Fire Flowers Read online

  My father had owned a camera once—a Rolleiflex with a hinged back, which one of his fattest customers had given him at the bonenkai party he held to thank his regulars at the end of every year. I took charge of it straight away, constantly tinkering with the intricate dials and mechanisms, copying out the mysterious foreign letters embossed on the front. Finally, after much hinting, my father brought home some photographic film. For two weeks, I waltzed around the neighbourhood with a cutout masthead of the Yomiuri newspaper pinned to my jacket, taking “portraits” of the locals: Mrs. Oka from next door, her face as wrinkly as her pickles; two maiko girls who giggled behind their fans as they stopped in for snacks on the way to a party.

  When my father got his red call-up papers, toward the end of the war, I was sent back to Tokyo from the countryside. My mother was stunned—after all, he’d been borderline at his age. One Sunday, my father asked me to dig out the old camera. He wanted to go up to Ueno Park to see the cherry blossom before he left to join his unit. There were hardly any families stretched out on the grass that year and no picnic gramophones played amongst the trees as in years gone by. We laid out our blanket and ate a quiet meal together. Before we left, my father asked me to take a photograph. I lined the whole family up beneath the sprays of white blossom, and waved them into position.

  My mother wore a pale blue spring kimono, her hand resting lightly on my father’s broad shoulder. Satsuko stood beside them, dressed in green and gold. They gazed out serenely, calm and dignified, as all around them, the blossom floated in the air. After a second, I pressed the shutter decisively. When I tried to wind on the film, the lever resisted. The spool was at an end.

  I found myself wandering through the heart of what had once been old Shitamachi. The flimsy paper and matchstick workingmen’s houses had all evaporated during the raids, but up the hill, past the crimson walls of the Imperial University, was the more elegant quarter where the artists and merchants once had their mansions. Most of the grand old villas were still standing, though they were damaged and silent now behind their heavy wooden gates. Along a shady gravel road, a tree had splintered in one of the gardens, knocking out a section of stucco wall. Grasping the woolly branches, I scrabbled up and hoisted myself into the gap. I sat there for a second, catching my breath as I peered over the other side.

  The wide garden was choked with tangled grasses and gnarled ornamental trees. A large, traditional wooden building stood before a gravel yard beyond which gates stood padlocked shut. It seemed solid and imposing enough, though slate tiles were missing from the slanted roof and the windows were boarded up.

  I swung myself over, and dropped down from the wall with a thud. It must have been some kind of inn, once, I thought, though it looked very much abandoned now. The fishpond was empty and silted, and by the front door, the welcoming statue of a tanuki had toppled over, one of his arms broken off, though he carried on grinning demonically nonetheless.

  The lock on the shutters was flimsy, and quickly sprung open when I hammered it with a rock. Past the vestibule, ancient pillars of twisted wood supported the low ceiling of an entrance hall. Dark patches showed where the rain had seeped in. As I stepped over the threshold, the floorboards creaked eerily. I shivered, praying that there were no dead bodies inside.

  The air was musty and slivers of light fell from cracks in the window boards. My eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom. Woodblock prints hung around the walls, and as I stepped closer to examine them, I gulped. They all showed ladies, mostly naked or only half-dressed in kimonos, sprawled on futons or cavorting with fierce-looking men. My cheeks throbbed as I stared at the various postures and poses.

  Up a wooden staircase was a hallway, with rooms off to one side, marked with nameplates. “Peony,” “Cherry Blossom,” then, “Ivy,” and “Chrysanthemum.” I raised my hand to the door of “Peony” and slid it aside.

  A dark shape hit my face and I crashed backward. A heavy fluttering filled the air—a huge black moth flew around me crazily, powder thick on its wings, sparkling like coal dust.

  Light fell into the corridor as I tugged the rotten boards away from the windows. Down below was a secret garden, a palanquin in one corner, its fabric rotted away. It must have been a real high-class place, I thought—a retreat for the top brass during the war.

  The tatami was frayed in most of the rooms, and in “Chrysanthemum,” there was a charred patch where someone had lit a fire. It had seen better days, that was for sure. But as I explored further, opening cupboards and trunks, I found rolled futons and sheets, soft pillows and blankets. We could build a huge fort here, I thought, almost tempted to rush off and tell the other children right away. But then, as I pictured them, huddled up under the dripping staircase at the station, the shivering men and women moaning and vomiting around them, my heart began to beat faster. An amazing idea had just occurred to me.

  Night had fallen by the time I got back to the station, and the children were penned into a corner by a group of soldiers, who were snoring away with their hairy overcoats pulled over their faces. The stink of sweat was overwhelming as I clambered over them and shook the children awake.

  “Listen! Get ready to leave. We’re breaking camp at dawn.”

  Koji rubbed his eyes. “What? Where are we going?”

  “Are we going home?” Aiko murmured, still half dreaming.

  “Can’t you tell us in the morning?” Shin groaned.

  “Listen,” I said, urgently. “You need to listen. We’re not staying here anymore. I’ve found somewhere else. A fortress.”

  “Wonderful,” Shin said. “We’re going to live in a castle.”

  Koji frowned. “Will there be other children there?” he asked, hopefully.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s just us for now. But listen. It’s a secret. Don’t whisper a word to anyone. Promise!”

  The children looked uncertain, still bleary with sleep. Shin rolled his eyes and turned over with a grunt. But Tomoko slid forward and knelt in front of me, pulling her fingers through her hair.

  “Don’t worry, Hiroshi-kun. Please rest now. I’ll make sure the children are ready first thing in the morning.”

  My heart shivered as she bowed her head. I lay down, and gradually drifted into a twitchy sleep. But in the middle of the night, I woke suddenly. White lights were bobbing across the sleeping bodies around the station, and for a moment, I was filled with panic.

  Ghosts! I thought. Floating above the corpses of the dead! But the lights were electric torches. Policemen and doctors in white coats were pulling back people’s heads and inspecting their faces in the pale beams. Every so often, they tugged someone to their feet and dragged them away into the darkness. A rod of light needled toward us and I urgently shook the children awake. I hustled them to their feet as the figures came toward us, and we hurried outside into the freezing night, as the frost prickled its way across the iron-hard ground.

  The house stood silent and ghostly in the morning mist, at the top of the hill. My heart flooded with relief. I’d been convinced by a strange fear that it might all have been a dream, that it would have disappeared overnight like some enchanted foxes’ palace. As I led the children over the gap in the wall and on through the garden, they started to rub their eyes and laugh. They could hardly believe it was true.

  As I opened the front door, Shin swore softly under his breath.

  “It’s not really ours, is it, big brother?” Koji asked in wonder. “Not really?” He pulled off his sandals and danced across the tatami of the reception hall.

  “It is now!” I shouted.

  We raced inside, letting out loud whoops and war cries as we tumbled crazily across the floor and tripped into a hysterical heap.

  We got to work cleaning the place up straight away. The children found cloths and buckets and a water pump in the kitchen and as they scrubbed and polished away, I checked the rat traps I had set the d
ay before, then pulled away the last rotten boards from all the windows. As daylight flooded the room, it became clear exactly how run-down the building was—the wooden beams were splintered and the paper screens all torn. But as the children pushed rags up and down the corridors, splashing each other with suds and singing at the top of their voices, they seemed to be in paradise. Clouds of dust smothered Aiko and Tomoko as they beat the futons upstairs, spluttering with laugher, while Koji and Nobu hopped around shouting, sword-fighting with their broomsticks.

  Shin, though, came over to me with a sly look on his face.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He sniggered. “I suppose you know what this place used to be, don’t you?”

  My cheeks throbbed. I’d taken down all the pictures of the ladies the day before, and hidden them all at the bottom of one of the cupboards upstairs.

  “An inn, I should have thought,” I said. “Some kind of classy place for the higher-ups.”

  Shin gave a nasty laugh, then made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. He thrust the index finger of his other hand through it repeatedly.

  “My father told me all about it,” he leered.

  By the end of the afternoon, the rooms were airy and the blankets fresh and clean. Beyond the kitchen, Nobu had found a small bathhouse with a big cedar tub, a smaller, private bathroom set off to one side. Part of the roof was missing in this part of the building, and most of the tiles were cracked. Filled with excitement, though, I heaved on the handle of the pump. There was a great gasp of pipes from deep within the building, but nothing emerged from the faucet except for a long, spindly insect.

  “Hiroshi-kun!”

  Nobu’s shout came from the other room. “Come and look!” In a compartment in the wall, he had discovered a large copper boiler and an oil burner covered with dials. After a few experiments and struck matches, we managed to get it to hold a flame. There was a rumble, and as I turned a wheel, we heard gushing and the clank of pistons, and wisps of steam rose from the boiler.

  At the pump, we tried the handle again. With a tremble and a sputtering noise, water began to gush out, lukewarm at first, but growing gradually hotter.

  “We did it!” Nobu yelled.

  Triumphantly, we marched back to the main hall. The children were lying exhausted on the tatami.

  “Well done, everyone!” I announced. “You’ve all worked very hard. And now, as a reward, we’re all going to have a real bath, in our very own sento!”

  Banzai!

  The children screamed with laughter as we raced to the bathhouse. Tomoko and Aiko took the private room, us boys the bigger one. We started to sing Koji’s dirty version of the Air Raid Song—Cover your ears! Close up your bum!—as we sat on our stools and scrubbed ourselves, the cedar tub gradually filling up.

  The filth on our bodies was just incredible. It must have been over a year since any of us had washed, and the tiles were soon covered in grimy suds. But then it was just bliss, as we sank into the big pool of steaming water, groaning like old folk at a hot springs resort. The girls shrieked with delight in the other room—they must have got into their own bath at just the same moment.

  As we lay there soaking, I looked up at the sky through the damaged roof. White clouds were passing overhead, and I pretended to myself that we really were at some lovely onsen up in the mountains; that after our bath we’d all dress in elegant clothes and be served dinner on floats suspended over the river . . . Tomoko’s soft laugh drifted from over the wall, and I closed my eyes, picturing her bobbing in the water. Her hair wet and stuck to her forehead, her skin taut and white; dark, hard peaks on the bumps of her chest . . .

  “Look out!” Shin hollered. “He’s lifting the tent up!”

  To my horror, I’d gone stiff and my tip was peeping out of the water. I crashed my fists into the bath.

  “Damn you!” I shouted, desperately hoping that the girls hadn’t heard. I leaped out of the tub and covered my privates, wiping myself off with a hand towel.

  Shin was still guffawing and even Nobu had a smirk on his face.

  “Thinking about someone we know?” Shin crowed, jerking his thumb at the wall. “Why don’t you go round and show her how you feel?”

  “Shut up!” I hissed.

  Shin started choking with laughter. “You’ll need something to make up for that ugly face!”

  “Shut up!”

  My cheeks were burning as I heaved out the wooden plug of the bath. Koji wailed as the water began to slurp away down the drain. I glowered at Shin, praying that the girls hadn’t heard his idiotic talk.

  “That’s enough,” I said. “It’s not funny anymore.”

  We decided to play a game later on. Koji thought it would be fun to pretend that we were all working at a real inn, and we all had to make up ways to entertain our guests. He rolled up a cone of newspaper on his head and sat cross-legged on the floor with a broom in his hands, then started to croon, plucking the strings of an imaginary shamisen. Nobu found an old pair of spectacles and sat on the stool in the office, greeting the “visitors” in a wheedling voice, while Shin tied a blue rag around his head and toasted the rice balls we’d brought with us on a little hibachi from the kitchen.

  Giggling came from the landing upstairs. Stepping carefully down the staircase came Aiko, leading Tomoko by the hand. They both wore old embroidered kimonos, rolled up at the hem to stop them from tripping. From somewhere, they had found powder and makeup too and had painted their faces white and lips red.

  Tomoko stood in front of me. Her hair was still damp and she smelled wonderful and fresh. My stomach knotted.

  “Look,” Tomoko said. “We’re geishas!”

  Shin clapped his hands and started to sing a dirty song, but I shot him a ferocious look and he trailed off.

  We sat down around the grill, and Aiko and Tomoko served us water from a teapot in little sake cups. I could hardly speak. Tomoko didn’t look like a girl to me anymore. She seemed like a fresh, delicate bud about to burst into helpless bloom. When she leaned over to fill my cup, her kimono showed the curve between her breasts and my hand started to shake so much that I spilled water all over the floor.

  Koji grabbed the teapot and swigged at it. A moment later, he started reeling, shouting in a slurred voice that he was drunk. As he tumbled over, the children cackled with laughter, and Tomoko put her arm around Aiko, smiling like a proud mother. For a moment, she caught my gaze and held my eye.

  I remembered the feeling of her body next to me as we stood on the coupling of the train back to Tokyo, the warmth of her cheek as we lay down together on the station floor. An acute, guilty pleasure crept over me as she came over and sat down beside me, a faint smile on her face. She took my hand and gently pressed it between her own.

  It was a soft, wonderful pressure, warm and enclosing. It only lasted a few seconds, but somehow, it seemed to capture the strange magic of those past months entirely.

  I jerked my hand away, and leaped up with a short bark of laughter.

  “Everybody up!” I shouted. “Time for bed!”

  Tomoko’s face fell as I hopped around, kicking at the children’s legs. “Come on! We’re not here on holiday, you know.”

  The children grumbled as they stood up and trudged sulkily upstairs. We’d already laid out the blankets in the rooms: “Cherry Blossom” for the boys, “Ivy” for her and Aiko.

  Tomoko and I stood outside in the corridor for a moment. My heart was still jittering.

  “Well. Goodnight,” I said.

  She bowed shyly.

  “Goodnight, Hiroshi-kun.”

  We went to curl up in our new blankets, and I blew out our lantern. The mattress was deliciously soft after all the months on the cold, hard stone floor of the station, but as I lay there in the darkness, I barely noticed its comfort. From the other side of the wall, Aiko was whispering so
mething, but Tomoko gently hushed her, and soon their lamp was extinguished.

  I closed my eyes. Tomoko’s image floated vividly in my mind as I drifted off to sleep. Her clumsily painted lips. The soft swell of her kimono. The pale skin of her throat.

  12

  ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE

  (Satsuko Takara)

  The sign I had tacked up for Hiroshi on the wall of Tokyo Station was tattered now, the ink smeared from the rain. I stood shivering in my thin coat, as a group of ex-soldiers huddled around a refuse fire nearby playing flower cards. An old woman squatted beneath a sign of her own, fumbling with her prayer beads. She gave me a sympathetic smile.

  “Don’t give up hope!” she mouthed.

  Not many people came to look for their lost relatives at the station anymore. In fact, we were the only two here today.

  I smiled back, faintly. What would her expression be like, I wondered, if instead of my grey dress and mackintosh, I’d been wearing my nighttime clothes, my face plastered white and lips red? What would Hiroshi himself think, even if he did miraculously appear? To discover that his big sister was nothing now but a shameless American butterfly?

  It had been weeks since my last trip here, and I felt dreadfully guilty for neglecting my duty to him. They were bringing up children’s bodies from the tunnels every morning now, desperately thin and blistered with smallpox. That afternoon, I’d taken his photograph around the main railway stations, holding it up in the faces of the filthy men and women. Crowds of them stretched out on mats across the ticket halls. They squinted for a moment, sucking their rotten gums, and shook their heads. It all felt completely hopeless. I should simply accept the fact that he was gone.