Fire Flowers Read online

  The perspective shifted; my stomach lurched. The world took on a sudden, febrile intensity as deafening engines thudded in my inner ear.

  My head was between my legs. Eugene’s hand lay on my shoulder.

  “Hal? Are you alright?”

  I took deep breaths until the thudding floated away. Eugene was staring at me.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Stuffy in here.”

  I hoisted down the cracked pane of glass on the other side of the compartment. Beyond the flat paddies, a stream wound below a scenic ridge. Eugene opened two bottles of beer and I took one from him gratefully.

  “Here’s how,” he said.

  We clinked bottles and drank. Presently, I took a private glance behind. The huge mountain was gone, smeared away into mist.

  A little narcotic rivulet trickled pleasantly around my brain as Eugene told me about the parallel life he had been living over the past few years, ever since I was drafted straight out of college and had joined 3rd Recon. He’d applied to the newspaper on a whim, it seemed; up to then, he’d been working at his father’s law office in Manhattan, excused from service due to his terrible eyes. Japan was his big adventure now. I joshed him about his “girlfriends” in Tokyo and he coloured, smirking.

  “Come on, Hal. Don’t tell me you haven’t succumbed to the delights of baby-san?”

  The question lacked nuance. Before I’d been sent to Saipan, there’d been henna-tattooed skin and plump Indian flesh in a mud shack at Kharagpur; a dose from my favourite girl at the Phoenix House in Chengtu. Always with a vague sense of brutality, as if I were some kind of marauding barbarian.

  “And how is Primrose, Eugene?” I asked, swigging my beer. “Still blooming, I hope?”

  “You should learn to loosen up a little, Harold.”

  “And how often do you find yourself frequenting such charming establishments, Eugene?”

  He adjusted his glasses, a trifle uncomfortably. “Most nights, I guess.”

  As the train followed the line of the coast, a cold wind blew in through the cracks in the windows. We were starting to shiver when the porter brought in a small, hot brazier of charcoal, which he set on the floor before folding down our bunks. Dusk fell, and we squeezed into our narrow berths and tried to fall asleep under short, thin blankets.

  The clattering of the train permeated my dreams, transforming itself into the pounding of aerial bombs. I was alone in a house I somehow knew from my childhood, a place that was at once intimately familiar, yet vastly lonely. The continual whoosh and blast of explosives came from outside and I felt an inexplicable sadness, as a child might feel when he is utterly abandoned. The glass door of a rifle cabinet hung open by the wall. A single lamp burned by the stair. A knock sounded at the door and I knew with instinctive fear who it would be. I hesitated for what seemed like an endless time, before I opened it.

  The disfigured Japanese boy was standing there, holding his makeshift baseball bat like some strange oriental cherub. His frail girlfriend stood beside him. Each took one of my hands and together they led me out into a blazing city. Then we were flying high up above a night landscape, villages and towns far below all razed to the ground. We went still higher, miles above the earth, and then we were flying amidst some strange, ethereal hinterland, surrounded by ancient, deserted cathedrals of the night . . .

  There was a piercing shriek and I awoke with a shout. The train was shuddering to a halt. The door to our carriage swung open and there was a sudden blast of cold air. People scrambled into our compartment, but the platform guard’s voice barked out. He raced to our door, valiantly barring entry, pulling people out and packing them off to the carriages reserved for Japanese. The door finally slammed shut, and I rolled over in my berth with guilty relief.

  The rest of the journey was interminable, the train groaning to a halt or stopping at small branch line stations. When we finally clambered out, blurry-eyed, it was into the dim morning light of Himeji, where we were met by Lieutenant Hartley, a shy young officer from the 130th Infantry.

  As we walked along the platform, the stationmaster slid out destination plates from their frames on the side of the carriages. Himeji was the junction of three major lines; the train would split here. As he slotted in new plates, two military policemen in white helmets trod past us toward the Allied carriage. They paused by our old compartment and hopped up onto the side, suspending themselves by the open windowpane as they inspected the interior. Apparently satisfied, they jumped down and waved. The stationmaster blew his whistle. As the carriages shunted forward, the new destinations of the onward route came into view, a list of Japanese ideograms next to neatly written English letters:

  OKA-YAMA—KURA-SHIKI—FUKU-YAMA—MI-HARA—HIRO-SHIMA.

  The artless syllables took me aback—like it was just another town. The frail girl from Ueno Station must have passed through here, I thought. The train pulled away. Just a few stops, now, before its terminus.

  Hartley drove us in a jeep through the town—all badly burned, though the castle at the summit of the hill was white as a wedding cake. I wondered out loud as to the significance of the military police at the station.

  “Well, sir,” Hartley said, struggling with the gearshift as we wound up the hill. “Himeji’s the end of the line for Allied personnel right now.”

  “Is that so?”

  A pained look came over his face. “Hiroshima’s kind of off limits for the time being, sir.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The castle loomed before us. Out front, GIs from the local garrison snapped portraits with their Box Brownies. Inside, the rooms were gloomy and austere.

  Eugene was sulking. “I’m sure glad you made me come, Harold. What a splendid view!” From the balustrade at the top of the castle, we could see far into the distance. A burned hamlet huddled beneath us, muddy fields stretching for miles around.

  “Okay, Eugene. Give me a break.”

  Back at the gymnasium where we were billeted, we ate a dull dinner of fried spam. Hartley joined us later and invited us to a bar. I refused, intent on getting my head down. Eugene’s interest was piqued. I heard him stumble back several hours later, stinking of cheap scent and whisky.

  The next day was cold and Eugene was surly. Halfway home, outside Kyoto, the train halted. After much confused lumbering, it shunted into a siding, where it stayed for over an hour. Finally, the door opened, and a large man whom I recognized clambered aboard. Thickset, big tortoiseshell glasses, a few strands of brown hair scraped over his head, he raised a meaty hand when he saw us. At that moment, the train began to creak backward. He heaved his kit bag up onto the rack, his face brightening as he noticed our green press patches.

  “Well, now. The fine men of the Stars and Stripes. Always a pleasure.” He held out a thick palm.

  His accent had a European inflection, I thought. German? Yiddish?

  “Mark Ward,” he said. “Chicago Sun-Times.”

  “Hal Lynch,” I said, shaking his hand.

  I remembered where I’d seen him now. At a press conference in the council chamber of the Diet a few weeks earlier, he’d been haranguing the incumbent prime minister with a vigour the man clearly found unfamiliar and disconcerting.

  Eugene shook his hand sullenly. I suspected he was resentful of the men from the “official” papers and the agencies. The Stars and Stripes, Japan itself, seemed something of a pet project for him, one he disliked having to share with others. The train started to clang along the rails, and Ward winced as he eased himself onto the seat opposite.

  “Lord save us,” he said.

  “Not quite a first-class Pullman,” I ventured.

  “Be grateful for small mercies, young man,” he replied, jerking his thumb toward the crammed Japanese carriages. He twisted his head until his neck cracked, then let out a groan of satisfac
tion.

  “Interesting assignment?”

  “Himeji Castle.”

  He raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Set of touristic sketches. About the historic places of Japan. Kinds of places the ordinary GI might like to visit.” A polite nod.

  “Castles and such. Famous beauty spots.”

  Ward squinted as the temple roofs and tall cedars of Kyoto skittered past outside.

  “Well. I guess they may as well take a peek at what’s left.”

  I noticed with embarrassment that Eugene was studiously ignoring the man. I speculated on the possible reasons for the train’s tardiness and Ward gave a sheepish grin.

  “I’m the culprit, I’m afraid,” he said. “I was interviewing a major here, local head of procurement, about certain contracts he’s just awarded to a local nightclub owner.”

  A cigar emerged from the side pocket of his kit bag, and he flicked a silver lighter at its tip.

  “Well, we just couldn’t stop talking and so the interview ran over. The major’s secretary was kind enough to telephone the stationmaster, who said he’d hold the train until I got there.”

  Eugene snorted. “Gee, I hope it was worth it.” He hoisted his boots onto Ward’s seat and buried his face in a two-month-old edition of Popular Science.

  “Don’t worry about Eugene, Mr. Ward,” I said. “He likes to keep abreast of his ignorance.”

  Eugene yawned deliberately, and went off to lie down in another part of the carriage. As the train rolled slowly eastward, Ward puffed at his cigar in the contented manner of a commercial traveller. He seemed to have visited half of the country already, though he said he’d spent most of the war in China.

  “I was based in Chengtu for a spell myself,” I ventured.

  He examined me, sizing me up. “Well, perhaps we’re kindred spirits, then, Lynch.”

  He took a flask of whisky from his kit bag and handed it over. I swallowed a glug with relish and he nodded for me to take another.

  “Well, that’s my sheet. How do you find yourself here, Lynch? You must have seen action, I suppose.”

  “Well, sure,” I shrugged. “Where should I start?”

  The train gave a loud shudder as the wheels shuttled on the rails. He glanced outside, the dusk gathering now in the paddies.

  “We have plenty of time.”

  As I told him about my war, the sound of snoring drifted from the next compartment. With vague resentment, I realized that Eugene hadn’t once asked me about my service in all the time we’d been back together. Ward’s manner was avuncular and invited confidences. As the train shunted toward Tokyo, he offered me more whisky from his flask and I recalled to him days and nights hunched over the viewfinders in the belly of Flashing Jenny, mapping out the country piece by piece.

  “You drew up targets for the Super Fortresses?”

  “Eyes of the 21st Bomber Command.”

  That previous September. Arriving at the Isley Field air- strip on Saipan, fresh and bright in our gleaming new photo-converted Superfort, straight off the line. Bombs out, cameras in. At our first briefing, General Curtis LeMay, then head of strategic air operations, informed us that the best map we had of Japan was from National Geographic. Our job was to remedy the situation. All through fall, we flew dozens of missions, debriefing LeMay in his Quonset every day at thirteen hundred, pointing out the spillways of the naval yards; the carriers and cruisers; the munitions factories turning out aircraft engines and locomotives, heavy guns and rolling stock.

  At dawn, one by one, the silver dream-boats floated off from the runways. Dipping with the weight in their bomb bays, they ascended, fuselages dazzling bright in the first rays of sun. After dark, the ground crewmen sweated it out on the airstrip, puffing cigarettes, gazing fretfully at their watches and up at the sky, until the low drone of motors sounded far away and finally the powerful landing lights lit up the runway and the first returning planes touched precisely down.

  In January, we were relocated from Saipan to Harmon Field at Guam to be closer to LeMay. Operations staff were no longer interested in industrial targets. Instead, we were told to identify the most densely packed residential areas in each Japanese city, and to grade them according to the most inflammable areas.

  “The fire raids?” Ward asked.

  My scalp prickled. My map of Tokyo hung on the wall of the Quonset two weeks later, the wards marked in varying shades of grey according to their population. By then we had fire jelly and white phosphorus that would stick to skin, paper or wood and burn like hell until everything was gone. To the west of Tokyo, the new suburbs were blank white. To the east, the old wards, Fukagawa and Asakusa, were shaded jet black.

  “The Tokyo Raid,” I said. “Lord God. You could see the flames from two hundred miles away.”

  Pillars of smoke rising to 18,000 feet. A sheer of heat, the sky blasting bright outside the windows of the plane. My hand pulling hard on the camera crank, over and over again.

  “Next week, Nagoya,” I said. “Osaka. Kobe. We were going to burn the whole damn country to the ground.”

  By July we were running out of places to bomb. My face in the mirror was twitchy, my body listless and unkempt. My CO ordered me to take a week’s leave, which I spent swimming around the reef at Tumon Bay, trying to shake my throbbing headaches and chronic dysentery, convinced that a stink of soot and burning flesh had ground into my skin. Floating on my back in the water, staring up at the planes in the sky. The day I returned to duty, I was told to prepare for a photo mission. We were to map out a bombing approach. To identify primary targets around the naval base out in the eastern city of Hiroshima.

  Ward was standing over by the window. He hurled out the remains of his cigar, and it flew into the night in a shower of embers.

  The next day at thirteen hundred, operations staff were hunched over my prints. LeMay suddenly turned, desperate with impatience, and hollered for a bona fide primary target.

  “Sir?”

  He stared at me.

  “You see a white, T-shaped bridge, sir?”

  “Show me.”

  I walked over and pointed. “See? Right in the centre of the city. Clear as day. Couldn’t miss it if you tried.”

  Ward shoved up the window. He turned to me in the darkness as I wiped the clammy perspiration from my forehead.

  “Are you bothered by what you did up there, Lynch?”

  Floating over that charred plain one week later, eerie and desolate. The rivers trickling slowly through the char.

  “You were just an observer, Hal.”

  “That’s right.”

  The train came out from behind a hill and curved around a stretch of coast. Black waves in the distance rippled with moonlight.

  Ward gave a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn.

  “Okay, Lynch. Maybe we should get our heads down.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “You’re probably right.”

  He looked up at the miniature berths, wincing. “Oh, my aching back . . . ”

  When we woke, the ruins of Tokyo were visible in the grey light of dawn. Naked children stood outside hovels at the bottom of the embankment, waving up at the train as we passed. At the station, we slung our kit bags over our shoulders and made our way through the departing crowd. Ward held out his hand.

  “It was good talking to you, Lynch. Look me up at the press club sometime. There’s some folks you might be interested in talking to.”

  “Okay, Ward. Thanks.”

  “Well then. I’ll see you.”

  He held up his hand and shouldered his way through the crowd, off to write up his story about procurement scandals and Allied corruption. Eugene and I wandered blearily back to the Stars and Stripes office to file our own piece: “The Touristic GI visits Historic Himeji Castle.”

  11

  THE RYOKAN

&nb
sp; (Hiroshi Takara)

  I woke up in the cavern of the ticket hall, my breath puffing in icy clouds. Wisps of vapour floated from the men and women slumped on the floor, as if they were a horde of sleeping dragons. I stood up and picked my way around their mats, dodging the pools of milky vomit that stank like rotten soybeans. At the foot of the concrete staircase, an old man shivered, clutching wretched fingers to shield his eyes from the dawn sunlight. I edged around him warily.

  Smallpox. The tunnel people had complained of splitting headaches at first. Then they started to shiver and moan. The rashes came soon after that, bubbly freckles that crusted into sores and spewed white pus all over their faces, as if they’d been stung by a swarm of wasps. The skin of the sickest ones stayed smooth as glass though. Eerie patches of purple welled up and raced across their bodies like patterns on a naval map. They died soon after, mouths gaping, as if something had taken them by surprise.

  The children wore rags over their faces and stayed well away from the sick. But Koji had come to me a few days earlier, complaining that he was exhausted and that his mouth stung. When he held up his shirt for me to examine him, I was sure I could see a mark on his chest, like a shadow on a snowy field.

  Outside, a frost had covered the city with a sheet of glittering white. It lay crinkled on the wasteground behind the station and on the jagged mounds of scrap metal in the yard. For just a moment, the city was silent, transformed into a secret, sparkling fairyland. I held up my hands, making a frame with my fingers. Wouldn’t it make a good photograph?, I thought.

  The Americans are savages and demons! That’s what we’d always been taught. During the war, I’d gazed for hours at the murderous coloured double-spreads in Boy’s Magazine, picturing myself in the midst of a desperate suicide charge at Guam, firing a submachine gun at those monsters on the beach. Chun-chun-chun!

  The American in the trench coat hadn’t looked like a savage though. He’d looked stylish and rugged as he stooped over to talk to Tomoko, his camera dangling around his neck. When he handed it to me, I rubbed my thumb over the exposure control and twisted the smooth aperture dial, hoping he’d be impressed. I pointed the lens at Tomoko, focusing carefully until her twin images were crisp and clear in the rangefinder. The weight of the brushed metal in my hands was absolutely beautiful.