Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [110]
Hold on, you’ll be okay kid, hold on; shielding the shattered body with his own, yelling for a stretcher.
He tries to lift the sodden body and Jesus Christ, oh Christ – Otishi’s helmet tilts and his brains spill down his face and over Joe’s hands.
52
Before the war Cho-Cho had cajoled and bullied girls to emerge from their invisibility, take charge of their own lives. She was aware that today’s women, sweating in coal mines, steel mills and factories to support the war, looked back yearningly to those inactive years.
She and Suzuki too found comfort in looking back, to the days when Cho-Cho and Henry sparred light-heartedly about tradition and women’s rights; when all three lived at ease in the glow of affection, even if Suzuki gave more than she received. Now they were equals, two women alone in different ways, warming hands and feet at a tiny charcoal burner.
They had been lucky, so far, in Nagasaki. While other cities large and small were bombed and burned, they had remained virtually untouched. A recent raid on the shipyards and Mitsubishi works had caused alarm: some of the bombs had hit the hospital and medical school.
A few days later Suzuki trotted up the hill to Cho-Cho. Parents were worried: there might be more raids. They were evacuating children, ‘Just in case. Making up groups. I’m taking the girls. Come with us.’
‘I’d rather stay here.’
Cho-Cho’s small, wood-framed house was across the harbour, further away from the docks, and long ago she had constructed a cellar. She promised to use it. If the planes came, she would be safe in her cellar.
There was an odd sense of waiting: perhaps more raids were on the way. Or perhaps talks were going on, somewhere at the centre of power, and decisions were being weighed. Perhaps – a tentative thought – despite the martial exhortations, peace was being sought. How long could they hold out? How many more would be sacrificed?
Meanwhile, she rolled another sheet of paper into her typewriter and began another letter, to join the rest in the embossed metal box on the desk.
‘My dear Sachio . . .’
On 6 August something unimaginable occurred in Hiroshima. She listened, incredulous, to the reports: this was not an air raid, it was an apocalypse. People began arriving in Nagasaki, fleeing the nightmare, their bodies hideously burned, some blinded, others maimed, barely alive. All over the country leaflets, not bombs, fell from the skies: the American president warned the Japanese people, ‘if they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on earth’.
No leaflets were dropped over Nagasaki. Through some bureaucratic error they were not warned. In Nagasaki life went on as usual.
On the morning of 9 August, shortly before 8 a.m., an airraid warning sounded. Cho-Cho prepared to honour her promise to Suzuki and go down to the cellar, but no planes appeared and half an hour later she heard the siren. All Clear.
She watered plants wilting in the intense heat. She tapped out the last page of a letter to Joey and placed it in the metal storage box. Then she washed some clothes, wrung them out and dropped them into an enamel bowl. Outside the house, even with an overcast sky, they would soon dry.
The time was just coming up to eleven. She stood on the threshold for a moment, watching a bird searching without success for worms. Even worms were in short supply now, put to good use in kitchens. She was preparing to hang up a towel when she heard