Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [120]
He felt a vast tenderness for her, for her fierceness; Yasuko was a paper shrew, self-protective. There was no taming to be done here. Disarmed, captivated, he wanted only to try and banish the shadow of pain from her small, questioning face. She looked younger when she laughed.
He caught an early train, picking his way through hundreds of blanket-wrapped figures asleep on the station floor, a few hookers hopelessly teetering up and down outside on their cork-soled platform shoes, seams drawn up the backs of teastained legs to simulate the stockings they occasionally managed to barter from a friendly GI.
One, with tired eyes and hair tortured into a frizzy bush, called out as Joe passed, ‘Hi, kid. You got cheese? Kraft Velveeta?’
He reached into his pocket for a packet of gum and handed it over with a muttered ‘Tsumaranai mono desuga.’
Startled, she responded with an instinctive bow and gabbled phrase of thanks. They exchanged a grin. ‘Hey, Johnny,’ she called after him, ‘you good American. Learning fast!’
55
Again a train heading for an unknown destination. He swayed, lulled by the rhythm, the sound of steel on steel like a fast drum riff, but what old song could he sing this time to the percussion backing of wheels on track?
From the train window he watched the countryside slide past, aware of the smallness of things here. The variety. Tiny streams, delicate trees nodding over chasms, hillsides glittering with waterfalls. No acres of American wheat or prairie grasslands stretching out unbroken to the flat horizon. With most of the land too mountainous to cultivate, this was farming in miniature, an oddly shaped rice field next to a vegetable patch, ingenious planting, every inch of soil packed tight with crops of one sort and another. What would these people make of the beet fields of America, cultivated so skilfully by the Issei and Nisei, great expanses of dull green stretching for mile after flat mile . . . ?
He was alone in a compartment reserved for Occupation forces, while the rest of the train was crowded with locals – “indigenous personnel”. Face pressed to the glass he allowed himself to let go, pulled by the train towards an area of pain he had spent a lifetime re-creating, clutching at old memories, fed always by the sense of loss.
And then the letter had arrived, the rug of bereavement had been pulled from under him.
No dead mother after all, just a faraway woman who had divested herself of unwanted ballast and sailed on without the inconvenient child. Or so he had thought, hating the woman, the memory of silk and soft, curved cheek, until Nancy redrew the picture.
When, two changes and many hours later, he heard the announcement, the destination named, he felt he was stepping into dream territory.
Nagasaki. Did it really exist?
He got off the train and saw her at the end of the platform: a small, stocky woman with a square face, in a dark robe something between a kimono and a dress. Suzuki.
She trotted up the platform, clogs noisy, and stopped a yard away from him, her expression solemn. She bowed formally, and he did the same. Then, laughing, they found themselves involved in an awkward, shaky hug.
‘Welcome to Nagasaki,’ she said, in careful English.
‘How did you know I’d be on this train?’ he asked, in Japanese.
She beamed with relief. ‘Ah! So I don’t need to try and remember my English.’
She glanced at the train. ‘It’s the only one today.’
‘I was planning to get another message to you once I was here.’
He looked down at the top of her head, the thinning grey hair, the creased brow. Lines criss-crossed her face; a net spun by time. She was wizened, like a fruit that has dried into age.
He reached into his bag, brought out a traditionally gift-wrapped parcel and handed it to her with a small bow. She bowed, murmuring traditional thanks. A pause.
‘I suppose I should call you Joey.’
Her hands fluttered, plucking at her sleeves.
‘You must be . . .’ a mental calculation, ‘twenty-three. You look . . . more mature.’
He laughed. ‘Older, you mean. That’s the army.