The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (37 page)

Earthquake.

He knew that she was trying to drag him outside again. He thought that the hotel would be a safe refuge, but he followed her anyway. The Japanese, who endured hundreds of minor earthquakes every year, had learned centuries ago to build their dwellings of lightweight materials—a wooden frame, paper screens, woven rice-plant floor mats, and very little furniture. Such a home, designed to collapse without killing its inhabitants, could be easily replaced if the inevitable fires that followed the quakes destroyed it. That was the negative aspect of their architectural anti-earthquake scheme: the Japanese cooked on hibachi, open charcoal fires, and when these overturned in an earthquake, the flimsy wooden structures went up like tinder.

When the ground begins to shake, the Japanese instinct is to run outside—to a bamboo grove, if possible—to wait out the quakes and its aftershocks in an open area, where nothing can fall on you. In the last
half century, under Western influence, Japanese architecture had changed, but the old traditions survived.

So they ran.

The shaking lasted less than a minute, and by then they were back across the street in Hibiya Park, where there was nothing to fall on them. The little café within the park was on fire, but otherwise, the grounds looked just as they had before. They walked over to a small pond and sat down to take stock of what was happening.

Henry was looking back across the street at Frank Lloyd Wright’s new building. If it collapsed, he realized that he would indeed have an eyewitness news story for which the world would pay him handsomely. Except for a few fallen stone statues by the courtyard reflecting pool, the hotel had withstood the quake intact, but many nearby structures had collapsed into rubble, and there were plumes of smoke rising from two of the neighboring buildings: the electric company behind the hotel and an insurance building beside it. The electric streetcars had stopped, meaning that the power lines had been broken by the earthquake. It occurred to Henry then that the water mains, buried deep underground, had probably also been destroyed—which meant that the fires would rage unchecked.

Henry looked down at Ishi, who had suddenly become a much greater responsibility than he had bargained for when they set out from the house on that sunny morning. He noted with approval that the child was not visibly distressed or weeping. Like him, he thought, she had been born middle-aged. In her decade of life, she had lived through many small earthquakes, and Henry, who had been in Japan for half as long, had also become accustomed to the sensation of terra infirma. He had delighted in the Japanese folktales that explained the phenomenon: a monster catfish lay coiled around the islands, and when it shifted its position, the earth shook.

He knew, though, that today’s event was not to be cast as a charming legend. The toppled buildings, and the columns of smoke rising in the
distance told him that this was a genuine disaster, well beyond the usual minor rumbles that happened so often. People were streaming into the park, in shock, perhaps, or waiting for someone to come along and tell them what to do next.

He nodded in the direction of the Imperial Hotel. “Perhaps we should go back inside. The building held up well.”

Ishi shook her head. “The fires will come. And I must go to my parents. We will go back now.”

“But the electricity is off. No streetcars. No telephones. And there will be many fires throughout the city.” Henry’s arguments were all sensible, but he did not press the point, because he realized that he did not want to be responsible for someone else’s child during the chaos of a natural disaster. Ishi wanted her parents, and he was happy to relinquish her into their care.

Ishi slipped her arm in his. “We will walk.”

In order to get back home, they would have to cross the Sumida River, perhaps a half hour’s walk from the park, in order to reach their home in the Honjo district on the western side of the river. Henry hoped that the Shin-Ohashi Bridge had survived the quake, and he wondered what they would find when they got to the other side. Surely there were fires in Honjo, too, and perhaps their building had also been destroyed, but in any case, he could locate Ishi’s parents, and, if necessary, bring the family back to safety at the embassy or wherever the Americans established their emergency headquarters to wait out the disaster.

He took Ishi’s hand so that he would not lose her in the crowds hurrying through the streets, some of them with handcarts, filled with clothing, bedding, and cherished family possessions, salvaged from their ruined houses. They weren’t all going in the same direction, though. People seemed to be fleeing the fires that had broken out in their neighborhoods without quite realizing that they were heading toward fires that had sprung up elsewhere. Roof tiles that had been shaken loose by the earthquake had fallen and shattered in the street, so that they had to watch
where they walked. Henry glanced up at the dry wooden roofs exposed by the fallen tiles. If wind-borne sparks reached those bare roofs, those buildings would go up like tinderboxes, too. Willing himself to speak calmly, he urged Ishi to walk faster.

The wind had picked up now, and the air smelled of smoke. Henry looked back the way they had come, wondering if they should have simply stayed in the new hotel, but he could see sheets of flames leaping behind them, forming a curtain that obscured the distant hills, and he thought that surely the sensible course would be to head for the river. When they reached the old wooden bridge, a policeman was stationed there, directing the foot traffic clogging the bridge from both sides, each group trying to reach the nonexistent safety of the opposite bank. On the ground beside the bridge were piles of bedding, discarded furniture, and abandoned handcarts. The policeman was permitting no one to set foot on the bridge encumbered by baggage, because such things were fire hazards and obstacles that would have endangered the lives of all who were trying to cross the bridge.

Henry looked down at Ishi. “It will be difficult to get over the bridge. Will you be all right?”

“Hai. We must go across.” Ishi answered him in a strong, clear voice, but her eyes were troubled.

“Never mind, Hedgehog,” said Henry, trying to smile. “We’ll manage.”

He thought of salmon fighting their way upstream as they shoved and squeezed past the hordes of desperate people who were surging in the opposite direction to get past. But except for the crackle of flames and the crashing of falling buildings, it was strangely quiet. No one screamed or wept aloud. Henry thought that under similar circumstances his fellow citizens back home might be stampeding in panic, and they certainly would not have been going so quietly. He wondered what emotions lay beneath the impassive faces of these calm, methodical refugees—self-discipline, resignation, or some other feeling that he could not even guess at.

After what seemed like an hour of polite shoving and dodging, while the sky darkened and the smell of smoke grew stronger, they finally reached the other side of the bridge. Henry stopped for a moment to get his bearings and to take stock of the encroaching fires, and before he could choose a road that would lead back to Ishi’s building, another policeman approached them, unleashing a torrent of words and gesturing in the opposite direction.

Ishi looked up at Henry. “We cannot go home,” she said, in case he had not understood the message. “He says that the head of police has ordered everyone to go to an open space near the river for safety.”

Henry blinked. “Do you know where it is?”

“Hai. The Army Clothing Depot. The building is gone. Now it is all grass, like park. My parents should be there. We will meet them.” She tugged at Henry’s sleeve and set off through the sea of people who were also heading for the safety of the open field where the Army Clothing Depot used to stand.

A sense of desolation, like a soul in torment.

—
MATSUO BASH

By the time court adjourned for the day, all you could see of the town of Wise was gray shapes in the evening mist, so Nora had not seen much of her new surroundings. A cold drizzle was beginning to fall as they dashed for the car. While Carl fiddled with the pedal starter mechanism, Nora wiped the rain from her face with a linen handkerchief. They did not speak until he had the car in gear and eased onto West Main Street, in the direction of Cousin Araby’s house.

“What did you think, Nora?”

She hesitated. “Well, it put me in mind of church. Important without necessarily being interesting.”

Carl laughed. “You could get in trouble saying that to a newspaperman. What did you think about the defendant, though?”

“I felt sorry for her. Having to sit there and listen to all those people saying what they thought of her. And listening to her friends giving chapter and verse of things she said about her daddy when she was mad. Nobody ought to have their private conversations dragged out in front of strangers.”

“Well, they’re trying to prove she committed murder, Nora.”

“I know. And if Eleanor Roosevelt was to die, I reckon they could get half our kinfolk charged with the crime on evidence such as that.”

Carl laughed. “But that would be fair enough, though, if she died in our house, don’t you figure? The neighbors heard the ruckus on the night Mr. Morton died, and he was in the house with only his
family present, so all this tale-telling of past quarrels is just the icing on the cake.”

Nora nodded. “I know he was done to death in that house, and it had to come about while they were having that set-to. I don’t see how we can know more than that. Suppose his heart gave out?”

“The jurors listen to everybody talk, and then they have to use their judgment to say what they think most likely happened.”

“I understand that. I just don’t know why anybody mistakes their opinion for the truth.”

“ ’Cause there ain’t many people in the world who can up and ask the dead man what happened to him.”

“Well, Carl, if I’d a-seen I’m, I’d a-asked him. He’s not here anymore.”

“Maybe if you went back to the house where he died? Well, I don’t suppose they’d let us in. They’ve been paid not to talk to other reporters.”

“I wish I could help you,” said Nora.

“I wish you could, too. I have to call in another story tonight to the rewrite man. It’s going to be pretty bland stuff.”

“But even if Mr. Morton was still around and told me exactly what killed him, you couldn’t put it in the newspaper, could you? A lot more people would believe the jury than would believe a twelve-year-old girl who has visions. And if you put my name in the paper, I reckon my folks would send you on into the hereafter to talk to the dead man yourself.”

“I’d deserve it, too,” said Carl. “And I guess the New York boys would have a field day with that story if I did write it. ‘Hillbilly Gal Talks to Ghosts.’ And ‘Backwoods Yokels Credit Superstition Over Science.’ ”

Nora hung her head. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t you give it another thought. This isn’t your problem, Nora. In fact, it’s hardly even mine. We’re not called upon to solve
the case for the police. I’ve only got to make sense of it when I tell the tale. But maybe there is something you could do. They won’t let me into the jail to see Erma Morton, because reporters are barred by those syndicate people. Her brother has seen to that. But you’re not a reporter. Maybe you could get in to see her. Take her a book or some ladies’ magazines. You wouldn’t have to stay long. Would you be afraid to do that?”

“What is there to be afraid of? Even if she killed a man, she’s already locked up.” Nora smiled. “I reckon I’d be safer talking to her than I am riding in this contraption with you.”

IN THE COURSE OF A CAREER
in journalism, Rose Hanelon had talked to English earls, convicted killers, society beauties, disaster survivors, and impoverished immigrants in tenements—nearly the entire spectrum of humanity—and she had felt not a twinge of discomfort in conversing with any of them. But as she gave Danny’s number to the long-distance operator, she felt her hand shaking. The people she interviewed in the course of a day’s work were all fodder for her feature articles, and they wouldn’t matter to her for any longer than it took for the piece to appear in print. After that she forgot them, as new people replaced them in her thoughts. She might like her interview subjects personally or sympathize with their plight, but they were part of an endless procession of humanity and she had to move on. You had to let the old ones go so that you could muster an interest in the new subjects.