Catastrophe struck at noon. The bells ringing for the end of morning lessons had only just begun to sound when chairs suddenly overturned around us and sticks of chalk flew through the air. Thinking this was some prank played by my classmates, I started laughing and clapping, until the blackboard came crashing down with a thud, injuring several children as it shattered. The walls shook and our heavy wooden worktables began gliding from one side of the room to the other. One boy got trapped under the furniture and screamed in terror. We had only just extricated him when a hail of plaster pelted down on us.
Our teacher, also covered in the white powder, ran to the window, opened it, and ordered us to jump. I was the first to throw myself out into the void: our classroom was on the second floor and I landed unharmed on my hands and feet in the grass below. Others followed me. Some of the boys jumping from the floors above injured themselves and we dragged them by the shoulders towards the garden. The whole façade of the building shuddered. The three entrance doors spewed a constant stream of pupils who had fought their way to the doors bareheaded, with torn uniforms and bloodied shirts. Suddenly the central building caved in on itself in one slow, irresistible descent, heaving with it the wings on either side.
The garden was seething with people screaming, groaning, running and crawling as the ground rippled beneath them. The paved paths that I had trodden so many times twisted like lengths of ribbon, and the trees we clung to arched and teetered before hurling us to the ground. We tried with no more success to cling to the grass and shrubs. A strange roaring sound rose from the center of the earth, and a torrent of rock and stone, the harsh, dry sound of torn silk.
When the tremors stopped, the staff and prefects grouped us together and made us sit in a circle on the sports ground. They told us not to move, and started to tend the injured and count the missing. I caught a glimpse of my younger brother in the distance and the joy of seeing him brought tears to my eyes. Somewhere in the crowd a boy was wailing and soon everyone had joined him.
We were forbidden to go anywhere near the rubble to look for survivors: we were ordered to wait for the emergency services, but at five o’clock in the afternoon still no one had come. By then the wind was stronger and, when flames flickered up from a building, suffocating billows of black smoke were buffeted and spread by the typhoon. Making the most of the confusion, I hopped over a collapsed wall and ran away along the street.
The scenes that greeted me came straight from hell. Tokyo had disappeared. Although some buildings were still standing, scarcely holding each other up, the roads had been submerged under a thick layer of bricks, wood and glass. People looked for their loved ones, helplessly calling their names. A madman wandered through the ruins laughing. Three nuns were crouched over the remains of a church, digging with their bare hands in the hope of finding a living soul.
Houses were burning and, with the aid of the wind, the fires spread. It was six o’clock in the evening and the dark ash whirling through the sky made the night close in. What happened next is confused in my memory. I can see myself feeling my way through this suffocating darkness, my path strewn with broken masonry, with people trying to flee and with dead bodies. I do not remember how I managed to reach our doorstep. I saw my mother sitting on a tree trunk, looking at the few things she had been able to save, with Little Sister at her feet, clinging to her legs. The sound of my footsteps woke her from her dazed silence and she looked up sharply. From the way she threw herself at me I could tell some great sadness was going to carve its way into me like an arrowhead.
“Father has just left us.”
I watched over my father’s battered corpse all night. His face was at peace, as if he were contemplating paradise, and his hands were as icy-cold as the underworld. From time to time I would get up and walk to the end of the garden, from where we could see the whole city at a glance: Tokyo was burning, a vast funeral pyre.
According to legend, Japan is an island floating on the back of a catfish, and the fish’s movements cause the earthquakes. I tried to picture this aquatic monster. The pain I felt was like a fever. I became delirious. Unable to kill the god responsible for this, we had to attack the continent. China, an infinite and stable land, was within our grasp- that was where we would guarantee our children’s safe future.
When Masayo arrives, I am torn away from a conversation that was becoming unbearably painful. She bows to the ground in front of her employer, who is weeping silently, then drags me by the sleeve and leads me up to her room.
25
The Resistance partisans withdrew into the mountains before nightfall, and were followed by those soldiers who had rebelled. In the space of an evening the town’s patriotic fever has abated.
The very next morning Japanese patrols are parading through the streets. A provisional government has been constituted; they are noisily tracking down and dealing with the rioters. If they fail to find any true rebels, they vent their anger on thieves and beggars.
The new mayor decides to rekindle Manchurian- Japanese relations and announces a series of cultural exchanges. The Japanese army, publicly praised and flattered by the Manchurian authorities, consents to forgive and manages to forget. We slip back into normality virtually in the wink of an eye. April brings us its radiant clarity. At school we start Japanese lessons again.
This morning I wake up late. My rickshaw boy runs breathlessly, fast as he can, so that I am not late for school. Sweat runs down his back and great blue veins crawl over his arms, and I am so overcome with guilt that I ask him to slow down.
“Please don’t worry, miss,” he replies haltingly, “a good run in the morning is the secret of eternal life.”
In front of the Temple of the White Horse I catch sight of Min heading in the opposite direction on his bicycle. I am so amazed that I don’t even think to wave a greeting… Our paths cross for a moment and then we are carried away from each other.
26
The order to leave is given. I have no time to say good-bye to Madame Violette and Masayo before our unit leaves the barracks and heads for the station. Whistles shriek on the platform and several companies of men push and jostle to get into the trains laden with tanks and munitions. We manage to climb up into a double-decker carriage.
The chill air of a hesitant, stuttering spring makes it impossible for me to sleep. I place my hand over my tunic pocket where I have put the last two letters I have received: they are still there. In Mother’s, her fine, clear writing reassures me that she is well, at least temporarily alleviating my anxiety. Akiko has somehow got hold of my address and has written at length.
Before I left, this young woman came to bid me farewell, and I deliberately went to hide, hoping it would make her hate me. She was my younger sister’s best friend and, having lost her brothers in the earthquake, she had become attached to me. Her family was related to the shogun Tokugawa, [8] and her modesty and elegance had appealed to Mother, who secretly hoped we would be married. Encouraged by her own parents, the young girl already believed she was my intended. Once I had left the military academy and had taken up my post on the outskirts of Tokyo, she started to write to me at the barracks-I replied to one letter in four. When I was away she would come to visit my sister, and her smiling and bowing won over my landlady, who willingly opened my door for her. She would wash and iron my dirty laundry, and darn my socks. Like most well-brought-up women, Akiko never spoke to me of her feelings, and her discretion permitted me to put her squarely in her place: she would be a sister, and nothing more.