Fireflies (10 page)

When she saw me, she smiled and knelt down on the floor in front of our futon.

“Please forgive me, Satsuko, for my juvenile behaviour last night. It must have been very discomforting for you.”

I admitted that she had seemed rather drunk, but said that she should think no more about it. She smiled, and bowed again.

“Now Satsuko,” she said. “Please come and have your breakfast.”

She opened up the pot on the stove, and I cried out when I saw what was inside. A silver fish, a herring, I thought, was bubbling away in a sauce of miso and saké. The aroma was just wonderful, and I glanced at the door to check that it was closed — the neighbours would have been madly jealous if they had smelled the food.

“Wherever did it come from, Michiko?”

She raised her eyebrows and put her hands in the air, performing a little swaying dance. Then she drew an envelope from inside her dress and handed it to me.

“Look.”

I gasped. The envelope was full of money, an astonishing amount, more than we could have possibly earned even if we'd worked at the Oasis for months.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked. “Save it up?”

She gave a short laugh. “No, Satsuko. First we're going to have some breakfast. Then I'm going to get some sleep. And then, you and I are going shopping.”

~ ~ ~

The Matsuzakaya department store might have been burned out, but the Mitsukoshi had reopened and I felt a thrill as we stepped through its wide doors. The shop had always been famous for its opulence and luxury, and even its wrapping paper had seemed beyond the means of a family like mine. But there wasn't much opulence or luxury left now, I thought, as we walked amongst the empty shelves and rails. An icy draft was blowing through the place and there was a crunch of rubble beneath the torn carpet underfoot. The staff stood about shivering in their uniforms. They didn't look quite so haughty anymore.

They scuttled after Michiko as if she were a noblewoman visiting from her country estate. She picked up a dress here and a shawl there, telling the attendant to wrap them and have them delivered to our house. But when she gave the address, they looked at us suspiciously. After all, Shinagawa wasn't the kind of place that anyone would have associated with nobility. From then on, I had the distinct feeling they were giving us dirty looks and muttering behind our backs, as if they knew that there was only one way girls like us could afford to shop at the Mitsukoshi.

“Please can we go now, Michiko?” I whispered. Michiko glanced at the assembled staff, and a mischievous gleam came into her eyes.

“Yes, Satsuko,” she said in a loud voice. “Perhaps you're right. Let's leave all this rubbish behind and go down to the Shimbashi blue-sky market instead. After all, there's so little to buy here!”

And she flounced out the door as they bowed down low, their faces frozen. She burst into laughter as soon as we got out into the street.

“Those stuck-up prigs!” she cried. “No one looks down on me anymore, Satsuko!”

In fact, there wasn't a great deal to buy at the Shimbashi blue-sky that day either, and Michiko finally had to be content with some sheer silk stockings and a floral scarf that the old woman claimed was from Paris. Just as we were leaving, we passed another stall, piled high with old, elegant kimonos.

I froze. Right on top, was something I recognized intimately. A beautiful green kimono, embroidered with golden peonies. The kimono that my mother had bought me on my sixteenth birthday, and which I'd been forced to sell to buy rice.

I leaned over to touch the hem with my fingertips, remembering at once how fine the stitching was, how delicate the embroidery. All sorts of memories and feelings passed through me then. Michiko must have noticed my expression, because the next thing I knew she was airily asking the stallholder how much it cost.

“Don't be silly, Michiko!” I said, but she shushed me and asked the stallholder again. As I suspected, the price was many, many times more than I had been paid, but without even bargaining, Michiko snapped out four hundred-yen notes from her purse and handed them over.

“Michiko, please! Don't be ridiculous!” I begged.

But the woman was already wrapping the kimono in colourful crêpe paper and tying it with a ribbon. When she had finished, Michiko wordlessly took it from her and handed it to me.

Then, I started to cry, for the first time in many months. As I stood there, shaking with sobs, I remembered how my mother had helped me dress in the kimono with such pride in her eyes; how Osamu had noticed me wearing it at the Spring Festival, and had strolled over to compliment me, blinking with embarrassment.

I remembered the face of his horrible mother, the day I'd gone to her villa, trembling with nerves, to ask if there'd been any news of him from the South Seas. Her mouth puckered, as if she'd been sucking a sour apricot.

“Dead,” she had hissed. “Shot in the stomach. Now get away, you slut.”

I was sobbing so much now that the woman who owned the stall sidled round and took my arm, patting it affectionately until I had recovered.

Later on that evening, after dinner, Michiko brushed my hair and made me try on the kimono again. It was as beautiful as ever, though quite loose around my shoulders. I hadn't quite noticed how thin I'd become. Michiko insisted on painting my face and then held up a mirror so that I could see my reflection. She took out a small vial and began to scrape a bright red paste onto my fingernails. To my horror, they began to turn crimson.

“What on earth are you doing, Michiko?” I said.

“Don't be so old fashioned, Satsuko,” she said. “It's just nail rouge. One of the Americans gave it to me. It's very modern.”

I was suspicious at first, but finally I gave in and let her colour them all. Afterward she poured us both some whisky and we giggled together for a while before going to bed.

~ ~ ~

Michiko left me not long after that. Her white-haired officer — a General, or Admiral, it seemed — wanted to set her up in an apartment of her own in Akasaka, where he could visit her whenever he chose.

“Michiko,” I murmured, after she told me. “Perhaps I could come and visit you sometimes. I could even come and stay, to help you get settled in —”

“No, Satsuko,” she said quickly, shaking her head, “You can't, he's very jealous, you see. He'll expect me to be there at all hours.”

A hard lump grew in my throat.

“Well then,” I said. “It doesn't matter.”

Michiko clung onto my arm, and rubbed her face against my shoulder.

“What do you think you will do now, Satsuko?” she finally asked.

“Well,” I said with a forced smile. “I imagine I will just carry on working at the Oasis. With all the other less beautiful girls.”

Michiko's face crumpled and she burst into tears. She hugged me, burying her face in my hair.

“But you
are
beautiful, Satsuko,” she cried, “You are!”

But whether I was or not, at the end of that week, a swish black sedan rolled up outside, and a driver came in to help Michiko move her things. He loaded up her trunks of dresses and gowns, her boxes of creams and vials. She strapped on her new high-heeled shoes and took one last look at our leaky room, then embraced me and tottered outside. With a wave, she clambered into the back seat. The chauffeur closed the door and, with a whining engine, the car reversed back down the alley.

13

NO.1 SHIMBUN ALLEY

(HAL LYNCH)

A grizzled mongrel nosed about in the dark fluid that welled from a broken standpipe on a street of ruined buildings near Yurakucho Station. On the front of the dilapidated hotel was a hand-painted sign:
Tokyo Foreign Correspondent's Club
. A staff car ground to a halt in the dirt road outside and I followed two Allied colonels up the worn steps, through a set of glass doors to a lobby, where correspondents stood in telephone booths, dictating stories. After a creaking ascent in the iron elevator, the old operator wrenched open the guardrail to reveal a hallway, redolent with the smoke of pipes and cigarettes and cigars. Two Japanese busboys bowed, and swung open a further set of doors. A polyglot clamour emerged from within.

The ballroom was crowded. A gleaming baby grand stood in the centre, a white-haired diplomat in dinner dress at its stool, holding uproarious court to his obsequious coterie. A clump of reporters harangued a U.S. Army major who spread out his hands in defence as their pencils jabbed the air around him. A pair of British naval captains, white caps under their arms, stood with woollen socks pulled high, being cheerfully molested by two old ladies in grey chiffon and horn-rimmed glasses. To the side of the room, crumpled correspondents interviewed nervous-looking Japanese; Chinese generals slumped on sofas and Allied officers sat drinking with women too pretty to be their wives. Between the encampments went Japanese boys in red and gold uniforms carrying trays laden with square bottles of whisky, delivering glasses, squirting soda siphons, slipping their tips into their side pockets and tapping them for good luck.

“Glad you could make it,” growled Mark Ward as he materialized by my side. He gave a lopsided grin when he noticed my expression.

“Where are we, Ward? Casablanca?”

An exquisite Japanese lady came down the steps, her black hair piled high to show a snow white neck, a string of silvery pearls tracing the prow of her ruffled silk dress. I knew her, I thought — the pin-up from the Oasis club, who had sat on McHardy's lap that night. She was moving up in the world. A grizzled, white-haired Third Fleet admiral barged forward to greet her, and she let out an almost genuine cry of delight as she took hold of his outstretched hands.

Ward led me into the crowd, signalling to a boy for drinks.

“This is the nerve centre, Lynch — the reliquary!”

The boy handed me a glass of raw Japanese whisky and I took a large gulp.

“Who runs the show here?” I said.

“We do.”

“How's that?”

“Wherever newsmen gather in the world, Lynch, needs must that they have a bar. Without such a place, stories go untold, confidences unshared. Last September, MacArthur decided that Japan didn't need any special correspondents, with their irritating habit of independent thought and inquiry. He stopped giving them billets. So we took over this place instead.”

A grunt came from behind us and a heavy hand fell on Ward's shoulder. Two bulky, shaven-headed men glared at us. One pushed Ward contemptuously on the arm, as the other jerked a warty thumb toward his mouth and emitted a phrase in some Slavic language. Ward grinned.

“Lynch, meet Gorbatov,” he said. “Boris One. The other fellow's Agapov. Boris Two. Don't ever get them confused or they'll break your arm.”

“Good evening, comrades.”

Boris One jerked his bare head at Ward. “We drink soon,” he ordered, as they headed off together toward the bar. Ward smiled as he watched them go.

“Friends of yours?”

“If you ever want insight into the dark recesses of the Soviet mind, Lynch, they're the men you should talk to. Oh, look who's over there . . . ”

As we worked our way toward the back of the ballroom, Ward recounted his mental encyclopedia of all those present. At the piano, the diplomat prodded the ivories to delighted applause. The notes of a Chopin sonata floated through the ballroom.

“Anyhow,” Ward said. “We're all in the library. Something that ought to interest you.”

“Oh?”

We proceeded down a corridor to an under-lit, smoke-filled room. A couple of cracked leather armchairs had been set up and dozens of foreign and Japanese newspapers were draped over wooden rails. A crowd of men, waistcoats lined with pencils, shoes scuffed, were gathered around a wide table. A man with a thick brown quiff sat, gesturing at a series of photographs laid out under a green-shaded lamp.

“A friend from Chicago,” Ward murmured. “George Weller. Just got back from an unauthorized trip.”

As we slid into the huddle, a couple of men nodded at Ward in greeting.

“The Mitsubishi shelters were useless, of course,” Weller was saying. “They were at the epicentre of the blast. The factory makes a strange sight now, I must say — like a metal ribcage, only all the bones are bent outward.”

I stiffened. I knew with instant conviction what he was talking about. We'd flown over the big Mitsubishi works at Nagasaki a month before the city was A-bombed. Torpedoes and ammunition for the Japanese navy were manufactured there, and I'd been surprised to see the place still standing. A graceful city by the seaside, just like Hiroshima, sprinkled with the spires of Christian churches.

“Most of those that died did so straight away, or within a few hours of the blast,” Weller continued. “But then something else happened. Something strange.”

Weller held up a photograph of a ruddy-faced Japanese girl, smiling into the camera with a knapsack on her back. I suddenly recalled the thin girl and her scarred boyfriend at the back of Ueno station.

“This young girl escaped the blast itself with no more than a burn on her leg. She left the city that day to stay with relatives. She came back two weeks later. Days after she returned, she looked like this.”

Another photograph. The girl was sitting up in a hospital bed now. She had the look of a scarecrow — bald patches on her head, prickles covering her skin as if she had been dragged through a thorn bush. The garbled tale of the trembling girl came back to me in flashes.

“This is her two weeks later.”

The girl once more. Withered almost to a skeleton now. Completely bald, her body covered in thick welts.

Weller paused, gauging the reaction of the men.

“But here's the thing, gentlemen. This girl didn't start to get sick until she came back to Nagasaki. And that was three weeks
after
the blast.”

The men scrutinized the photographs as Weller handed them around. They muttered soft prayers and obscenities before passing them on. I studied the print of the girl. She looked up with empty eyes from a frayed hospital mat, dark blood clotted beneath her nose.

“What is this, George?” Ward asked.

Weller shook his head, lit a cigarette.

“The doctors won't make a diagnosis. Because they don't know how to diagnose it. It's sinister.”

“Does it have a name?”

“No. For now, it's just Disease X.”

Ward glanced at the photograph in my hand, then took it and placed it carefully back down on the table.

“What's the official take?” Ward asked.

“Headquarters don't buy it. Or they don't want to buy it. They say it's a scam. That the Japs are looking for sympathy. Easier terms.”

Weller unfurled a newspaper. To my dismay, I saw it was a copy of
Stars and Stripes
— the same copy, in fact, that had our piece on Himeji Castle printed toward the back, just before the sporting green.

“This is from one Colonel Warren, of the University of Rochester medical school.”

“That august institution,” Ward murmured, to snorts of amusement.

“He states, quote: ‘There absolutely is not, and never was,' — note that,” said Weller, his finger raised, “‘any dangerous amount of radiation in that area.'”

He paused. He had the men's entire attention now.

“‘The radioactivity of a luminous dial wrist watch is one thousand times greater than that found at Nagasaki.'”

He set the newspaper down on the table.

“Do any of you gentlemen wear a luminous dial wristwatch?”

A few raised forearms.

“Ever find your intestines choked with blood? Blood spots in your bone marrow?”

Furrows spread across the assembled brows.

My mouth was dry. I raised my hand. “Mr. Weller?”

He glanced up. I swallowed as the faces of the other men swivelled toward me.

“Disease X. Has it been reported in Hiroshima also?”

Weller shrugged.

“God alone knows. Both cities are now out of bounds. Under penalty of court-martial.”

I pictured the MPs loping along the platform, scrutinizing the Allied carriage for passengers. Vast cogs seemed to be moving, somewhere far out beyond my vision.
The bomb made her sick
? The boy's fervent nod. “So,
desu
.”

Ward stepped forward. “When's this going out, George?”

Weller stubbed out his cigarette with sudden bitterness, then slumped back into his chair. “It's not.”

Incredulous noises came from the assembled men.

“How so?”

“I was fool enough to file it in Tokyo. Headquarters have killed it. Every last word. Diller told me I was lucky to still be in the country. I doubt I will be much longer.”

Noises of anger and disenchantment came from all sides of the room. Ward slid behind Weller's chair and raised big, calming hands.

“Okay boys, here's what we do. We form a delegation, we go to Diller. We impress upon him that this is unacceptable censorship . . . ”

I barely heard him. The photograph of the girl was propped up against the lamp, her eyes boring into my own. The newspaper had fallen open at our story, and I saw the photograph I'd taken outside Himeji Castle: Eugene holding up a samurai sword, baring buck teeth with a ferocious expression.

I pushed urgently out of the library. The noise and chatter of the ballroom washed over me again, along with the frenzied crescendo of the Chopin sonata. I signalled urgently to a boy for a drink and when it came, I threw it back, feeling the alcohol liquefy the pressure in my temple, my pulse slackening. The men began to stream out of the library as the meeting wrapped up. They lit cigars and made a beeline for the bar. Ward approached me, thick eyebrows raised.

“Everything okay, Lynch?”

“Fine. Little claustrophobic.”

He nodded. “Pretty strong salts, huh?”

“Yes. Pretty strong.”

“Another drink?”

“Some other time.”

“Okay Lynch. Make sure you come again.”

A thick cloud of blue smoke curled over the animated crowd as I weaved out and took the elevator back down to the lobby. I strode into the cold night, stumbling through the refuse and mud. Just before the junction, I glanced up at a building. The front was still there, but the back was missing, like the façade of scenery in a cheap Western. You could see right through the walls, and where the roof should have been were stars.

I bought a pint of whisky from a hood at the Ginza crossing, and swigged at it as I strode back home. At the Continental, I lay down on my bed and swilled some more. Then I switched off the light, still fully clothed, and drank in the darkness until the face of the skeletal young girl had dissolved from my mind.

~ ~ ~

Down in the dusty basement of the press club, I scoured archive boxes of newspapers for any article concerning the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was precious little to read. Access to both areas was interdicted now, and there were no official reports on the state of things in either city. The London
Express
had carried a report by a correspondent named Burchett who had raced down to Hiroshima in advance of our lines. “The Atomic Plague!” screamed the ghoulish headline — but the article itself had been suppressed and the copy in the archive was scored with thick black ink that stained my fingers. There was the set of photographs in
LIFE
, the surrender issue, which showed the familiar ruined plain of Hiroshima from above, and made the brief, tantalizing reference to the reports from local doctors of bleeding gums. But the article abruptly cut to a consideration of the future of war and the place of the atom bomb within it, and no more reference was made to its victims.

The only other piece was in the
New York Times
, by a man named Laurence. He'd flown as official observer upon the
Bockscar
to Nagasaki. His writing was lyrical, almost poetic, as he described the swollen tub being loaded into the bomb bay on Tinian.

“A thing of beauty to behold, this gadget,” he wrote, as if extolling the virtues of a new refrigerator or vacuum cleaner. The pilot had taken the bomb up to 17,000 feet, and from there, in the air-conditioned cabin of a reconfigured Superfort, Laurence had pondered the fates of those on the ground below.

“Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? No. Not when one thinks of Pearl Harbour and of the death march on Bataan.”

I'd heard the line so many times already, it seemed almost worn smooth by repetition.

His tone became rapturous, almost sexual, as he described the blast and the mushroom cloud exploding into the sky:

“The smoke billows upward, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upward, descending earthward . . . ”

Floating over that desolate plain. The city swept away.
Poor devils.

The end of the article was puzzling. As if in pre-emptive defence, Laurence emphasized the official line: there was no “mysterious sickness” caused by radiation in either of the two A-bombed cities. Any such reports were “Jap propaganda,” wily attempts to wring concessions from the Allied powers, a cynical ploy to win sympathy from the American people, with their big hearts and deep pockets.

I lay the paper down, and closed my eyes.