Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [81]
A couple in front of Joey paused, hugging their possessions, to peer aghast through one of the doorways.
The young wife whispered a word or two, turning to her husband, appalled. Pressing fingertips to her lips in distress, she lifted a hand in a nervous movement to smooth her hair.
Joey caught the gesture, the curve of her cheek, and something fluttered at the edge of his mental vision: a woman, her head half turned, her rounded cheek, the collar of her kimono falling away from the nape of her neck, hair piled high. Fugitive, she was gone before he could study her. In his pocket a photograph of the same woman in a dark frock, gazing directly at the camera, hands firmly in her lap.
A brief tour of inspection told Joey that one Tule Lake hut was much like another; the difference lay in the occupants. When Malinowski stepped ashore on his first Trobriand island and walked up the beach, he may not have been thinking of where he would sleep that night, but soon enough the decision would need to be made. Joey had assumed the great man occupied a wood and thatch hut, one of the village structures that encircled the yam store, the spiritual centre of the community. Until he saw a photograph of Malinowski sitting outside a tent, and readjusted his mental picture: of course the professional observer needed a tent set apart; it provided him with privacy and a chance to write up his day’s work. Joey, surrounded by strangers as foreign to him as the islanders to the anthropologist, possessed no tent; he would have no privacy here, in this ‘village’ of shoddy boxes.
The huts were built of cheap raw pine. As the wood dried, the planks had cracked and warped, pulling free of nails, the wood shrinking so that the dark knots contracted. When Joey touched one, the neat circle dropped out, leaving a hole.
Behind him a voice: ‘This could be a Peeping Tom paradise.’
Ichir had decided Joey would make a congenial room-mate. He plucked two strangers from the crowd and manoeuvred them through the door: Kazuo. Taro. Now room-mates.
One by one, huts were filled. No squabbling, no pushing; tradition dictated that young deferred to old. Larger families took the bigger rooms, six or eight squeezed into a cramped living space, possessions piled against walls or stored under narrow army cots. No running water. In each room a pot bellied, wood-burning stove stood centre floor, steel stovepipe piercing the roof. No one was deceived into thinking this was a temporary holding place: a shoddy box without curtains, rugs or furniture was now home.
On the first day Joey carried his tin plate to the mess hall and lined up with the rest at the counter. An elderly couple ahead of him stared with dismay at grey American meat and potatoes. They moved on, to the next dish.
‘What is this?’
‘Spam sushi.’
‘Ah!’
‘It’s a Hawaiian specialty.’
‘Ah!’
They examined a dish of overcooked and pallid vegetables. Moved on.
They accepted a spoonful of rice and found somewhere to sit. Tasted. Exchanged glances.
‘Undercooked,’ she whispered. ‘Burnt,’ he said. They nibbled the bread.
The young ones in the line were equally unhappy. ‘What happened to the burgers?’
‘The hot dogs?’
The mess hall guards watched, baffled: what was the problem with these people? Some of the best Japanese cooks in Portland had volunteered for the kitchen. What more did they want?
The army delivered B-rations, cans by the crateload, blocks of cured meat, sacks of beans, rice, flour, sugar. The internees lined up. The garbage bins overflowed.
Waiting in line became a part of daily life. Joey fell into line for the mess hall, the post room, the wash house and the toilet.
Stepping out of the hut door after lights out, heading for the latrine block, he was picked up by a blinding beam: the searchlight from one of the