Fireflies (19 page)

A shop girl. What did it matter, in any case? The war hadn't cared much for class, had it? That careful social gradation my mother had ruthlessly applied to every facet of her universe, from the pattern of a kimono belt to the arrangement of a teacup, proved worthless. What a mockery death had made of it all. Of rank, of ancestry. As if our blood type had mattered as it poured from our veins; as if the bone fragments of a lowly private were distinguishable from a general's as they'd sluiced into the sinking mud of that tropical hell.

And if Satsuko Takara was a fallen woman, wasn't it I who was to blame? The man who had taken her virginity, as if it were a prize, the day before going to war?

I needed to find her again, I thought. I would seek her out, wherever she was in the city. I had no hope that we might rekindle our lost love, such as it had been. The war had slaughtered my romantic capacities after all. Yet, perhaps, I might apologize to her for my failings. Make some small recompense.

I emerged from the bath feeling entirely cleansed. I dressed in my clothes, overwhelmed by their tarry stench of cigarette smoke and sour sweat. I vowed that I would make a bonfire, burn them all up in a great blaze. I'd buy myself a new set entirely, before going on my search for Takara-san.

I stood in front of the mirror; combed my hair; gave my teeth a quick scrub with my finger. I might even visit a teahouse on the way home, I thought. I felt more refreshed that I had in years.

As I emerged from the changing room, a sudden panic came upon me. The scrawny old woman in the vestibule was asleep, her head tilted backward, a line of drool dangling from her mouth. The door to the compartment where I had left my shoes was open. I rushed over. The latch was up. The compartment was empty.

I seized the woman and shook her violently. She stared at me in dull incomprehension.

“Where are my shoes?” I demanded. “Why have you moved them?”

“I haven't moved them anywhere, sir,” she complained, “Why should I?” She'd been right there, she said, keeping an eye on things all this time.

I had a sudden vision of the two boys outside. With choking trepidation, I darted out. The street was empty. Back inside, the woman was looking vexed, sucking at her lips and shaking her head.

“Oh sir!” she moaned. “Those two dirty children! They were playing right outside! They must have noticed sir's handsome shoes, and taken it into their heads . . . ”

Oh, it was wicked, sir! Those dirty, wretched, evil little shrimps. Scampering about right by the entrance, she had told them to clear off, but she must have just dozed away for just a second. Oh sir! Whatever must the honourable gentleman think? Such evil little urchins. What a wicked place Japan had become, that two innocent little children could do such a shameful thing!

Methodically, I opened every other compartment as she ranted away, praying that I had somehow been mistaken, that I would open a wooden hatch to see amber contours glinting calmly back at me.

It was to no avail. They were all empty. I felt a hard lump in my throat, an intense sensation of loss, as if someone close to me had died. Wretchedly, I went back outside and looked up and down the street. It was no use. The area was deserted. The shoes were gone.

~ ~ ~

I shuffled from the bathhouse with bales of newspaper wrapped around my bare feet. They grew sodden and bitty as I negotiated the puddles, and soon threatened to disintegrate altogether. People went by me with smiles on their faces.

I stubbornly filed a complaint at the police box. The officer on duty rolled his eyes as he wrote out a form. He suggested that I go down to the nearby black market and search for them there — that was where most of the stolen goods in the area ended up, he said.

If he knew that, I asked myself sullenly, as I prowled up and down the aisles at the market, then why didn't he do something about it? Icy water had risen up the legs of my breeches now, and my feet were almost naked. It was dark by the time I found a stall selling shoes on the very edge of the market. It was just as the officer had suspected. My Oxfords were sitting there, in pride of place upon the trestle table.

I pointed at them. “Those are mine.”

The stunted stallholder squinted up at me.

“Four hundred,” he said. He glanced down at my naked feet. “Perfect for a gentleman like you.”

“Four hundred? What are you talking about? I paid three for them just this afternoon.”

He shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

“But they're mine!” I shouted. “They were stolen from me this afternoon.”

The man came a little closer. “So I'm a thief, am I? Is that what you're saying?”

“Yes, yes, you are,” I said. “They were stolen from me this afternoon by two urchins, no doubt paid by you —”

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder and twisted me around. Beneath a felt fedora, glittering little black eyes stared at me — the sharp yakuza boss who ran the place.

“What's the problem here?”

I stuttered, acutely aware of the pincer-like grip around my arm, the bulging muscles beneath the man's pale silk jacket.

“Those are my shoes,” I managed to say. “This man has stolen them from me.”

“Oh yeah?” he slurred, picking them up and looking at them with a bored expression. “Well, they look like a pretty common style to me. There must be thousands like them in Tokyo. Don't you think you've made a mistake?”

“I should hardly think so. I had them on my feet not two hours ago.”

He rubbed his forehead with a pained expression. “Look, mister, I think you've made a mistake. There's no need to be making wild accusations in public.”

“But it's true,” I said, frantically. “Two children stole them from me this afternoon!”

“Look, mister,” he said, squaring up. “You've made a mistake, now calm down.”

“But they're mine!”

There was a piercing pain in the socket of my right eye, as his knuckle crunched against bone. I collapsed onto the ground, my vision black on one side, my head ringing.

“You've made a mistake, mister,” said the tough, looming above me. “So forget about it now. Either buy something or push off.”

He strolled away, wringing out his fist.

I slowly picked myself up. My glasses were dangling from my ears, smashed and useless. I could still see the dim, reflective red glow of my shoes upon the table, the man standing over them protectively.

“Alright then, damn you,” I said. “I'll buy them back. But look. I can only afford a hundred.”

I took out all the money I had left from my pocket, and laid it in a pile on the table. The man straightened up, as if I had offended him.

“One hundred!” he said, haughtily. “Outrageous. Don't you know these are Oxford brogues — they're made in London! I couldn't take anything less than three.”

I almost started to sob as I looked helplessly down at my numb feet. The last of the newspaper clung to them in soggy strips, and my toes were raw and shrivelled.

The man grew more sympathetic.

“Look,” he said. “A pair of these wouldn't suit you anyway, sir. They're far too fancy. But I'll tell you what I can do. I can sell you a good pair of boots for fifty yen.”

Good heavens no
, I thought,
not boots again, not after all this time
.

He reached beneath the table to pull out a hulking pair of army boots and laid them heavily down upon the table.

I recognized the smell straight away — the rancid odour of rotten soybeans. I picked one up and held it in front of my face, fingering the chafed cowhide, poking my finger through the familiar holes. Wearily, I pushed fifty yen in coins across the table to the man, who pocketed it neatly. I bent down and tugged the boots back onto my feet.

“Look!” the man said cheerily. “A perfect fit. You see, you're lucky after all.”

Wordlessly, I strode away from the market as the darkness and rain fell about me. As I trudged back home along the mucky street in my old, detested army boots, I had the curious feeling that they had somehow magically engineered the whole affair, that they possessed some supernatural power. That now, reunited with me again, they were content, and were smiling in secret triumph.

22

THE YOSHIWARA

(SATSUKO TAKARA)

It was shivering cold on the ward, yet the women insisted on opening up the tall, cracked windows late in the afternoon to clamber up on the sills and look down at the street below. It was like the cinema for them, I thought, as they hung there, screeching like vultures. They saved their loudest chorus for any passing American soldiers, who waved back in salute even as the girls made vulgar gestures at them.

We were on the top floor of the crumbling, grey venereal hospital, up five worn flights of stone stairs. Large chunks of plaster were missing from the walls and you could see the brickwork and horsehair beneath. The hall was lined on each side with thin straw mattresses, patients' belongings arranged beside them: wiry military blankets, envelopes of tea, tangled strips of dried cod.

One afternoon, I came back from work, my back aching from scrubbing and polishing the floors of the dining hall all morning. A plump lady was laying out her things by the mattress next to mine. I knelt down and introduced myself, and she nodded and smiled, showing deep dimples in the slabs of her cheeks. Mrs. Ishino was her name, she said, and she ran a restaurant down in Nihonbashi. There was something familiar about her face, I thought. It was as if I'd seen her on some forgotten theatre poster, many years before. She held out an earthenware jar and beamed at me.

“Help yourself!” she said. “Pickled plums. Nothing like them to keep the doctors away.”

I almost gasped as I tasted the sour juice for the first time in years. Mrs. Ishino spread a cloth between our mattresses, and laid out some rice crackers and dried seaweed, urging me to help myself. As I nibbled away, she glanced toward the doors at the end of the ward, then pulled out a small flask of clear liquid from beneath her kimono jacket.

“Have a nip of this as well, dear,” she said, handing it to me quickly. “Nothing like it for the cold.”

It was strong and she nodded at me to take another sip. It was warm as it reached my belly. As I handed back the bottle, I realized that I was smiling.

Mrs. Ishino told me her story as we ate. She waved her hands in the air, acting things out, imitating people's voices just as if she'd been a comic storyteller kneeling on a stage. The day before, she said, the police had banged on the door of her bar in the middle of the night. They told her that they were there to enforce new regulations, and they'd carted her off to the hospital, along with the two girls who worked for her, Masuko and Hanuko. At the hospital, the doctors performed their usual tests. Masuko and Hanuko were given the all-clear and sent home. Mrs. Ishino, however, had been diagnosed with something very unpleasant.

“And I know exactly who's to blame, Takara-san,” she said, waving a thick finger at me in menace. “And he'll be in for it as soon as I get out of here, you mark my words!”

I clapped my hand over my mouth, trying desperately not to laugh. Mrs. Ishino took a long swallow from her bottle, then burst into loud peals of laughter herself.

~ ~ ~

The women wore padded kimonos of faded grey-green as they slouched on the floor. Some got on with piece work they'd been given to pay for their treatment, stitching trousers and dresses from strips of old grey uniform or painting little dolls to sell as toys and souvenirs in the hospital shop. The others sat about nattering about the same old tedious things until evening, when the generator finally gave out and we were plunged into darkness again.

Those first nights, I lay parched, desperate for just one of my pills. I tossed and shivered with feverish nightmares, and the bed was soaking wet when I woke. But before long, I started to feel almost calm again. The terrible dreams that had haunted me began to slowly fade.

One afternoon, I walked over to the big window of the ward to look out. Opposite the hospital, the first plum blossom had budded white against a row of scorched trees.

~ ~ ~

There was a glint in Mrs. Ishino's eye as she sat down on her mat. There was a frayed towel draped over her shoulder, and her hair was wet from the bathhouse.

“Good news, Takara-san,” Mrs. Ishino said, as she tugged a tortoiseshell comb through her hair. “I'm finally escaping at the end of this week. I've been given the all-clear.”

“Oh,” I said. I glanced at the fine wrinkles around Mrs. Ishino's eyes. I realized that I'd become quite used to her matronly presence next to me when I woke up each morning. “Well, I'm certainly very pleased for you, Mrs. Ishino.”

She pursed her lips in a sly smile, and then poked me in the shoulder. “And that's not all,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I've heard a message on the wind that you'll be getting out as well, Takara-san!” she said.

I looked up at her in alarm. Despite the pungent smell of the bedpans, the back-breaking work, and the chemical soap that left my hands as scaly as snakeskin, the long ward with its high ceiling had become like a refuge, a place where I could hide from the world and all its horrors.

Mrs. Ishino twisted her hair into a knot and knelt down on the floor beside me. “Tell me, Takara-san,” she said.

“Please ask me anything you like, Mrs. Ishino,” I said.

“What is it that you intend to do with yourself, Takara-san?” she asked. “When you leave here, I mean?”

The main doors to the ward swung open. The doctors appeared in their white coats to begin their rounds. A sharp chemical smell swirled through the hall. I had a sudden memory of my room at the International Palace, the orange card tacked over the entrance.

“I'm not sure, Mrs. Ishino,” I said. “Perhaps this, or that . . . Perhaps I'll go back to the Oasis, to see if they'll have me.”

Mrs. Ishino looked at me sharply. “Haven't you heard, Takara-san?”

“Heard what, Mrs. Ishino?” I said.

“The comfort stations, Takara-san. The Americans have closed them all down.”

“But why?”

She snorted. “I expect there were too many yankiis going home to their wives in America with unexpected conditions like mine.”

I thought uneasily of the broken-down mansion in Tsukiji: the drugged girls in their vivid dresses, the colour of bruises. We'd all be wretched pan-pan now, forced to work in the alleys and craters, to go with anyone who came along, American or Japanese, decrepit or even violent . . .

Mrs. Ishino cocked her head to one side. “Takara-san,” she said. “I wonder if I could possibly make a request?”

I nodded. “Of course,” I said. “Anything at all!”

“Perhaps you might consider coming to work for me?” she said. “The shop could always do with another pretty girl. Someone who's worked in the trade before, you know.”

Gratitude and relief flooded my heart. It would be just like the old days, I thought, working at a real restaurant again — I'd go to and fro amongst the tables with my skirts hitched up, a big bottle of saké on my back, serving the dishes and joining in with all the banter . . .

“I run it for the Americans of course,” Mrs. Ishino said, holding my eye. “We're a liberal establishment.”

The warm glow fluttered away.

“And there are extra services we provide. Discreetly, of course.”

My heart sank.

Mrs. Ishino took my hands in hers. “Why not come and work with us, Satsuko? It's not such a bad place. You're sure to get on with the other girls. You could do much worse, you know.”

She was right, of course, and I knew it. I could only do worse.

I took a deep breath, then knelt before her and bowed my head.

“Ishino-sama,” I murmured. “I'm certainly not worthy of your trust and affection. Please accept my gratitude, from the bottom of my heart.”

Mrs. Ishino's face lit up. She beamed at me and squeezed my hands.

“Don't you worry about that, Satsuko-chan,” she said. “Don't you worry about anything at all.”