Radiance (11 page)

Imagine travelling around Manhattan and trying to siphon that gargantuan, glittering experience through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old Hiroshima victim: it was like trying to fit a tidal wave through the eye of a needle. Daisy stole glances at the girl as they hopped into a carriage, or as they slid into a mahogany and velvet booth at Oscar’s, but she couldn’t penetrate the surface. Keiko’s manner was civil and correct—but perfect civility, Daisy realized, wasn’t precisely what was called for. Keiko had misjudged. A certain amount of innocent exuberance was needed to grease the Project’s wheels.

Irene noticed.

In the pink-tiled bathroom at the Waldorf, she asked if Daisy had detected something “a bit off.”

Daisy felt ruffled. Protective. She said she wasn’t sure what Irene meant.

“Ah well, let’s leave it then.” Irene took a seat in a plush chair and dabbed at her eyeliner with the dampened corner of a tissue.

“But what do you mean?” Innocent little Daisy. In truth she knew very well.

“She doesn’t strike you as a trifle blank?”

It was typical of their relationship that Irene could fearlessly name what Daisy pretended not to notice. Still, it felt wrong to be judgmental after the hell the girl had been through. Who were they to complain, especially about something so subtle as
the girl’s lack of enthusiasm? Besides, maybe this was how people showed enthusiasm in Japan.

“She doesn’t seem to like us,” Irene said. Another truth.

Daisy stammered that these things took time.

“Do they? I haven’t found that. I usually know who I like right away.”

“Then you don’t like her?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. But she’s cold, that I will say. Which makes our job all the more difficult.”

Daisy refused to agree with her friend, but sliding back into their booth, she felt the girl’s coolness, just as Irene had said: a small force field of hostility emanating from the top of her head. It would be good, Daisy thought, to take the girl aside—not now but at some point—and talk to her severely. Here’s how we do things in America, Daisy could imagine saying: we say thank you like we mean it, we shake hands like we mean it and we evince a delighted interest in our surroundings, especially when taken on long sight-seeing cruises around Manhattan by Circle Line ferry.

But for now she kept these thoughts to herself.

T
OWARDS THE END OF
A
PRIL
—almost a month after Keiko had arrived in America, and ten days before she returned to hospital for the removal of her major scar—the State Department lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding atomic testing. It was a calculated move to prepare the public for the hydrogen bomb, at least that was what people in the Project said. Not only was each atomic test reported in detail in the newspapers, but for the
first time the bomb blasts were televised as well. Not having TV, Daisy read the accounts in the newspaper—the reporter rhapsodizing about the mushroom cloud, its shades of fiery red and stormy black, and describing the surging winds that followed.

The paper said that flocks of “atomic tourists” set up deck chairs in the desert to watch the explosions. The Atomic Energy Commission condoned this. Daisy put the paper down and closed her eyes. She could imagine how these onlookers must have felt when that mysterious thing, the atom, was whacked in two before their eyes, creating an unearthly jag of light across the desert air, a mighty heaving in the molecules of earth and sky.

Dr. Carney called the bomb mass entertainment. Bread and circuses. “He thinks it’s a brilliant ploy,” Irene said. “He says the blast fills all the empty cracks left in people’s souls from the misery and carnage of the war.”

“Goodness.”

They were on the telephone again, Irene and Daisy.

“It forces people to realize we’re in a new world. That’s what Raymond says.”

As the advent of gaslight had shocked Victorians (so Carney had explained to Irene), illuminating the docks and fairgrounds, the back alleys and secret parks—so the atomic bomb was lighting up its own generation of men and women.

“He says it’s thrown a new light on everything,” Irene said. “It has changed the world utterly.”

“But he wants to stop it.” Daisy said this uncertainly, as Irene had spoken with such relish.

“Yes, of course—that goes without saying.” Irene lit a cigarette. “But in the meantime we also have an opportunity for study. The bomb, and people’s attitude towards the bomb, is fascinating. People want to get close to it. Like moths.”

That was what Dr. Carney had said.
When Keiko travelled around Manhattan, people often recognized her as the girl from the newspapers. Her scar made her stand out. People stared, edging closer, seeming to want a heady dose of that acidic thing, radiation. When Daisy was with Keiko, she often felt itchy, as though she had slept in a bed full of cracker crumbs. Was that an effect of the radiation, or was it just the power of suggestion? The bomb, radiation, the entire world of atomic weapons was so new, who could say what peculiar abreactions any of them could expect?

But one thing was clear. Keiko’s scar was like a badge, marking her in the public’s eye. It said, Here passes someone who has experienced the dread fire.
The dark mother,
Atchity had called it, words that haunted Daisy. And yet that expression was strange, because the bomb wasn’t dark at all. It erased shadow. It illuminated what might have hidden. It was fire and light in uncountable measure.

To the men and women who watched Keiko as she fed the ducks in Central Park, or lined up for a hot dog, she might have been a visitor from a strange planet, touched by the dust of Mercury or Pluto, so odd did she seem, so tainted with something foreign. Briefly, Daisy imagined shooing them all away, her large bottom waggling as she scurried to and fro.
Get away,
she would hiss.
Don’t stare.
But to no avail. There was something ancient at work here. It made Daisy think of conquering soldiers parading their shackled slaves through the streets of Babylon—a picture she’d seen once, in a book of Bible stories: rows of slender Hittite girls, dressed in white, chained together at the neck. The onlookers had gawked and laughed, but they had also desired them. That was why she remembered the picture so vividly. It had been arousing to lie in the sun on the parlour floor, looking at those slave girls all dressed in
white. Now this was strange but true, she thought: victimhood seemed to fuel desire. Men, especially, seemed to want to taste Keiko’s vulnerability, sidling near her on the subway ramp, staring at the tracks, pretending to be nonchalant, focusing on their erections. Dr. Carney too: he always stood close to Keiko, within the circle of all that, so that he could breath in the heady scent of antiseptic and dried blood and lemon bath splash. Daisy noticed this. She couldn’t help it.

One afternoon Dr. Carney performed a pre-surgical examination on Keiko’s facial scarring. Daisy and Irene waited downstairs in the lobby of Mount Sinai Hospital. It took longer than expected, and it was almost dark outside when Dr. Carney and Keiko rejoined the women. “All’s fine—right, Keiko?” Carney said briskly. They stood together in the middle of the lobby—a place where the acoustics took on an odd resonance. Keiko gave him a closed-lipped smile, then lowered her eyes to study the granite floor.

At that moment, the wire-service photographer popped from behind a pillar.

“Miss Kitigawa.”

He stopped them in their tracks with his flat Midwestern accent. A look of rare alarm passed across Keiko’s face, and she blushed—a mulberry stain.

“I’m not here for a photo,” the man said quickly. “Please don’t worry about that, miss.” He hunched his large frame, in order to meet Keiko’s eyes. “My name’s Tom Orley,” he said softly. “Maybe you recognize it—I’ve sent two letters, and I saw you at the press conference. Had the feeling you saw me too.”

“Who are you?” Dr. Carney stepped forward, looking ready to seize the fellow by his collar.

Tom Orley straightened, taller than Carney by a good eight inches. He glanced around at them amiably, then back at Keiko.
“I am very sorry if I’ve alarmed you, Miss Kitigawa. Here—” He reached into his inner jacket pocket and brought out a long, thin navy blue box.

“What is it?” Dr. Carney snapped. He reached for it, but the fellow pulled it back.

“It’s for Miss Kitigawa, if you don’t mind,” he said. “For Keiko.” She raised her face then and looked into his eyes—intense brown. Warm and bovine. “If I give you this, will you open it later?”

She held out a gloved hand and he put the box in it. Then he turned, walked across the lobby and exited through the revolving doors. Through the large window Daisy saw him get into the driver’s seat of a cab.

There was a beat or two of stillness.

“Oh dear,” Irene said softly. “What a dreadful man.” When nobody said anything she shivered theatrically, then glanced at Carney, to gauge his reaction.

“What has he given you?” Carney asked.

Keiko opened her palm. There was the prettily hinged leather box.

“Open the latch, dear,” Irene said.

Keiko pushed at the latch. It opened neatly on its two hinges. Inside, lying on a cushioned satin lining, was a gold watch. She lifted it up and held it out to them. It had a dainty face, tiny numerals; the gold band was constructed of interlocking hearts.

Irene whistled. “A Lady Elgin watch. And from a complete stranger.”

Keiko said nothing.

“It’s not unexpected,” Daisy heard Carney say, “for a young woman like Keiko to have admirers.”

This elicited more exclamations from Irene, who agreed that it wasn’t unexpected but still condemned the effrontery.
Carney put an arm around Keiko. “I’ll give you a ride to the station,” he said.

Keiko slid the box into her coat pocket.

That night Daisy watched the girl. She sat in the living room on the slippery green couch, with its vague pattern of leaves and roses, leafing through a magazine. She wasn’t exactly ignoring Daisy as she bustled about, straightening up before Walter’s arrival home, but she didn’t bother to speak, either. When Walter came home there was the brightening—as though a curtain had been drawn. Now it was time to sit up straight, present herself. Walter entered the living room, having changed into his scruffy cardigan and tartan shirt. Daisy often wished she had the fortitude to hide them. He stood looking down at Keiko thoughtfully as she placed the magazine on top of another one on the polished side table, aligning their spines.

“How old are you, Keiko?”

“Eighteen.”

He nodded, as though that explained a great deal. “Well, come into the kitchen,” he said, “and I’ll show you how to make a martini. Unless of course you know already.”

Keiko giggled.

Now how was that possible? The girl had made no sound approaching a giggle in the three weeks that Daisy had been her companion. But when a nice-looking man offered her a martini, she giggled. In the kitchen Walter joked, saying that Daisy had never been able to mix a drink strong enough for him, not to save his life, but that he’d teach Keiko how to do it properly. Then he asked Keiko if she wanted one, and to Daisy’s complete surprise she laughed outright and said she would try one, thank you, before she looked guiltily at Daisy. All at once an atmosphere of gaiety descended: measuring the vermouth, tasting the straight gin
(which made Keiko choke), adding the olive—“This Important American Ritual,” as Walter called it, broke the ice that night.

After dinner he pushed back his chair and got out his tobacco can and papers and took them out on the back steps. Daisy cleared the plates and cups, then carried the tablecloth outside and shook the crumbs over the back porch railing. She left the door open and Keiko came out to join them.

“Look,” Walter pointed. They could see the Big Dipper clearly, even the two stars that circled round each other, which Walter explained were called Jack and his Wagon.

“We’ll all have to walk down by the creek when the weather gets warmer,” he said. “Right now the ground is too soggy, but in a few weeks, away from these lights, you’ll be able to see a million stars.”

“After the operation,” Daisy added.

Keiko stiffened and Walter shot her a look—but it was all right. In another second Keiko raised her face and looked at the Dipper, and Walter pointed out Draco the Dragon, curling above and below the giant spoon.

T
HE WEEK BEFORE
Keiko was scheduled to return to the hospital, the weather changed. What had been a cold, rainy difficult patch suddenly eased into a series of gorgeous blue-skied days. Linden Street, on which there was not a single linden in sight, came into blossom. Bees hummed. Robins chirped. Tulips, with a mad, invincible spirit, thrust their pointed leaves through the earth and unfurled their hot petals.

That afternoon Daisy took Keiko to the Éclair Bakery on First Avenue, thinking it would be nice to pick up a couple of pastries, then eat them in the sun in the United Nations plaza before meeting up with the others. She pictured the two of them sitting on a cement planter, licking cream from their fingers, looking comfortable with each other as Dean Atchity and Irene approached. If Daisy could create the outer look of ease, perhaps the inner feeling would spark into life as well.

As she and Keiko neared the front of the bakery line, a woman behind them—a portly East Side matron with grey-rinsed hair and a mink stole—tapped Keiko’s arm vigorously with the handle of her umbrella.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she said.

“One of whom?” Daisy said sharply.

“I don’t see why your country deserves such charity. Look what you did to us.”

“Shush now,” Daisy said.

“Oh, don’t you shush me!” The woman’s eyes were watery and hard. “My son died in Saipan, and I think getting all misty-eyed because we dropped the atomic bomb is just—reprehensible.” Her chest expanded like a robin’s. “I’d drop that bomb again, any day, any second, if it would save my son.”

“But it won’t.”

She shook her head. “I hate you people,” was all she said, then she turned and left the shop.