Fire Flowers Page 17

  “The Aftermath of the Atom,” I titled the piece. I described the day simply and clearly, from the moment I arrived at the station to the second my train back to Tokyo passed into the tunnel. Darkness had fallen outside the big plate windows by the time I was done. The pool cast by my lamp was the only light burning in the building. I rolled out the final sheet and read the last paragraph out loud.

  “While most of the victims of ‘radiation disease’ are now dead, it seems clear now that this terrifying new weapon has a capacity to destroy even beyond that which its creators foretold. It has the capacity to plant the seeds of a lethal sickness into men’s bodies, to scatter poison into their very souls. Whatever the justification for the atom bombing of Japan, any government that believes in justice surely has a duty to help those that it has unwittingly—or wittingly—exposed to this sickness, this creeping death that still lurks in men’s bloodstreams so many months after the smoke has cleared.”

  The heavy newsroom door creaked open and I lurched up in my chair. A tuneless whistle came from the corner of the room and the big overhead lights glimmered on. Eugene. He assumed the comical expression of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Hal!” he exclaimed, striding toward me. “Don’t tell me you’re working? On a Sunday night?”

  I smiled, hastily covering up the pages on my desk.

  “How about you, Eugene? Feeling guilty about something?”

  The corners of his mouth turned down.

  “Let’s just say I forgot something.” He opened the drawer of his desk and palmed a package of prophylactics into his overcoat pocket. He parked himself on my desk with a grin.

  “Where have you been anyway, Hal? We never see you anymore.”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for my old roommate. He’d never seen any action, just like all the other fresh recruits now garrisoned in Japan. The country was like a playground for him.

  Grime and dirt were ground under my fingernails and developing fluid stained my skin. As I looked up at his cheerful, freckled face, the crooked wire-rimmed glasses beneath the wild thatch of hair, I felt a curious collision of instincts. After a moment of hesitation, I gathered the sheaf of papers on the desk and handed it to him.

  “Proof this for me, Eugene.”

  He licked his thumb and forefinger as he flipped through the pages. Surprise, astonishment, confusion progressed across his face as he read. I slumped in my chair, aware of the sour reek of my unwashed body. When he finally finished, he gave a low whistle.

  “Boy oh boy, Hal. Do you think Dutch’ll go for it?”

  I laughed, despairing. “You know I wasn’t planning to file it to the Stars and Stripes, Eugene.”

  He adjusted his glasses. “Right. So—where are you going to file it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve no idea. One of the nationals, maybe.”

  His face crinkled with apparent distaste. “So you’re a Fancy Dan now, Hal?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t get it Hal. Why are you so bothered about the Japs all of a sudden? They started it, right?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I just led him down to the basement and gestured at the prints. He examined each in turn, pausing every now and then to take a closer look. He became silent for a long time, brow furrowed.

  “They’re quite something, Hal.”

  “Thanks Gene.”

  “SCAP was upset enough about the rat guy.”

  I laughed, picturing Dutch in his office, accusing me of being morbid.

  “They sure were, Gene.”

  He glanced at me in doubt.

  “You’re sure you want to do this, Hal? You know it means trouble. Why not let sleeping dogs lie?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?”

  I shook my head.

  “Discuss it over a drink?”

  I shook my head again. I suddenly yawned, my eyelids like lead.

  He sighed. “Well. Okay, Hal. Suit yourself.”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “You get some rest, Hal, do you hear me? You’ll be here tomorrow, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. See you around.”

  There was a vague sound of whistling as he climbed the stairs, and the heavy office door closed with a thud. I was hopelessly fatigued. The lights and the scent of chemicals made my head swim as I unpegged the prints from the line. Upstairs, I peeled the carbon from the line and slid the photos and the story into my drawer.

  The next day at noon, freshly showered and shaved, I walked back into the newsroom. Faces glanced up at me, then swiftly dropped away. The room fell silent but for the echo of typewriter keys.

  “Someone die?” I asked, with a pang of trepidation. “Who was it? The Emperor?”

  Upon my desk lay a scribbled memorandum in Dutch’s handwriting: “ASAP.”

  As casually as I could, I sat down and opened my drawer.

  It was empty. Over in Dutch’s office, figures were silhouetted against the glass. The muffled sound of argument was rising from within.

  Keeping an eye on the door, I walked to the stairs, and then ran down. In the darkroom, I switched on the lights. The developing tins were neatly stacked in the corner. Even the drops of fluid on the floor beneath the drying line had been mopped clean. I got back upstairs just in time to see Eugene arriving at his desk. When he saw me, his smile froze. Over his face passed the look of a whipped dog.

  The door to the office swung open and two military policemen stepped out. Behind them followed an extremely anxious-looking Dutch.

  “Ah, our roving reporter!” he called when he spotted me.

  The MPs loped over as Dutch stood rubbing his head. One of them squared up to me.

  “Mr. Lynch?” he asked. Puffy-faced, his skin was as soft as a boy’s. I realized, absurdly, that I recognized him: the petty officer who’d sat next to me on the gun turret of the Missouri, the day of the surrender signing. He showed no sign of recollection.

  “We’ve been asked to fetch you, sir.”

  The friendly southern drawl was incongruously loud in the newsroom. Everyone was still staring at their typewriters in studious concentration.

  “May I ask by whom, officer?”

  “Just come along with us, would you, Mr. Lynch?” he said, placing an encouraging hand on my arm. “There’s some folks who’d like to talk with you.”

  The Public Relations office was located in a sinister-looking building that had once been home to Radio Tokyo: the voice of the Japanese Empire. From here, bulletins of lightning victories had rung across the Pacific, the shortwave siren song of Tokyo Rose. The concrete box was painted jet black—camouflage against night attack.

  Flanked by the MPs, I walked up the stairs as a man I somewhat knew emerged from the doorway. George LeGrand was a photographer from LIFE magazine who’d approached me a few weeks earlier, to ask my advice on aerial photography.

  “Hello, Lynch,” he said pleasantly, nodding toward the MPs. “Everything in order?”

  “Hello, LeGrand,” I said. “It seems the brigadier general wants to speak to me about something.”

  “Baker?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Good luck.”

  Brigadier General Frayne Baker was MacArthur’s new head of Public Relations—a stony, white-haired North Dakotan, as mean and surly as his predecessor.

  “In any case, you’ll find him in good cheer.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I’ve come from him just this moment. We’ve all been on an exciting duck hunt.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s right. The Imperial Palace invited him to the Imperial Wild Duck Preserve to try his hand. They give you these big nets, you see . . . ”

  The southern boy cleared his throat.

  “I’d best be on my way, LeGrand.” ­
>
  “Okay, Lynch. See you around.” He glanced at the MPs, then winked at me. In a stage whisper, he said: “Don’t worry too much about Baker. He’s had a damn good lunch.”

  The office door was open and I walked in. Baker was sitting behind his desk, cap askew, eyes closed, hands clasped across his chest. A trio of ducks lay on one side of the desk, necks tied together with twine, beaks hanging disconsolately open. There was a musty smell, and I was reminded of my father in his den, a bottle on the table, sleeping off his lunchtime load.

  My missing piece was on the table, heavily scored with blue pencil, thick initials circled in the margins. Two photographs lay beside it. I recognized the picture of the schoolteacher. Next to it was the photo of the Buddha statues. The print had been torn precisely in half.

  Baker’s eyes flickered open. He spent a second staring at me, attempting to focus on my face.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” he snapped.

  “I was told to come, sir. Obliged.”

  He gave a sullen growl and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Who’s your editor?”

  “Dutch. That is, John Van Buren, sir.”

  “Stars and Stripes?”

  “That’s correct.”

  He placed his big, liver-spotted hands down on the table. “You do him a great disservice. As you do your paper.”

  “With the greatest respect, sir—”

  “Respect?” His eyes flashed. “What does a Stars and Stripes man know about respect? Do you respect military interdict? What in the hell is a Stars and Stripes reporter doing in a restricted area in any case?”

  “With the greatest respect, sir, the Stars and Stripes has a tradition—”

  “Damn the Stars and Stripes, sir!” The fist slammed down upon the table with such violence that the beaks of the ducks rattled faintly together. “Damn you. Don’t you know I could have you court-martialled right here and now? Do you under- stand that?”

  My mouth was dry. “The public has a clear interest in knowing what is happening in Hiroshima—”

  “The public has all the information they need about Hiroshima, son!” A vein bulged in his forehead, and I tried not to flinch, picturing my father at the height of a fit. “Don’t you worry about that. This—” He gestured at the table. “This—horseshit? You think you know better than our best medical men?

  “I want to report what I saw, sir—”

  “What you saw? What you were shown, don’t you mean? And who showed it to you? The Japs!”

  He stood up, perspiration shining on his forehead. As he leaned forward, I could smell the boozy cave of his mouth.

  “Did it ever strike you as convenient, what you saw? Gave you a guided tour, didn’t they? Your own private freak show. Ever consider why they were so keen to show you around?”

  A pang of doubt struck me. In my mind’s eye, I saw the police chief scowling at me: Now—show America what it has done. Dr. Hiyashida’s familiar wave, his gleeful pride as he showed me his most pathetic victims. Take more pictures! For your newspaper!

  I swallowed. Baker’s eyes twitched. “Played you for a fool, you idiot. Don’t you see? You’re a sap. A first-class fucking sap.”

  He picked up my article and slapped it with one hand. He snorted, as if faintly amused. “Radiation disease.”

  He threw the pages in the air, and they fluttered incoherently to the floor. “Horse. Shit. Tell me, son. Were you ever in a battle against the Japs?”

  “I was a lieutenant in Third Recon—”

  “Well, I was a general at fucking Bataan, Lieutenant!” he hollered, smashing his fist upon the table again. “You ever hear of something called the Death March? That mean anything to you? You ever hear of a place called Pearl Harbor?”

  His eyes were blazing, consumed with fury. He pointed to the door.

  “Get the hell out of here.” His ruddy face had ripened to a deep maroon, his tongue lolling from his mouth like an overheated dog’s. “Get out!”

  I rotated swiftly and marched out the door, as tiny, ruffling feathers floated up from the corpses of the ducks.

  Dutch stroked the ginger-blond hair that he grew long below his pate, looking at me with watery eyes.

  “There’s no chance, Hal, I’m sorry. No chance at all.”

  His face was grave, like a doctor informing me of a terminal illness. “And there’s trouble. It’s gone all the way up. They’ve been asking me some pretty tough questions about you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as whether you are, quote, some kind of subversive. Whether you are a communist.”

  “Am I, Dutch? In your opinion?”

  He gave a long sigh. “Times are changing, Hal. I think there’s going to be another war coming soon.”

  “So. What did you plead?”

  “I told them about your fine work in reconnaissance. I told them about your commendations. I told them that you may have been . . . disturbed by what you saw from up there. That you may be feeling the need to make some kind of recompense.”

  “I’m a bleeding heart, Dutch, is that it? Or are we pleading insanity?”

  “Hal. I’m putting my neck out for you here.”

  “What’s the verdict, Dutch?”

  He shook his head. “You’re suspended, Hal, for the time being. Pending their decision on what to do with you.”

  “What about my other pieces?” I said, sullenly. “‘The Touristic GI?’”

  “I’m sorry, Hal,” he said, with more emphasis.

  “And you’ve agreed to all this, Dutch? What kind of newsman are you? Whatever happened to the crucible of change?”

  He laughed. “What do you want me to do, Hal? They’re threatening to have you court-martialled for travelling to a prohibited area. How can I publish journalistic pieces from a military prison?”

  He looked down at the desk, guiltily. “And I’ve been asked to take back your press pass, Hal. I’m sorry.”

  An unexpected lump rose in my throat as I slid the square of crumpled paper out of my wallet, the scrawl of MacArthur’s signature smudged now as I placed the pass upon the desk.

  “What’s going to happen to me, Dutch?”

  He leaned forward. Sotto voce he said: “Strictly between you, me and the gatepost, Hal, I think you’ve been lucky. Believe it or not. I gather there’s been some kind of falling-out upstairs about what to do with you. There’s a certain amount of . . . tension between Intelligence and the New Dealers.”

  “So they’re not slinging me out?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I can’t write, but I can stay?”

  He shrugged. “For now at least.”

  Limbo, I thought. The realm of lost souls.

  “Okay, Dutch,” I said. “I’m going to go get my head down.”

  A pained look came over his face. “That’s another thing I need to tell you, Hal. You’re going to need to find another place to live. They’re taking away your billeting rights.”

  I let out a short laugh.

  “That’s right. They’re a petty, vindictive bunch when they want to be. And you won’t be able to draw rations either. You’ve got two weeks.”

  “No more powdered eggs, Dutch?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “No more gratis Luckys?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Alright. Thanks, Dutch.”

  “Wait, Hal,” he said as I stood to leave.

  “Don’t tell me. I’m not invited to the Christmas party.”

  His face was serious. His throat moved. He opened up his drawer and took out a slim envelope and slid it toward me.

  I glanced at him in question. His brow rippled.

  “You know, it’s very bad form for a photographer to leave negatives in the enlarger head, Lynch.”

  I stared at hi
m. I could hardly recall leaving the darkroom the night before, I’d been so tired. He nodded at the envelope. I half opened the brim.

  Inside was a cut spool of maybe twenty photographs, shots I’d taken at the hospital. My heart leapt, and I grasped Dutch by the shoulders, kissing his bald head.

  “Alright, alright,” he spluttered.

  “I won’t forget this, Dutch. I mean it.”

  He wiped his head with his handkerchief. “Merry Christmas, Hal. Enjoy your tinned turkey while you still can.”

  I suddenly pictured Dutch in his paper Christmas hat, playing Santa amongst his horde of redheaded children. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “And your eggnog!” he called out plaintively, as I left the room.

  19

  CHILDREN OF THE EMPEROR

  (Hiroshi Takara)

  Tomoko and I were lying on the floor of Ueno Station, gazing up at constellations of fireflies. The Yoshiwara canal was strewn with fire as we sat on the concrete embankment and I kissed her and stroked her black hair. Then we were beneath the iron rivets of the railway track, a train screaming overhead as I fumbled with the fly of my khaki uniform, twisting her hair as I pulled her toward me—

  I woke with a shout. The room was dark and Koji was whimpering in his sleep beside me. My heart pounded as the dream floated away, leaving me utterly appalled and ashamed.

  Tomoko had hardly said a word since the night of her attack. Once again, she had retreated into that silent, distant world where she’d hidden after leaving her home, as lonely and haunted as her old slit-bomb shelter. No one had spoken as we trudged home that night. The children were all aware that something awful had happened. When we reached the inn, Tomoko went straight through to the bathhouse and slid shut the door behind her. I realized that the water would be icy cold and so sent Aiko in to ask her if I should light the boiler. When she came back a moment later, she shook her head.

  “Go upstairs and lay out the blankets, then.”