Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms (18 page)

‘Are you okay?'

Without opening his eyes, he says, ‘I miss my country when I think about the landscape. It is very different to here.'

‘The mornings are darker later here and the days get cooler in autumn, and the leaves change colour in Cowra but we don't have a name for it,' Mary tells Hiroshi, who opens his eyes. Before she can think of anything else to say, he speaks.

‘My favourite season is spring; I love the cherry blossoms. Near my home is a park, Kagamino Park, it has hundreds of cherry trees. Every weekend in spring my parents would take us there.' Hiroshi savours the memory. ‘We would have picnics under the cherry blossoms. Special Hanami picnics where we looked at the cherry blossoms. I was a young boy who loved flowers. It must have been funny for my parents seeing me so happy with flowers.' But his happy memories cause sadness that overwhelms him again. He slumps down. ‘I miss home. I miss my family.'

He buries his face in his hands and Mary doesn't know what to do. She sits next to him for a few minutes but she knows that her time is up. She must get back to the hut. She puts her hand on his shoulder as she stands and says, ‘We are your family, too.'

As she gets to the ladder, she turns. ‘I can't believe I almost forgot. I can post your letter, safely – it will go through the Red Cross.'

‘Really?' Hiroshi feels renewed hope that there may be a chance he can contact his parents.

‘Yes, quickly, here.' From her apron pocket she pulls an envelope that she has ‘borrowed' from the sideboard at the Smiths'. She hands it to him. ‘Can you write your address on here?'

Hiroshi rummages around in the dim light for the pencil he wrote his letter with. His hands are unsteady as he writes on the envelope. When he finishes, he slips his letter inside and hands it to Mary.

‘I'll take care of it,' she says, and leaves.

2 November 1944

T
he Williams children run into the hut, breathless and scared but excited at the same time. James is squealing and as soon as Mary lets him off her hip, he heads straight for his mother, nestling between her legs as usual although he's shot up in height in recent months and he's almost too tall to fit. He clings to her thigh and the grasp is so uncomfortable that Joan has to pry her son from her body. She wonders if being the baby of the family and the only boy means he will always be this clingy.

‘What's going on?' she asks Mary, who looks overwhelmed by all the noise.

‘I don't know, I was just coming back from the Smiths' place and all the goothas were screaming and running in all directions and the mirris were howling and chasing their tails
and I can't work out what happened.' Mary rubs her temples. ‘It's giving me a headache.'

‘I'll tell you what happened,' Betty says. ‘Dottie, Jessie and I were all helping the littler kids play drop the hanky.'

‘I got the hanky,' James pipes up, grinning widely as if he was the fastest in a race. Joan pats him on the head and nods for Betty to continue, but Dottie butts in.

‘Then,' she says, ‘a small man came and joined the game. He seemed friendly, he just wanted to play too, but –'

Before she can finish, Jessie jumps in. ‘We all remember what Uncle Kevin told us about the birricks, and we got scared.'

‘Uncle Kevin said the birricks move around the mission at night, remember? He told us to make sure we had all the wood we needed and everything inside before dark. Before the birricks start moving around the mission.'

Joan knows the story only too well. Like others, she believes there are spirits moving around outside of a night. ‘That's it, no more playing outside after dark.'

‘Oh, Mum,' comes the collective cry from Betty, Dottie and Jessie, and when James finally catches on, he says in a whiney voice, ‘Oh,
Mum
,' and starts jumping up and down in protest.

‘Don't make me get your father to talk to you about this. From now on, as soon as the big lights come on, I want you inside.' Joan is not going to argue with the children about it, and is glad that at least there is a little electricity at Erambie to give some light during the night.

‘But, Mum, you know that playing outside when it's warm is what we do, there's nothing to do in here,' Jessie says grumpily.

Banjo walks in with Kevin just as Joan turns to wash some potatoes. ‘What's all the racket? I can hear you lot outside. A man doesn't want everyone knowing his business.' He walks over and plants a dusty kiss on his wife's cheek.

The kids hope their mum doesn't tell their dad what's going on. Their father doesn't get cranky often, but they've seen him get wild when they misbehave and, as Jessie says, ‘it's not good'.

‘Maybe your Uncle Kevin can tell the story about the bunyip again,' Joan says, hoping her brother-in-law hears. She thinks it's a good time to remind the young ones of the stories the Wiradjuri live by and the beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation that keep them all safe.

Kevin pulls up a stool, sits down and rolls a cigarette. ‘The bunyip is half man and half beast.' He opens his eyes up wide and looks at each child one at a time to suck them into his story. The kids' eyes and mouths open wide too. They love it when their Uncle tells stories and it doesn't matter how many times they hear the same one over and over again, or how scared they might get, and they often do.

‘The bunyip only comes out at night.' Kevin looks at his watch. ‘So he's out there now!' The girls squeal, James cuddles into his mother and Joan smiles, grateful for the story. ‘If you go near the river, and you know you are not supposed to, then the bunyip will drag you under and . . .'

The children all wait in anticipation as Kevin leans in.

‘He will EAT you!'

With that, the girls all scream and run into their bedroom and James starts to cry.

‘Come on, big fella, don't bung on the waterworks.' Kevin picks James up and mouths ‘cry baby' to Joan as he carries the child into the bedroom, where the girls are cuddled up in the bed together.

‘What was all that about?' Banjo asks.

‘It's all under control,' Joan says and winks. ‘I'll tell you later.' She doesn't want to stop her kids having fun, but the stories of the birricks, bunyips and gooligahs, the long held Wiradjuri stories are the same stories she heard as a child and they are real. She's not going to take any risks.

‘Come,' Mary says the minute her feet touch the ground. ‘Come.' She motions to the ladder.

‘What are you doing?'

‘It is a clear sky and a full moon, I want to see the rabbit. I want to see the rabbit with you.' Mary knows it's a risk. She knows it goes against everything her parents would allow. It's against everything her Uncles Sid and Fred had agreed to. But she wants to see the rabbit in the moon. ‘Come,' she says again.

Hiroshi does as he is told, following Mary up the ladder and into the night air. It is hot and dry but the air is clean and the sky is a blanket of stars. Mary leads Hiroshi quietly behind the lavatory, where they sit on the grass and look at the moon high in the sky.

Hiroshi clears his throat then says, ‘And he sees the vision
splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.'

‘You remember the words from “Clancy”!' Mary says, astonished at how beautifully he recites poetry.

‘Yes, I have read them many times, and usually they make me feel sad that I cannot see this.' He waves his hands in the air as if to run his palms across the starlit sky. ‘Being trapped without this beauty, it is one of the hardest things, Mary.'

There are a few moments of silence.

‘I heard alarms today Mary, I was worried.'

‘It is November the eleventh, Armistice Day,' she explains. ‘Everyone in the town stops at eleven am to remember those who have died in war.' She pauses. ‘I was at the Smiths' today and I slipped your letter into a pile of Red Cross letters written by Italian soldiers. I think it will be on its way to Japan now, Hiroshi.'

Hiroshi closes his eyes and imagines his parents reading the letter but his thoughts are broken when Mary asks, ‘Can you see the rabbit?' She is so enthusiastic he can't help but smile. ‘Is it there?'

Hiroshi stares up to the moon and Mary stares at him, waiting to see recognition in his eyes. When he breaks into a smile, she knows he has seen it and she too looks to the sky.

The pair sit for a few minutes. There is silence, other than a barking mirri somewhere across the other side of the mission. Hiroshi is conscious of the female next him. He is only human.

He is present in the moment, enjoying the fresh air on his face. His thoughts shift to a vision of cherry blossoms – the warmth of the light pink flowers, the pure whites and the soft
yellows – that always calmed his mind, that often inspired his own poetry, the blooms that carried him home whenever he was lonely. The blossoms he knew as a child were in a world that is so far removed from the life he is living now that he wonders if he ever really had a childhood or if he just dreamed it.

Life is like the cherry blossom, he reminds himself; short, but exquisite. He thinks of the last time he was in Ueno Park when he was at university and how he sat beneath a tree waiting for a cherry blossom to fall on his head for luck – the myth that most students half-believed in, just in case their study didn't pay off. Back then he had Benika, also a uni student. They were in love. He momentarily forgets that Mary is there and remembers the feel of Benika's flesh against his and wonders if he will ever feel a woman's breath on his skin again. Will he ever know the joy of love again? Will he ever have children? A son that he might one day may be forced to send to war? His head is aching with the same thoughts he has had over and over and over again.

He thinks of Benika naked, her soft flesh against his own, of their lovemaking in a hotel room they rented for a few hours before he left. It is a treasured memory that kept him warm and hopeful in the brutal landscape of New Guinea.

Then Mary gasps, startling him from his thoughts.

‘I see it! I see it, Hiroshi.' Tears form in her eyes – her belief that they could be brought together by sharing the sky was correct. Sharing the rabbit in the moon has helped them connect like she knew they would. She feels close to Hiroshi, and he lightly touches her hand.

‘What's that?' he asks, breaking the spell Mary is under. ‘There.' He points.

Mary sees the red glow of a lit cigarette in the distance and imagines it's Claude still trying to hide the fact he smokes. She strains to see the figure more clearly and realises it's her Uncle Kevin. The cigarette is moving in their direction.

‘We better go,' she says, getting up quickly and running around to the opening of the bunker. ‘Quick,' she urges Hiroshi. ‘Get back down there. I'll see you tomorrow.'

Hiroshi moves like a fox, just as he did the night he arrived here, and Mary catches her breath as she walks back to the hut, arriving there at the same time as Kevin.

‘What are you up to, Mary?' he asks.

‘Nothing, Unc, just using the lav.'

‘I think you should get to bed,' he says, looking towards the bunker.

Mary goes inside, hoping her Uncle didn't see anything, doesn't go down to see Hiroshi and doesn't mention anything to her parents.

A week later, while Mary is dusting the bookcase at the Smiths', she's surprised to find a book of poetry by a woman, and wonders why Mrs Smith hadn't given her this one to read. The poet's name is Mary Gilmore. She reads the title of the volume to herself,
Under the Wilgas
. She assumes it means the wilga tree. Then she opens the book gently as if it is a
precious gift, and it will be, a gift for Hiroshi. She turns the pages slowly, reading the names of the poems until she stops at the words ‘The Waradgery Tribe'. It sounds a lot like her tribe, even though her family spell it differently.
This is a book about Aborigines
, she thinks.
This is a poetry book about
us. She puts it in the band of her undergarments under her calico dress.
I'm just borrowing it
, she tells herself.
I am not a thief
.