Fire Flowers (23 page)

The Matsuzakaya department store had been turned into a shop for the Americans. Behind the steamed-up windows, Westerners crowded the aisles, picking out tins and boxes. Next door was a club, set in an old bomb shelter. Japanese girls stood hopefully outside, trying to coax the GIs in.

I'll find a pistol
, I thought.
A Nambu Type 14. I'll track that bastard down to some brothel, wait outside until he comes out drunk into the street. And then—fire. Bam! Right in his face. Bam! Bam! Bam!

Long after nightfall, I found myself walking past Hibiya Park, at the corner of the Imperial Plaza. Two huge pine trees stood erect and glittering in front of the American headquarters, and on the higher floors, yellow lights were burning. I wondered about the men who worked up there. Every one of them would have slept with at least one woman, I thought. A Western one and probably a Japanese one as well. Even the ugliest one amongst them would know all about the great, masculine secret that still lay beyond me.

The moon was full in the sky. You could see the rabbit in the moon tonight, I thought. Silvery light was rippling in the water of the palace moat, and down below, something bobbed in the darkness. I squinted, wondering if it was a dead rat. Another lump floated over, and, slowly, more and more came into view, bumping against the stone wall of the bank.

A thin American in wire-rimmed spectacles came over and stood beside me, his mouth open in a yawn. He threw something down into the water, fumbled for a moment, then began to piss into the moat. The splash slackened and he shivered like a dog before belching and buttoning himself up. I looked down again, slowly realising what the shapes were. Legions of used prophylactics were floating in the palace moat.

From the Imperial Plaza came faint sighs, grunts and cries of surprise. Against the wall of the gate, twisted shapes humped against each other in the moonlight, white buttocks of men encircled by coils of legs as women moaned out softly, then sharply.

It was hopeless. A moment later, unable to stop myself, I ran over to the trees and thrust my hand into my underwear. I rubbed myself swiftly and furiously until, after a few seconds, I felt a dark warmth flood inside my belly, overpowering me, and I shuddered, gasping, hot and cold all at once, feeling as if my stomach had melted out all over my thighs. I stood there breathless in the shadows, gripping onto a branch and quivering with shame.

 

It was a freezing cold night, and we were rummaging about in the garbage cans by a row of warped tenement houses. The eaves were low and stank of fish guts and night soil and the sickly sweet smell of rot swamped me as I stood arm-deep in refuse. The other children were hunting a short distance away. Tomoko was hunched over, her tunic sleeves rolled up. She was desperately thin now, and her skinny arms showed as she delved in a heap of peelings.

My fingers touched something and my heart suddenly leaped. A smooth sphere, soft and squashy. I clutched hold and tugged it out, flooded with excitement.

It was exactly what I'd hoped. A whole bean jam bun, untouched except for a tiny solar system of silver blue mould. My mouth began to water as I held it to my face, inhaling the sweet smell of mochi.

Tomoko had once told me that they were her favourite thing to eat. She was still standing nearby, ghostly in the moonlight. The dough was sticky in my fingers as I urged myself to go over and give it to her, to make her a present of it. Here was the chance, I told myself, to break down the impossible wall that had come between us, a magical token that might somehow shatter the awful spell that had been laid upon her.

Aiko was standing beside me, her eyes wide.

“Look what you've got!” she trilled. The other children started to wander over.

“A whole bean jam bun! Will you give it to Tomoko?”

Tomoko glanced up as she heard her name spoken.

I suddenly noticed Shin standing in the darkness, a nasty grin on his face. My stomach knotted and my cheeks began to throb with embarrassment. I gave a short laugh.

“Give it to Tomoko? Why should I? I found it, didn't I?”

“But you always save bean jam for Tomoko,” Aiko insisted.

Tomoko was still gazing at me in the moonlight.

Without knowing why, I stuffed the bun into my mouth. I tore at it with big wolfish bites, chewing with my mouth open like a peasant. Aiko stared at me, aghast, as I swallowed it piece by piece. It was dry and mealy, not nearly as nice as it had smelled. But I carried on regardless, stuffing it all into the wads of my cheeks.

The dough was so dry that it finally made me gag. I choked, and spat out the last mouthful. Aiko stared at the remains, as if she was about to cry. Tomoko stood, hunched over, gazing at the ground, her arms by her sides. My eyes filled with tears of shame.

Koji's voice came from the alleyway at the back of the houses. “Come quickly!” he hollered. “Come and look what I've found!”

I hesitated for a second. I wiped my sleeve across my eyes and rushed after him into the darkness.

 

It was the yard of what must have once been a teahouse. Crates of rubbish and empty bottles lay all around and a powerful stench floated from an old latrine shed.

“Look!” Koji crowed. He pointed at the ground. In between the crates lay obvious and ripe morsels. Apple cores, fish carcasses, mouldering pumpkins. The children scrambled forward, and I was just about to do the same, when I caught a movement from the corner of my eye.

“Stop,” I said. “Don't touch anything.”

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. The sleek corpse of a rat was twitching in the corner. Another appeared by the latrine, then another—dead and unmoving, wiry tails coiled, mouths open, tiny teeth bared in pain. I gingerly poked one with my foot and tipped it over.

The puffy flesh was writhing with maggots. My stomach heaved.

“Get back,” I said. “Don't touch anything.”

Koji's face fell, and his frail chest began to heave up and down.

“Leave it. Leave all of it. It's been poisoned.”

The children stood there, mouths open, as if unable to believe we'd be leaving all of this feast behind.

“Let's go. Move!”

They still hesitated.

“Now!”

One by one, they slid back under the fence to the alley. As we gathered in the darkness, I suddenly felt horribly tired.

“Let's just go home,” I said. “Let's all just get some sleep.”

The children began to whine in frustration, still ravenous.

“Be quiet!” I yelled. “I can't stand it any more!”

I rushed ahead, tears in my eyes, not wanting the others to see. Icicles hung from the eaves of the tenements as we stumbled through the back alleys like a clan of starving goblins. We were just passing through the wasteground at the back of Ueno Station when I heard a commotion behind me. Filled with helpless anger, I spun around, my fists raised.

My heart stopped.

Tomoko lay on the ground as the other children stood above her, trying to pull her up. She shivered uncontrollably, as if she was having a fit. Aiko started to scream as I rushed over and knelt down in the earth. Tomoko's hand was gripping onto something tightly and I tried to prise open her stiff fingers as she started to choke.

I thrust my fingers into her mouth and tried to wrench out whatever it was she had eaten. But she writhed violently from side to side, vomit seeping from her mouth. She suddenly retched and half-eaten fragments of fruit emerged. There, in the moonlight, were the black teardrops of apple pips on her glistening chin.

She gave an awful bark and her back arched and her limbs thrust out. She stared straight up at me and gripped onto my hand, her eyes filled with blurry tears. Her head shook, and she started to gasp. She froze, and then her whole body rose up, as if a terrible pain were passing along her spine. She shuddered and sank back down again, her eyes still staring at me as a fine, white froth leaked from her lips.

Her fingers slowly released their grip on my own. She slumped to the ground. A strange gargling emerged from deep within her body, and I fell backward.

Her features seemed to soften. She was gazing up at an uncertain point high above, as if toward some distant star, far away in the sky.

T
he festive season was upon us, and in celebration, SCAP hoisted two Christmas trees outside headquarters with a ten-foot banner across the façade: “Merry Christmas!”

After I got my marching orders, part of me considered leaving Japan. I'd go back to New York, I thought, get on the GI Bill and return to Columbia. Join one of the big agencies or magazines or dailies and make a living snapping mobsters and sports stars. Or I'd move to some honest-to-God small town, a Knoxville or a Jacksonville, take a job at the local paper and cover the high school football games, the petty brawls and larcenies that came to the county court each week. I'd arrive at the office bright and cheery in my gleaming new Cadillac every morning, settle down with a Southern girl and raise a litter of my own.

Then I thought of Christmas dinner with my mother and my aunts in the depths of a New England winter—the empty plate laid for my father, his sullen portrait glaring down from the wall. The snow falling silently outside, as if it were passing over the very edge of the earth.

So I decided to stay in Tokyo, to get drunk, and to see what the new year would bring. The men that still haunted the Continental were subdued now, almost meditative, resigned to another Christmas away from home. Most of the boys who'd seen action were already back home, their feet up in front of their well-deserved hearths in Lexington and Harrisburg and Worcester and all the other countless villes and burghs that make up the vertebrae of our nation. Those left behind walked the halls in their socks, wrote letters, played rummy and whist, busying themselves with innumerable small tasks to while away the time.

On Christmas Eve, SCAP organized a party. There was to be a dinner and a movie show, followed by a performance by “native musicians.” I pictured the overheated hall, the red-faced officers in their paper party hats attacking their tinned turkey and eggnog. Douglas MacArthur standing up to make some flowery speech as the officers slumped over their trifles. It was all too god-awful to contemplate, and so, early in the evening, I wrapped up warm and headed out into the streets, alone.

 

It was bitterly cold that night, and everyone had their hats pulled down over their foreheads, mufflers pulled up to their eyeballs. I hitched a ride to Shinjuku on an infantry truck, but the driver got lost and took an unaccountable detour and we passed through the abandoned districts, the shantytowns of the old city. The water that flooded the bomb craters had turned to ice, old pieces of metal and timber frozen within, sticking out like the limbs of witches. Between the craters, clumps of people huddled around miniature braziers, burning paper, kindling, pieces of old furniture—anything that could hold a flame. Their hands cast flickering shadows over orange faces as they stared into the fires. They didn't look up as we passed.

The Infantry finally let me off outside the brightly lit, newly covered market by Shinjuku Station, where fresh, excited young GIs were swapping their cigarette ration for beer and whisky. I did the same and took a couple of nips right there to warm myself up. Then I wandered the streets with no particular goal in mind. Tacked to a newly cut telegraph pole, I discovered a handbill advertising a concert: Handel's
Messiah
. This intrigued me, so I asked a man for directions, and headed for the theatre. As I strode up the street, a couple of kids ran past me, frosted white from head to toe, as if they'd been rolled in sugar. I wondered whether this might be some strange Japanese seasonal custom, but then the rumble of a truck came from around the corner with GIs hanging from both sides, pumping out a great, whirling mass of white powder like a blizzard of fine snow—DDT. Folks were hurrying along after the truck to get disinfected as the powder drifted down and settled in restless shoals on the frozen ground.

I finally found the old theatre. Elderly couples in Western dress were walking inside as I paid my entrance fee to a beaming young woman. The roof of the amphitheatre was mostly gone—the building was open to the sky. From a slat seat above the stalls I could see a silver needlework of stars. Down below, the orchestra and choir tuned up on metal chairs, their breath emerging in glistening clouds. A couple of GIs were scattered solitary in the aisles, hunched up, clutching themselves for warmth. Everyone was shivering, so I had the bright idea of passing the whisky around. I tapped the shoulder of the man beneath me, who glanced at his wife, and then took the bottle with a murmur of surprise and gratitude. After he took a sip, I gestured for him to pass it on. It went steadily around members of the audience, who directed glances of appreciation in my direction, before it finally returned to me with the barest sip remaining.

Down below, the conductor tapped his stand and counted two silent notes in the air with his baton. Then the voices began to fill the frozen night and there was an exhalation from the audience. We all sank back into our seats, watching and listening as the exquisite voices of the choir billowed up into the sky in clouds of tiny diamonds.

I pictured the notes floating up, rising high above the ruined city, above the men and women who lay shivering in their shacks and hovels far below, huddled together around their flickering fires, silently staring into the flames and wondering what the future would bring. The voices flowed out across the night, and I thought about the folks back home in America, the Christmas trees lit up and the children scampering about in the snow as their mothers stood in the doorways, calling them in for dinner. I saw men and women all across the world, reunited after all these long years of war, mothers hugging sons, girls embracing sweethearts, fathers with tears in their eyes as they welcomed their children home, home from the war, back home to where they belonged, at last, for the war was over—
and they were alive
.