He has drunk tea and eaten rice in the all-night food stall by the Station Hotel, but there is something wrong with his insides. An hour after the Tokko left he was racked with stomach cramps, followed by violent diarrhoea. It has been over a week now. The cramps have stopped but the diarrhoea remains troublesome, unpredictable.
He stands by a pillar, sits on a bench, studies, as discreetly as he can, what the others do, what is normal. He lines up to buy a newspaper. When he reaches the front of the queue, he becomes confused by the coins in his hand. The vendor is irritated. Time is money. Are there more policemen at the station this morning? More uniforms? Through the clustered speakers above his head a woman’s voice, broken by amplification, is announcing the name and destination of a train. Part of the crowd peels away, advances in close formation. Yuji’s gut grips tighter. He stops, shuts his eyes, breathes. All that has led to this moment is hidden from him. What was it? What made him think he could do this, could break through the black lines? Certainly, he is no longer guided by argument, by any of those justifications he muttered to himself for hours in the sewing room. All he has left now are skin memories. The ghostly weight of a child in his arms, a woman’s hair on his face . . How can that possibly be enough?
He picks up his case, drags it up the stairs, moves shoulder to shoulder with strangers, sees a train, sees a carriage number, starts to climb aboard, is stopped, shows his ticket. ‘This one’s for Hamamatsu,’ says the guard, his face and voice quite unexpectedly friendly, solicitous even. He points the way. Yuji crosses under the line, surfaces, walks up beside another train. There’s a board on the platform: ‘Shiminoseki Express 0715.’ It is not one of Kyoko’s days, he knows this, but edging along the corridor, his case knocking against the calves of people leaning from the windows, he constantly expects to see her, to meet her startled gaze.
He finds his compartment. A man and woman are already there, people his parents’ age. He nods to them, takes the seat opposite. Under his suit he is sweating, heavily. Does he look like a fugitive? Like one of the spies the association pamphlets urge citizens to be vigilant for? (‘He will not reveal himself by his dress or manners. He will be cautious at all times.’)
‘You should put it up,’ says the man, pointing to the luggage rack. Yuji lifts the case. If the lock failed now, some clothes would fall out, an oiled silk raincoat, a pair of straw sandals, a night-kimono, a towel, a pair of schoolboy’s white gloves with stitching on the back and mother-of-pearl button at the wrist. He has a few books with him: Akutagawa, Soseki, Kafu. He has no foreign books. Nor in the end did he take his last copy of Electric Dragonfly, a little book that has always weighed too much. He has the photograph from the dresser in the Western room of Father and Mother on their wedding day, stiff as dolls. He has the pin. He has his money, his pass for the Izu Dancer. Also a letter, typed in the garden study, purporting to be from a rubber trader in Batavia inviting him to visit as soon as possible. It might, perhaps, fool someone.
Are they moving? No . . Yes! They are moving, and for a moment he is thrown into confusion by his failure to notice it the instant it began. He turns to the window, grasps his knees, forces from his mind the memory of Miyo sobbing in the dark next to the vestibule step. As they pass through the marshalling yards they pick up speed. It’s a beautiful morning, the sun, the pure spring sun, cresting the roofs of the Low City. He narrows his eyes and stares, wills himself to be a camera, to see and keep everything, but everything, the moment it appears, is swept away as though it was not really his to see any more. He sits back, opens the paper, hides behind the paper, looks at the senseless words, the senseless pictures.
‘You’re going all the way?’ asks the man.
‘All . .?’ says Yuji, lowering the paper.
‘To Shiminoseki?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a long ride.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve been visiting family. We’re from Hiroshima.’
Yuji nods.
The man looks at him, waiting. ‘And you?’ he asks.
‘Me?’ says Yuji, wondering if the carriage toilet is already occupied, if it is too soon to go and look. ‘I’m from here.’ He gestures to the window. ‘I’m from Tokyo.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
On 9 and 10 March 1945, in an operation code-named Meeting House, more than three hundred B-29 Superfortresses from a base in the Mariana Islands made a low-level night attack over Tokyo. The raid began just after midnight and continued in waves for two and a half hours. Each plane was carrying up to eight tons of incendiary bombs. Film taken on the ground shows vast walls of fire moving uncontrollably in strong winds, while people, ant-like, scurry desperately for shelter. Estimates of casualties vary widely but it is likely that between eighty and a hundred thousand were killed that night, the majority from the old, densely populated wards near the river. By daybreak the Low City lay in ashes again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Beatrice Monti della Corte and the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany. Warmest thanks also to Etsuko Suda and Nanae Koimai for their advice on matters Japanese. All errors, as ever, are the sole responsibility of the author.