Fire Flowers (33 page)

“Where do I remember you from, kid?” he said, taking a sip of his beer. It was amazing. I guessed a man like him needed a good memory.

“My father used to own a restaurant, sir. Not so far from your old office.”

He grinned, as if remembering far-off, sunlit days. “Takara Eels?”

My heart almost burst with pride—my dad's shop!

“Fucking great,” he said. “Shame it closed down. All dead now, I guess?”

A pit opened in my stomach. I bowed my head. “Yes, sir. I'm sorry.”

“Even that cute girl? Was she your sister?”

I glowered at him. Mr. Suzuki raised his eyebrows and held up his hands in apology.

“Alright, little shit—don't go upsetting yourself. Where'd you get that contraption from in any case?”

He pointed at the camera, and I drew it closer to my chest, fingering the knot in the leather strap.

“Steal it?” he smirked.

I stared at the table in silence.

“Suit yourself.”

He drew a big pile of noodles onto his chopsticks and gazed at the steam that came off.

“No family left at all?” he asked, stuffing the noodles into his mouth.

I shook my head.

“That makes two of us.”

He slurped down the last of the soup, then lit a cigarette. “Want to take some pictures for me?” he asked, as he squinted through the smoke.

“Photographs, sir?”

“I could use someone with sharp eyes.”

Despite what I had told myself, there was something about his face that made me nod straightaway.

“Good boy,” he said. “Work hard for me and I'll see you're treated right.”

There were little wrinkles on his forehead. As I stared at his blunt features, I realized that he was older than he looked. He snapped his fingers in front of my face.

“See?” he said with a grin. I found myself grinning back at him. “Now you've got a friend in the world.”

 

I left the inn soon after the children had gone away. It felt too lonely after that, the paper screens torn, the tatami littered with dead moths and butterflies. The grass was waist-high in the garden when I went, the cracked statue of the tanuki still lying grinning on the threshold.

Now that the weather was warmer, I slept in Ueno Park, beneath a tarpaulin stretched from a tree not far from the shogun's graveyard. The lotus plants in the pond were leafy now, and green and black ducks dabbled in the water. I hung around the clapboard bars in Yurakucho where the Americans drank at night, holding up the camera hopefully as they lurched out. They posed drunkenly, arm in arm with their friends, or with giggling Japanese girls hoisted up on their shoulders. They scribbled their names and their billet in my exercise book, and I wrote down the number showing on my exposure counter. An old chemist developed the film for me at the back of his tiny studio in Kanda, and I delivered the prints to the Americans a week later to collect my fee. I stood in the marble lobbies as they flipped through the shots, guffawing, and tried to smile as they patted me on the head and I waited for my money.

 

Mr. Suzuki gave me a ninety-millimetre screw-mount lens for my camera and a big pair of field binoculars that must have belonged to some officer during the war. From the top of the old railway bridge, you could see people approaching from any direction. Mr. Suzuki told me to take pictures of anyone I didn't recognize, and showed me a series of flags to shoot down a wire stretched over the market if there was ever any sign of trouble—white for American military police, red for Koreans or Formosans. Sometimes, too, he had me take stealthy photographs of the American soldiers who came to the market in military trucks to deliver crates of cigarettes and rations, and who took sheaves of cash from Mr. Suzuki, holding up their thumbs and slapping the sides of the cabs before roaring away.

The rest of the time, I was free to roam about taking photographs of whatever I chose. The market became my personal cinema as I gazed through the rangefinder of my camera, the cool, heavy frame a comforting weight against my face: the traders laying out piles of old boots, bony women stalking the aisles with babies on their backs, the ex-students who ran the liquor stall and drank glass after glass of booze at the end of the day until they collapsed on the ground.

Then, there were the pan-pan girls, who strutted through the market as if they owned the place, shrieking like vixens and yammering insults. They grabbed any man that they fancied by the arm, or the crotch, and dragged him away beneath the railway arches.

The girl in the purple dress gave me a sharp erotic thrill whenever I saw her. Yotchan must have been about eighteen and wore heavy lilac makeup, her hair cut in a straight line so that it fell just above her eyes. There was something about her thick legs and giant breasts that made my stomach melt, and sent me scrambling up the ladder to the top of the railway tracks to helplessly relieve myself. As I watched her through my camera, day after day, a plan began to take shape in my mind. Mr. Suzuki had told me that I was getting paid at the end of the week, fifty yen. Yotchan, I'd heard, cost ten. Finally, I decided. It was about time.

Mr. Suzuki must have noticed that I was distracted, because, toward the end of the week, he called me over to the office, a wooden hut on the edge of the market. A pile of crisp black-and-white photographs lay on the desk in front of him, and he frowned as he flicked through them. At the end of the stack was the blurry shot of Yotchan. He grinned.

“Cute,” he said. “Not my type, though.”

He leaned forward. “You want to see some real pictures of girls?”

My heart began to thud as he took an envelope from his desk drawer and slid it over to me. I quickly stuffed it under my shirt as he gave me a wink.

“Don't worry, kid. I was just the same at your age. Though I'm guessing you're a man already, right?”

I swallowed, glancing at the picture of Yotchan. He grunted.

“No? Well. I'm disappointed in you. It's about time, then, isn't it?”

My pulse started to race.

“You've worked hard all month,” he said. “You could do with a break. I'll tell you what, next weekend, we'll go to a place I know in Shinjuku. They'll show you the hills and the valleys.”

I started to tremble.
This was it!
I bowed my head, my fingers clutching the envelope beneath my shirt. Just as I was leaving, he called out behind me.

“They're all good girls,” he said. “Not like real geishas. More like
Daruma
dolls.”

I stared at him, lost. He started to wheeze with laughter.

“You can roll them over as much as you like!”

 

I kept my head down as I shuffled through the market, painfully aware of the envelope hidden beneath my shirt. I didn't even notice the girls until I had walked straight into them. Something soft bumped against my head and I was suddenly surrounded by a choking cloud of perfume.

“Hey, look where you're going, you little prick!”

Clouds of coloured nylon and cotton swirled around me. The girls' faces were plastered with makeup and they grinned at me like jackals. Yotchan jerked her hand up in a brutal sexual motion.

“Gone blind, have you?”

My cheeks throbbed. It was as if she could see right through me.

A nasty grin came over her face. “Well. I don't suppose you get much with that melted face of yours. How old are you anyway?”

“Fifteen,” I muttered.

Her eyes narrowed as she edged closer. “Well. You're practically a man already, then, aren't you?”

My face was nearly touching the pale skin between her throat and her breasts, my nose swamped with the sour animal smell of her sweat.

“Want to take me on, kid? You've got money, don't you?”

Despite my panic, I felt an almost excruciating excitement.
Please
, I thought,
don't let me lose control, not right here and now.
Yotchan was staring at me slyly, her bright red lips moving round and round as she chewed her gum.

Suddenly, her hand shot out and she gripped my privates. She squeezed and I gasped as her eyes grew wide.

“Well!” she said. “You are a man after all.”

She pulled my head toward her and crushed it against the pillow of her bosom. I heard the other girls shrieking with laughter, and I struggled to free myself, spluttering. The stall-holders had all gathered round now and were cackling away, enjoying every moment.

Yotchan snorted. “Well. He knows where to find me.”


I stumbled backward, bent over double. Yotchan fluttered her hand in the air. “Come back tonight. Make sure you bring enough money.”

I slunk away, my cheeks throbbing.

Yotchan suddenly exploded with a splutter of laughter. “Hey! You've forgotten something.”

I froze, rooted to the spot, suddenly aware of the lack of weight within my shirt.

I hardly dared to glance back as I ran toward the railway embankment. Yotchan was bent over, shrieking, waving the photographs in the air for all the world to see. The stallholders were all roaring with laughter, tears of amusement streaming down their faces.

W
ard was subdued as he sat at the kitchen table in his fine new house in Shinjuku, freshly decorated in preparation for the arrival of his wife, Judy, from Chicago. A new set of wicker furniture graced the room and the sliding doors were wide open to disperse the lingering smell of fresh paint and pickled radish. I felt a pang of jealousy as he showed me the neat garden outside—the wisteria in bud over the doorway, a cherry tree ablaze with white blossom and filling the air with scent that mingled with a thread of incense from the nearby temple. His beard was thick now, streaked with silver, and he wore a long silk robe, as if he had just stepped out of some antique Japanese painting.

“So where are we, Ward?”

“I've talked to more people this week, Hal. Harry Welles from
LIFE
. Auberon Fox from
TIME
. They're intrigued. They want to see your pictures as soon as you arrive home.”

The whir of a cicada came from the trees. I went over and stood in the doorway. From up above the slanted tiles of the temple roof floated the thudding sound of a drum.

“Are you ready?” he said.

The drum beat faster and faster, until, with a bang, it suddenly halted.

“Almost. When's Judy arriving?”

“Friday.”

“Everything fixed up?”

Ward grunted. “Almost.”

He stood up to fetch a bottle of Guckenheimer from the sideboard and poured us two glasses. Birdsong trilled from the garden; there was the faint, far-off drone of Buddhist prayers being recited.

“It's a beautiful home, Ward. I'm sure you'll be happy here.”

He nodded steadily and sipped at his drink.

“You're going to miss Japan, Lynch. Isn't that so?”

I thought of the imprint of Satsuko on my bed that morning, silently echoing the contours of her body. Stray strands of black hair upon the pillow. The cedarwood cigar box hidden, waiting, under the floorboard in the corner of my room. I needed to talk to her, and soon.

“You won't look back from this, Lynch,” Ward said. “Believe me. It'll be the making of you.”

I nodded.

He draped a sandalled foot over his big thigh and blinked heavily. He rubbed his eyes and gave a lopsided grin. “You know that I'm proud of you, don't you, Hal?”

I nodded. “Thank you, Mark.”

He poured more whisky into his glass and sighed again, then turned to look at the last cherry blossom in the garden. My throat tightened. In the pale sunlight, sitting in his chair, for a moment, he looked just like my father.

 

The first warmth of summer was hovering outside my window as I gazed over the crooked planks of the tenements below. A horse-drawn cart paused in the alley, and a ragged child stroked the animal's flank. I rolled out the carbon from the drum of my typewriter. I was in shirtsleeves, rewriting what I hoped would be the final draft of my Hiroshima piece.

There was a quiet knock at the door and Satsuko came in. She was carrying a glass of beer and some rice crackers. I sat her down upon my knee as I read over what I'd written. I ran my fingers through her hair. I kissed her. The sweeping horns of “Sentimental Journey” were drifting up through the floor- boards, and streetcars clanged in the road as the dusky sunlight streamed over us.

The USS
New Mexico
was leaving the following week for San Francisco. I'd booked my passage that morning; the ticket was safe in my jacket pocket. At the Military Affairs office, I'd made inquiries about the legal procedure of Japanese emigration and entry to the United States. The captain had rolled his eyes and told me I was the third person to ask that day. The Alien Exclusion Act
 
was still in place for Orientals, he said, but everyone thought it most likely would soon be rescinded, judging from the number of potential war brides strolling around on the arms of American soldiers. Satsuko could join me later, I figured, after the restrictions were lifted. Five months, six at the most. After my photographs had been published. After my whole world had changed.

We undressed and lay down on my futon and I inhaled the scent of her pale skin, feeling the warmth of her body against mine. She was naked except for a narrow wristwatch that I'd bought for her two days before.

She reached over for her purse. From it, she took a small velvet jewellery box, which she shyly presented to me. Inside was a small silver crucifix on a chain. She took it out and draped it around my neck, then fastened the clasp. She pulled me over so that we both faced the cracked mirror leaning against the wall. She pointed at the reflection of our entwined bodies.

“Look,” she said. “Adam—and Eva.”