'd looked stylish and rugged as he stooped over to talk to Tomoko, his camera dangling around his neck. When he handed it to me, I rubbed my thumb over the exposure control and twisted the smooth aperture dial, hoping he'd be impressed. I pointed the lens at Tomoko, focusing carefully until her twin images were crisp and clear in the rangefinder. The weight of the brushed metal in my hands was absolutely beautiful.

My father had owned a camera once—a Rolleiflex with a hinged back, which one of his fattest customers had given him at the
bonenkai
party he held to thank his regulars at the end of every year. I took charge of it straight away, constantly tinkering with the intricate dials and mechanisms, copying out the mysterious foreign letters embossed on the front. Finally, after much hinting, my father brought home some photographic film. For two weeks, I waltzed around the neighbourhood with a cutout masthead of the
Yomiuri
newspaper pinned to my jacket, taking “portraits” of the locals: Mrs. Oka from next door, her face as wrinkly as her pickles; two
maiko
girls who giggled behind their fans as they stopped in for snacks on the way to a party.

When my father got his red call-up papers, toward the end of the war, I was sent back to Tokyo from the countryside. My mother was stunned—after all, he'd been borderline at his age. One Sunday, my father asked me to dig out the old camera. He wanted to go up to Ueno Park to see the cherry blossom before he left to join his unit. There were hardly any families stretched out on the grass that year and no picnic gramophones played amongst the trees as in years gone by. We laid out our blanket and ate a quiet meal together. Before we left, my father asked me to take a photograph. I lined the whole family up beneath the sprays of white blossom, and waved them into position.

My mother wore a pale blue spring kimono, her hand resting lightly on my father's broad shoulder. Satsuko stood beside them, dressed in green and gold. They gazed out serenely, calm and dignified, as all around them, the blossom floated in the air. After a second, I pressed the shutter decisively. When I tried to wind on the film, the lever resisted. The spool was at an end.

 

I found myself wandering through the heart of what had once been old Shitamachi. The flimsy paper and matchstick workingmen's houses had all evaporated during the raids, but up the hill, past the crimson walls of the Imperial University, was the more elegant quarter where the artists and merchants once had their mansions. Most of the grand old villas were still standing, though they were damaged and silent now behind their heavy wooden gates. Along a shady gravel road, a tree had splintered in one of the gardens, knocking out a section of stucco wall. Grasping the woolly branches, I scrabbled up and hoisted myself into the gap. I sat there for a second, catching my breath as I peered over the other side.

The wide garden was choked with tangled grasses and gnarled ornamental trees. A large, traditional wooden building stood before a gravel yard beyond which gates stood padlocked shut. It seemed solid and imposing enough, though slate tiles were missing from the slanted roof and the windows were boarded up.

I swung myself over, and dropped down from the wall with a thud.
It must have been some kind of inn, once,
I thought, though it looked very much abandoned now. The fishpond was empty and silted, and by the front door, the welcoming statue of a
tanuki
had toppled over, one of his arms broken off, though he carried on grinning demonically nonetheless.

The lock on the shutters was flimsy, and quickly sprung open when I hammered it with a rock. Past the vestibule, ancient pillars of twisted wood supported the low ceiling of an entrance hall. Dark patches showed where the rain had seeped in. As I stepped over the threshold, the floorboards creaked eerily. I shivered, praying that there were no dead bodies inside.

The air was musty and slivers of light fell from cracks in the window boards. My eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom. Woodblock prints hung around the walls, and as I stepped closer to examine them, I gulped. They all showed ladies, mostly naked or only half-dressed in kimonos, sprawled on futons or cavorting with fierce-looking men. My cheeks throbbed as I stared at the various postures and poses.

Up a wooden staircase was a hallway, with rooms off to one side, marked with nameplates. “Peony,” “Cherry Blossom,” then, “Ivy,” and “Chrysanthemum.” I raised my hand to the door of “Peony” and slid it aside.

A dark shape hit my face and I crashed backward. A heavy fluttering filled the air—a huge black moth flew around me crazily, powder thick on its wings, sparkling like coal dust.

Light fell into the corridor as I tugged the rotten boards away from the windows. Down below was a secret garden, a palanquin in one corner, its fabric rotted away.
It must have been a real high-class place,
I thought—
a retreat for the top brass during the war.

The tatami was frayed in most of the rooms, and in “Chrysanthemum,” there was a charred patch where someone had lit a fire. It had seen better days, that was for sure. But as I explored further, opening cupboards and trunks, I found rolled futons and sheets, soft pillows and blankets.
We could build a huge fort here
, I thought, almost tempted to rush off and tell the other children right away. But then, as I pictured them, huddled up under the dripping staircase at the station, the shivering men and women moaning and vomiting around them, my heart began to beat faster. An amazing idea had just occurred to me.

 

Night had fallen by the time I got back to the station, and the children were penned into a corner by a group of soldiers, who were snoring away with their hairy overcoats pulled over their faces. The stink of sweat was overwhelming as I clambered over them and shook the children awake.

“Listen! Get ready to leave. We're breaking camp at dawn.”

Koji rubbed his eyes. “What? Where are we going?”

“Are we going home?” Aiko murmured, still half dreaming.

“Can't you tell us in the morning?” Shin groaned.

“Listen,” I said, urgently. “You need to listen. We're not staying here anymore. I've found somewhere else. A fortress.”

“Wonderful,” Shin said. “We're going to live in a castle.”

Koji frowned. “Will there be other children there?” he asked, hopefully.

I shook my head. “Not yet. It's just us for now. But listen. It's a secret. Don't whisper a word to anyone. Promise!”

The children looked uncertain, still bleary with sleep. Shin rolled his eyes and turned over with a grunt. But Tomoko slid forward and knelt in front of me, pulling her fingers through her hair.

“Don't worry, Hiroshi-kun. Please rest now. I'll make sure the children are ready first thing in the morning.”

My heart shivered as she bowed her head. I lay down, and gradually drifted into a twitchy sleep. But in the middle of the night, I woke suddenly. White lights were bobbing across the sleeping bodies around the station, and for a moment, I was filled with panic.

Ghosts!
I thought.
Floating above the corpses of the dead!
But the lights were electric torches. Policemen and doctors in white coats were pulling back people's heads and inspecting their faces in the pale beams. Every so often, they tugged someone to their feet and dragged them away into the darkness. A rod of light needled toward us and I urgently shook the children awake. I hustled them to their feet as the figures came toward us, and we hurried outside into the freezing night, as the frost prickled its way across the iron-hard ground.

 

The house stood silent and ghostly in the morning mist, at the top of the hill. My heart flooded with relief. I'd been convinced by a strange fear that it might all have been a dream, that it would have disappeared overnight like some enchanted foxes' palace. As I led the children over the gap in the wall and on through the garden, they started to rub their eyes and laugh. They could hardly believe it was true.

As I opened the front door, Shin swore softly under his breath.

“It's not really ours, is it, big brother?” Koji asked in wonder. “Not really?” He pulled off his sandals and danced across the tatami of the reception hall.

“It is now!” I shouted.