The Emperor of Any Place (7 page)

Leaning on my fists, I stared into the shimmering surface of the water. Might it be poisonous? I dismissed the idea. After all, how many times could you die in one day?

In a glossy-leaved bush nearby, a white-throated ground dove whistled at me and chirped. “Hello,
hato-chan,
” I said. “Thank you for welcoming me to your island.” The dove paid me not the slightest attention, fluttered to the ground, and dipped its beak into the water.

I watched the bird, its plumage so much finer than my own. Ha! I was down to nothing but a loincloth. The bird sipped the water, not six feet from me but undisturbed by my alien presence. And, Hisako, you will forgive me if I admit to you that I had the strangest thought:
This bird has lived forever. The dove is fearless because nothing can kill it.
“So maybe this sweet water is an elixir,” I said out loud. “Maybe I will live forever, too.”

In the dappled coolness of this clearing, I dipped my hands back into the pond, but this time I dug down deep into the cold, thick mud. At once I felt the healing in it. I scooped up the rich brown sludge, let it drip and slither down my arms. Tentatively I applied the mud to the raw and suppurated flesh of my torso. There were virulent red patches, hideous abscesses, all along my side. Gently I applied the muck to my afflicted body as though it were an expensive ointment. I breathed through my nose, my lips pressed tightly together to suppress the urge to scream with the pain of touching my skin. Then I sat, cross-legged, closed my eyes, and let the mud do its work. I was alive.

But you are worried, perhaps, about the other ghosts I saw when first I landed, the ones standing a ways off watching me with red and ready eyes. You are thinking,
Isamu, you must have been feverish and confused.
But no, it was not so. When first I reopened my eyes, just as I felt the raft begin to move again on the incoming tide, I was startled to see one of the ghoulish creatures only a few feet away. It backed off, its head cast down as if it had been looking for something. I was not fooled. I knew what this fellow was, a
jikininki.
Slim as an eel it was and slimy, a decomposing cadaver, but with those glowing eyes and the sharp claws needed to tear apart a corpse.

“I’m not dead yet,
jikininki,
” I shouted at the creature. It wasn’t much of a shout. My throat was parched. But the ghost stepped back a few paces more, and I could see how sad it was that I was not going to be its dinner. I dug my fingers into the wet sand and with a mighty effort hurled a fistful of it at the ghost. “Go! Scat!” I said. And, slope-shouldered, the thing limped off up the beach. My gentle ghost children watched all this with interest but no alarm. They are a peaceful lot. I climbed to my feet, exhausted from the ordeal, and immediately they crowded close to me. I did not like it, despite their angelic faces. But I decided they were only curious and not a threat.

But back, now, to the deep, green pond. Time passed. The dove flew off. The shadows moved. I stood, a little groggily, on my feet, a mud man. How you would have laughed to see me. I was mud from head to toe. I contemplated bathing in the pond. If the waters were indeed magical, surely they would heal me. But then I thought of how my body might contaminate it, the only source of potable water I had found so far. No, I would leave it be. I would bathe in the ocean eventually. But for now, I had to eat.

I headed back toward the beach, through the glinting light filtered down through the palm trees, banana trees, papaya trees. There was food there, all right, but I was in no shape to climb a tree. Not yet. I made my way back down the sloping path, a path made by animals, as I had supposed, for there was one now, a deer, a sambar hind with her fawn. I stopped in my tracks. So did the deer.

“Konnichiwa, shika-san,”
I said, bowing to the animal. She did not move. The young stag did not move, either. “You are going to the magical pond,” I said, very gently, calmly. Then I stepped aside into the dense underbrush and gestured with my hand for the deer to pass. A long minute passed and I stood perfectly still, as still as any tree. And finally she budged, her eyes alert for movement. There was a curious blemish on her neck: a hairless bloodred spot on the underside of her throat, oozing a white liquid. I stared at it as she hurried past, so close I could have patted her yellowy-brown hide. The fawn skittered after her, frisking at one point, kicking out his back hooves. I laughed and watched them proceed up through the tall grass until they were out of sight. I couldn’t say why but I felt strangely blessed.

Such wonders I have seen, Hisako-chan.

The sun had passed over the island and was low in the western sky, though it would be hours before it set. I ventured out onto the sand.
Atsu!
Still hot, but bearable, and it was time to see what there might be amongst the wreckage on the beach. I passed by where I had taken off my uniform, what was left of it, and had hung it on the low branches of a tree. I had fashioned my loincloth out of a torn piece of cotton I found, caught in the branches of that very same tree.
These branches shall be my clothing closet,
I thought,
my chest of drawers!
The cloth of my loincloth was dead-leaf yellow, the color of bravery. Ha!

As I had made my way from my makeshift raft up the beach, staggering and crawling and half dead of thirst, I had seen this strip of cloth fluttering, caught by a gust of wind, a tattered flag. And when I reached it — reached the coconut palms and shelter from the scorching sun — I had stripped out of my army uniform, peeling it away from my damaged skin, glad to be free of the stench of it.

I stopped now, beside the uniform, dry and warm to the touch. It was so strange, Hisako, for it was as if I were touching the shoulder of a dead comrade. My hand strayed to my chest, to my
omamori,
your gift to me. There were beads of water on it. I brushed them away.

“I am alive, Hisako,” I murmured. “I have no idea whether I am in this world or some other, but I am alive.”

Then I turned to scan the beach, my hand raised to my brow, squinting in the brightness after the shadowy coolness of the jungle. My ghostly cavalcade turned with me to look.

There were torn and broken things everywhere.

Crates and broken boards of wood, tangles of rope, all manner of debris. All manner of treasures! It was like a market — a bazaar. I remembered in a sudden flash the busy prefecture where you lived and worked in your father’s noodle shop.

“Ah, for a bowl of
miso nikomi,
” I said out loud, patting my stomach. But no, there was nothing so comforting there. After a while I did find food, or something like it, half buried in the sand, like pirate treasure. On my knees, digging like a dog for a bone, I cleared away the splintered, sun-bleached wood. I peered into the crate, shoved my arm inside it, and pulled out something wrapped in cellophane. I pulled out tin cans with indecipherable words on them. What else: matches — good!

And what was this? I picked up a slim packet, as long as my hand, flat and wrapped in paper and foil. I opened it to reveal a hard flat brown stick. I smelled it, scraped at the dark surface with my ragged fingernail, sniffed it again. Sweet. Then I tasted it. Ah,
such
sweetness. I dared to bite into it.
Pock!
A piece snapped off in my mouth. I let it sit there. It was not like anything I have ever tasted. I closed my eyes and savored the substance now melting on my tongue.
¹

There were other things, white tablets. I licked one of them.
²

“Mazui!”

I spit and spit to get the taste out of my mouth. Luckily, there was also dried fruit, which I gobbled down greedily. But the dark brown substance, Hisako. How I hope one day you will taste it.

Before nightfall I had explored the eastern side of the island and found no signs of human habitation, other than the detritus on the beach. The jungle was dense enough that there might well be people at the heart of it. But I did not see the smoke of fires nor, as it darkened, the lights of any settlement or camp. I would explore the island in time, for there was nothing else for me to do. And I would have to make myself some kind of a shelter. How long would I be here? I could not say. But by the end of that first day, I was in no hurry to go anywhere. Somehow, I knew, I would have to try to find my way back to Saipan, back to you, Hisako, and to our tiny set of rooms, if indeed there is anything of it left. But I wanted to be whole again, first. I wanted to heal. There was so much healing to do.

At sunset I climbed a grassy hill at the northern end of the island, a hill high enough that I could see the whole island with its white beaches and green heart. And from there I perceived that it was, yes, heart-shaped. Gazing down at the place where the western and eastern shores curved up and around and then back down until they met in a deep cleft, I suddenly remembered a favorite book of my grandfather’s,
Kokoro
by Sōseki Natsume. I love reading, as well you know, and it was only because of
Ojiisan.
I have told you about him, how we talked — or
Ojiisan
talked and I sat at the old man’s feet, listening. At least when I was younger I listened, when I still knew how to sit still and be obedient. Before I reached the age where I was in such a hurry to do things my own way.

I sat now on my heart-shaped island, cross-legged, and thought of him.

“A book called
Heart
?”

“Ah,” said my grandfather, “there are shades of meaning. It could refer to ‘the heart of things’ or ‘feelings.’” I remember how he patted my chest gently, where my heart was. “It can mean ‘Heart and mind’— many things.”

I remember frowning, shaking my head at this. What was the use of a word that meant many things? When you said “carburetor,” it meant carburetor. When you said “piston,” that’s what you were talking about. Even as a small boy, I was wild about automobiles and motorbikes — anything that roared and belched smoke. I remembered
Ojiisan
smiling at me kindly. “If only life worked as simply as an automobile. In books things can mean more than one thing, and that makes you
work
at the meaning.”

I stood and looked out at my new home. In honor of my
ojiisan,
and in honor of things not being as simple as automobiles, I called the island “Kokoro-Jima.”

It was in the cleft at the top of the heart that I discovered the lagoon. A wide barrier reef crossed the northern reach and turned the voluptuously curving V-shaped bay into a warm, sandy-bottomed shallow salt lake. I bathed there that night, tired from my trek along the island’s eastern flank. The moon was frozen in its fullness, heavy with light, and I lay on my back in the water staring up at the stars. I imagined you, Hisako, in my arms, the two of us naked in this paradise.

¹
Isamu would seem to have tasted chocolate for the very first time. He had stumbled on a box of K rations, the “assault lunch,” by the sound of it, which also included caramels and chewing gum.

²
Probably water purification tablets!

I found other rations in the wreckage along the eastern beach of the heart-shaped island. The flat, brown-colored stick was a marvel, but some of the other food items made me wonder if the rumors were true about the Americans being monsters, for there were cans of vile, gelatinous meat, or so I supposed it to be, though the sight and smell of it made me retch.
¹
There were also
bisuketto
I could barely crack with my teeth.
²
It was hardly food at all!

But, as I had known from the start, there was food growing on the island. And as I combed the beach, sifting through the debris of the war that I had slipped away from — drifted away from on a piece of broken ramp — I found a good sharp knife to cut down papaya and even a sword to open coconuts. I made a spade to dig up taro. The island provided.

Unfortunately, the island also provided food for the restless
jikininki.
These are not like the friendly children ghosts. No. I knew the
jikininki
for what they were, from the minute I laid eyes on them. Human-eaters. They were harmless to me as long as I stayed healthy, but they were repulsive and a reminder that death was here in this otherwise beautiful place.

“Here!” I shouted, hurling a can of the horrible meat at one of them that ventured too close. The ghoul recoiled and shuffled a few yards off, sniffing the air like a dog, although how it could smell anything with what was left of its decrepit nose was a mystery to me. The
jikininki
stepped from foot to foot as if the sand were too hot for its misshapen, cadaverous feet. “Eat up!” I yelled, pointing to the opened can at the ghost’s feet. The creature sniffed again, hissed, then turned and loped awkwardly away. I laughed and slapped my leg. This thing that ate putrid flesh — even it wouldn’t touch the canned meat.

It was the
jikininki
that led me to the first corpse.

I came down from the hill one fresh morning and saw several of the ghouls congregating on the beach. As I got closer, I could see that one of them was kneeling on the ground with his hand under the head of a dead man, its shoulder protecting the carcass from its hideous kinsmen, claiming the body as its own, while it lashed out at any of these revolting creatures who dared to come too close.