Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [77]
Wordlessly the pair stepped into the cubicle and threw their bags on two of the beds.
‘Joey Pinkerton.’
‘Sat Ichir. Since we’re all Japs here.’
‘So what do I call you – Sat?”’
‘That’s my family name. You call me Ichir.’ He regarded Joey, head cocked. ‘There’s an old Japanese joke. I’ll cut to the punch-line: “funny, you don’t look Japanese” . . .’
‘My mother,’ Joey said. ‘I was born in Nagasaki.’
‘Holy shit, you’re worse off than me. At least I was born in Benton County. You were spawned in the devil’s empire.’
‘Think they’ll shoot me?’
‘Only if you run,’ he said. ‘This is America. Home of the free, remember?’
The scar on his cheek was fresh, the jagged line dark with dried blood. He touched it with a fingertip.
‘In case you’re wondering; neighbourly gesture of farewell. Something to remember them by.’
‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They went home on a visit, the annual pilgrimage to the old folks. Planned to be back for shgatsu.’ He saw Joey’s expression. ‘New Year’s? They always come back loaded with the full traditional shopping basket and we spend the whole holiday stuffing ourselves with osechi-ryori and all that jazz. Why not? It makes the grandparents happy.’
He had been going through his pockets absent-mindedly, and now produced a couple of cellophane-wrapped candies. He offered one to Joey, unwrapping the other slowly, following an unspoken trail of thought.
‘Well there won’t have been many pretty postcards sent this year, not really a time for nengajo.’
Joe wanted to ask: what city were they in, Ichir’s parents? How traditional was the family? What was nengajo? For the first time he became aware of the extent of his ignorance: the order of names, the celebration of festivals, the food, the customs – all a blank page. There must have been a time, between learning to talk and being carried off to America, when he would have been familiar with these things, would have recognised the New Year dishes, played the traditional games. Now, he stood, stupid as a tourist, lost in a foreign, exotic world.
He unzipped his bag and looked around for shelves, but the walls were bare. The Portland Assembly Center was temporary; till the real camp was ready. But what did temporary mean? A week? A month?
For twenty-four hours they were stunned into shock, paralysis. Then, like a collective mechanism clicking into gear, everything changed. Men drew up duty rosters; everyone got busy: women in the communal laundry, scrubbing, wringing out, hanging up clothes; young men setting up lessons for children, others checking out the kitchens, organising communal latrines. Girls draped stark cubicles with colourful scarves, teams of volunteers washed down walls and floors to try and eradicate the lingering reminder of dung.
Joey offered his services in the clean-up operation and was met by exquisitely polite refusals. Smiling, bowing, one after another they explained they had enough help already . . . so kind, maybe another day, or when they changed shifts perhaps . . .
They didn’t trust him.
‘Do you blame them?’ Ichir said. ‘The way you look? You could be a government spy.’
There came a day some ten weeks later when everything shone clean; when disinfected livestock stalls had been painted in harmonious colours, children placed in improvised schoolrooms and a handwritten daily news-sheet produced – even though there was, of course, no news in the usual sense.
The inmates had, by a communal act of will, created a village within a steel cavern.
Next morning came the announcement: the relocation camp was now ready; it was deportation time.
34
When no more bodies could be fitted into the train, when even the corridors were packed solid, the guards opened up a baggage car for the remaining ‘passengers’. Joey climbed in with the others and moved up to make room for Ichir and his bag.
He thought about cattle travelling like this. At the end of the ride the cattle faced slaughter; for this motley freight-load and others like them, there was a blank. Nobody had felt the need to explain what lay ahead, other than