The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [44]
He reached for the door handle, and stopped. He turned to me, trying to suppress the grin on his face, like a little kid trying to hide a whoopee cushion. He turned the handle slowly, then flung open the door, shouting “HOUSE! HOUSE!”
Mrs. Japanese Claus sat tucked under a low table in the middle of a cluttered room. She shrieked with laughter as a terrified terrier dog dove into a box in the corner, causing the couple to laugh even harder. I remained in the doorway ready to flee this crazy scene.
“That, the dog house,” the woman said, pointing to the box. She stood to lift the trembling dog, and we had formal introductions. They were the Yamadas, and the dog’s name, amazingly enough, was Santa. Now soothed, Santa trotted to the table, looking for scraps of food.
“HOUSE!” She shouted again at Santa, who tore the tatami mat with his claws in an effort to speed back to his “house,” the dog box.
“Santa speak English. Bilingual dog, yo,” said the proud teacher, arms folded across her chest.
“Our house, your house,” said Mr. Yamada, gesturing around the small one bedroom apartment, “You stay, you eat!”
I joined them for an extended meal of soups, fried noodles, and fish. I learned that Mr. Yamada worked long hours as a street sweeper, his wife in a laundry. The economic miracle of Japan had somehow left them behind. Yet they provided me food and shelter as if they were mayors of the city. He spread a futon for me in the corner of the room, and rushed to the end of the hallway to prepare my bath.
We shared a jolly chat in broken English about the weather, about my studies in Japan, my skills with chopsticks, everything except the obvious. Perhaps sixty or seventy years old, my hosts may have been teenagers during WWII. Most older Japanese tend to remain in the same area they were raised. Thus, they were most likely in the vicinity when a pilot from my country dropped the bomb that killed over one hundred thousand of their neighbors.
When I did bring up the war, after many shared cups of sake, they both nodded and were quiet a moment. Mrs. Yamada said the city was “like this,” she waved up to the cloud of smoke in the room, but “it blow away, long ago. We together now. All in same house.”
The next morning they sent me on my way with coins for the subway, and directions on how to visit Peace Park, the cherry blossom-covered site of Hiroshima’s ground zero. I promised to write the couple, send them pictures of my journey, to share anything I could with my two new friends.
But the rigors of the road caused me to lose many of my belongings, including my address book. I could never thank them fully, could never find them again among the mazes of that city. So I write this story as my delayed thank you, to honor their spirit of forgiveness, and to spread their message that even after the most bitter of battles, different people can share their lives in an open house.
Bill Fink is a freelance travel writer based in California. He writes about his adventures around the world for the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun Times, Islands Magazine, and a host of other assorted magazines, guidebooks, websites, and newspapers. He also appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2006. You can check out more of his stories at www.billfinktravels.com.
MIEKE EERKENS
Femme in the Vosges
This is how place can put a key in your hand.
I HAVE COME AS A WOMAN TO THE LORRAINE REGION OF France, to the Vosges department more specifically. This is no Provence. There are no lavender fields and sunny squares, no late-afternoon pastis and Brie next to a babbling fountain of frolicking cherubs. This is the Vosges. There are gray, moss-covered churches and gray, moss-covered cemeteries, and gray, moss-covered monuments bearing the names of villagers lost to World War I.
What kind of woman am I, who comes to this ominous, dark landscape, this agrarian and watery culture which is on the verge of total abandonment, half of its homes now vacant and crumbling?