Hiroshima Boy Read online

  “You’zu really don’t tell him dat.”

  “We did. Toshi explained how Rei was always on edge.”

  “Datsu no good,” Mas murmured. The detective was stacking the deck against Rei. “Maybe I go to ceremony,” he told Thea.

  “You should. Almost everyone will be there.”

  The girl knew shortcuts and shady paths to get to the garden. As they walked by elderly men playing lawn ball, it was obvious that not all islanders were interested in revisiting the past.

  When they finally arrived at the tent, all the folding chairs were full with people dressed in black. Even the children were in their black-and-white uniforms, making Mas feel even more self-conscious in his khaki pants and tan striped shirt. He usually felt that he could disappear in sand-colored clothing, but here at the gloomy memorial, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Punctuating the black were sashes of bright purple and orange worn by the priests. One of them was chanting with some true believers following along. The detective and Gohata were seated in the front row. Someone had pulled out a chair to make room for Ayako’s wheelchair. Mas was grateful that he and Thea were standing in the rear, their heads barely shaded by the roof of the tent.

  Three young people—two girls and the sad-looking boy—were ushered up to the front. They took turns making an offering to the rock memorial and Buddhist scroll that was attached to the tent. Their rosaries drooping from their wrists, the girls brought flowers and a string of folded cranes, while the boy carried a green bamboo vase. The ringleader boy, chibi, and the skinny one were huddled together in the seats, chuckling and probably plotting an evil diversion, until a teacher went back and hushed them into silence.

  All the attendees were now invited to come up to the makeshift altar and make incense offerings. Mas was glad that offerings would start from the front rows, as the Buddhist funerals he went to in Los Angeles usually started with the back. By the time he and Thea were making their offering, the attendees would be bored and restless, their minds on anything besides what was transpiring before them.

  Tatsuo pushed Ayako forward in her wheelchair to be first in line. Mas was again reminded how she was completely different from her younger brother despite their physical similarities. Haruo would have never called any special attention to himself during the offering of incense. His eyes—or at least his one good eye—would have been focused on his own business and not on any other’s at a time like this. Ayako, on the other hand, made it a point to survey the crowd from right to left before being rolled back to her spot. Unfortunately she and Mas locked eyes briefly, which caused her to produce a most unattractive scowl.

  Mas wanted to forego his own participation, but he knew that would be impossible. He kept his eyes down on the grass and tried to think of anything else—Haruo the cat, Genessee, Takeo—as he waited his turn. Once at the urn, he dutifully pinched the incense and released it into a shallow dish. And just to make it official, he put his hands together and silently lifted up a prayer specifically for Sora and Rei.

  After the incense offering was complete, Toshi began his address. Thea’s face was shining, and Mas almost felt embarrassed to stand next to such a lovesick child. Who knows how long this union would last? It was only a matter of time before Ayako found out, and the result would not be good. Mas could easily picture Thea’s pink nose and tears as she awaited a flight back to the Philippines from Kansai Airport.

  “I want to thank you for the opportunity for Senbazuru to participate in this ceremony,” Toshi said. Mas couldn’t see Ayako’s face, but he noticed that her head was down, as if she were taking a nap. “As most of you know, the Children’s Home was started after the war because of the Bomb, since most of their parents had been killed and there was no one to take care of these children.

  “This island has since come to represent healing, whether it be for the youth or the seniors who might be hibakusha.”

  He said a few more words before completing his speech. Gohata, dressed in the same type of black suit, was up next. “As you know, the Kondo family has been longtime residents of this island, ever since the first Sino-Japanese War, in the late 1800s,” he said. A noise came from the tool shed across the way. The door flung open, banging against a metal trash can.

  Rei, her blond hair piled up like a bird’s nest, stumbled out. Her pale skin looked sunburned, and she was wearing the same clothes that she had on the other night. She appeared badly hungover. What a change from the cool and collected woman with the umbrella he had first met on the shore. Inside, she must have been feeling how she was acting now. Mas felt afraid for her.

  She stood and stared at the ceremony, as if she hadn’t fully registered what was happening.

  “Oh my goodness,” Thea whispered. “She looks like a zombie.”

  Gohata continued talking, but it was obvious that he had lost most of his audience to Rei. It only got worse when Detective Suzuki rose and made his way to the garden.

  “This anniversary is a time to pursue peace,” Gohata said.

  Rei, spotting the detective, began to run toward the pathway by the shoreline.

  “For nations to come together, not as enemies, but as friends for a better future.”

  The detective did not chase after her, but he did walk to the ridge to get a better look. By the time he returned to the tent, the ceremony was almost over.

  The detective approached the teacher at the village school and whispered something in his ear. Based on the teacher’s reaction, the message had been unpleasant, and Mas was curious what would happen next. As soon as Gohata made his closing comments, the teacher addressed his charges. “The detective has requested that we have a special meeting at the school now. All students and their parents are required to attend.”

  The four trouble-making boys, even the ringleader, had become oddly quiet. The skinny one looked sick to his stomach, and the one with the mournful face, who already was pale, looked even more washed out. The little one, the chibi, was so agitated that Mas thought he might spin out like a top.

  What was the detective going to do with the village children? Had he received any new leads that implicated them in Sora’s death?

  Mas was happy that the detective was turning up the heat on the boys. Whether or not they had done something criminal, they were bullies. He didn’t know if a session with the Hiroshima Police Department could make them change their ways, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

  Thea had received some new information as well. The detective had issued a directive that the islanders must immediately report any sightings of Rei. “There won’t be any way that she’ll be able to get off the island,” she told Mas. “She’s not allowed to get on any of the ferries.”

  Rei was cornered, just as Mas had been in the nursing home.

  “Disgraceful,” Mas heard Ayako say to Thea as they boarded a van back to the facility. He held up his hand to Thea to signal that he’d see her later.

  The sun was blazing, and Mas wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. Cleanup crews were already stacking the folding chairs, leaving the kazari decorations attached to the iron fencing. There was no breeze, so the streamers remained still.

  Mas crossed the street to take a look at the tool shed. The outlying garden was a naturalistic design with young seedlings and flower stalks planted here and there—small sunflowers, orange lantanas, drooping purple dahlias, and red blanket flowers. It wasn’t much, but in this heat, the drought-tolerant garden was a worthy effort.

  The tool shed served not only as a place to store equipment, it was also a makeshift museum. Mas shuddered to think that Rei had stayed overnight in that place. In between a lawnmower and edgers and clippers hanging from the walls were laminated black-and-white images of a line of skulls and stacks of bones. All unearthed ten years ago, they were the remains of eighty-five atomic-bomb survivors who had died on the island. In 1971, the bones of more than six hundred victims had been found on the school grounds, a reminder that the pa
st still haunted the new generation that had nothing to do with World War II.

  Also on the walls were photographs that Mas knew too well. Ravaged people, their clothes literally burned away from their bodies, desperate for help. These, too, were in black and white, while his memories were in full color.

  “I hope that girl didn’t deface anything in here.” A raspy voice sounded behind him.

  Konbini Kondo, Gohata’s sister-in-law, stood outside of the shed, wearing a bonnet and apron over her black dress.

  “I’m sure everything is where it’s supposed to be.”

  Kondo took off her gardening gloves to straighten out two sunflowers in a vase on a makeshift ledge underneath images of bones discovered a few years ago. “You learning what America did to Hiroshima?”

  In the growing heat, Mas was becoming impatient. “I am a hibakusha.”

  Kondo took a few steps back in the dirt as if she couldn’t quite take it in. “I thought you were an American.”

  Again, it felt strange to be known on an island of strangers. “I am. I was born in California, but taken to Hiroshima when I was a baby. I was in Hiroshima until I was about eighteen years old.”

  “So you are a hibakusha.” She wouldn’t have believed it unless she said it out loud, Mas figured.

  Anticipating her next question, he said, “Train station.”

  “Soka,” Kondo soaked in his personal information for a few moments before she began to share hers. “My mother was walking about the Kyobashi River. She was pregnant at that time.” She didn’t continue, and Mas could only assume what had happened to the baby.

  “Zannen,” he said. It was certainly sad, a waste of a life.

  Kondo’s lined face softened. “They didn’t want to have any more babies, but then I was born. And then my sister.”

  Mas grunted and studied the photos on the wall of the shed.

  “You’ve met my mother. She is staying at the home,” she said.

  Mas had already figured out that the pregnant mother in the story was none other than the woman who had stolen his friend’s ashes.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Arai Masao.”

  “Kondo Kiseki. Pleased to meet you.”

  They bowed to each other. Somehow Mas’s status had changed from foe to friend.

  “So you taking care of this garden.”

  Kiseki nodded.

  “Hard job.”

  “Yes, well, it’s my hobby. And someone has to do it.”

  Mas wasn’t much about small talk, and their conversation had lost most of its steam. “I better get back to the home. I’ll need to prepare to leave soon.”

  “Oh, yes.” Kiseki was almost smiling. “Well, safe travels.”

  Mas bowed his goodbye. As he walked back to the home, he couldn’t help but wonder why news of his departure would make the woman so happy.

  The nursing home was buzzing with gossip about what happened at the ceremony. Of course, the main subject was Rei.

  “I can’t believe she would run from the police like that,” an old woman was saying to her companion in the lobby.

  “Truly unthinkable.”

  “I think I saw her here a couple of nights ago.”

  “How could that be? You are imagining things again.”

  “No, I think—” Upon seeing Mas, the woman shrank in her wheelchair. Apparently Mas was also a topic of discussion today.

  “Ah, Arai-san.” Tatsuo called out from the front desk. “Suzuki-san had to leave to prepare the security for the big ceremony in Hiroshima. He asked me to return this to you.”

  He stepped back to one of the metal desks and retrieved Mas’s camera next to a stack of folders. Handing it over to Mas, he asked, “They find something in there?”

  “Just a child’s prank.” Mas had wished it had been more, but based on the detective’s quick departure, he probably hadn’t come up with anything substantial during his meeting with the schoolchildren.

  Mas excused himself. All that sun and walking had completely worn him out; if he didn’t get some kind of sustenance he would surely collapse. The cafeteria was closed, but he was able to flag down the worker who had fed him the previous day. After a trip to the kitchen, she presented Mas with a couple of rice balls and a tin of sardines, also most likely from her personal stash. With his meal in hand, he tiptoed past Ayako’s open door. He didn’t need to be further interrogated today.

  In his room, he opened the sardine can with its attached tab instead of a key, which was standard for the old-fashioned rectangular tins. Standing over the sink, he pulled out a couple of slimy fish, put his head back like a seal and threw them in his open mouth. Chomping on them and the rice balls together was probably the best meal he’d had in Hiroshima—after the okonomiyaki, of course.

  He was thirsty, so he went back to the vending machine in the cafeteria to buy an ice-cold green tea. As he bent down to retrieve the bottle, he both smelled and heard someone behind him. The smell was a mixture of sickness and neglect, like old used tissues forgotten in a sweater pocket. When he turned around, Kondo-Obasan the thief stood in front of him as if she was waiting for something, perhaps an explanation.

  After hearing about her background from her daughter, Mas couldn’t stay mad. He tried to walk around her, but she moved swiftly to block his path.

  “They always take everything away,” she said, her eyes barely visible underneath the flaps of flesh.

  Mas frowned. Did he need to press the alarm button to alert the office?

  “They lie. They want me to forget. But I will never forget.”

  Who is wanting you to forget? Mas wanted to ask. But he knew his question would probably not result in anything coherent.

  “Don’t listen to them,” she muttered, shuffling away back to her room.

  It was naptime, and Mas halfway hoped that when he woke up, all of this would have been a madcap nightmare brought on by too many helpings of jalapeño peppers. When he got up, it was the same warm tatami room with a lonely sardine in a tin next to him.

  This would be a perfect treat for Haruo the cat. Taking the tin with him, Mas went outside to sit on the bench under the camphor tree. It was a truly magnificent tree, an old one judging from its branches, which stretched out like arthritic limbs. It was at least twenty feet high, the height of almost four of him. Mas respected old trees, and lately even preferred them to pruned specimens. Once the roots were established, they didn’t need much care from humans to survive. And they outlived humans, enduring the topsy-turvy mess that humans created through hubris and hatred.

  He sat in the shade for a good half hour, but she never appeared. He left the open tin underneath the bench. Surely this would entice Haruo to make an appearance, but still nothing. Did he make a mistake by bringing the half-blind cat to this side of the island? Perhaps Haruo, who had faced familiar bullies on the west side, would survive better back there than here on the mysterious east side.

  He walked along the ridge above the jetty. The water vista was utterly serene and calm, without a hint of the chaos that had occurred over the past four days. In the distance were low-flying birds that looked like cormorants, perhaps some of those that had escaped their masters. In this area, fishermen traditionally trained cormorants to fish, tying strings around the birds’ necks so they couldn’t swallow large fish. The birds would fly back to the fishermen so they could remove the catches from their bills. While fishermen have discontinued the practice, some tour companies continue to train the birds. Mas preferred to think of the cormorants liberated, no master in sight.

  He returned to the bench to see that the sardine tin was empty. He hoped that Haruo had been the one to enjoy the treat. It would truly be zannen if the sardine instead helped to fortify a rat or another carrier of disease or sickness.

  The cooler weather had brought out more mosquitos. After slapping them away from his bare ankles and forearms, he decided to seek refuge back inside.

  It was in the middle
of night, pitch black, when Mas heard a commotion down the hallway. Another sundowner incident, he figured, but he couldn’t ignore the noise, so he slid open his door.

  “The American, I need to see the American,” he heard a young, high-pitched voice say.

  Mas trudged down the corridor toward the front office. Again, he’d forgotten his slippers, and his soles felt cold against the linoleum floor.

  When he reached the lobby, he saw it was the village boy with the sad eyes who had been calling out. “Hurry,” he said, rushing over to Mas and practically knocking him over. “I think something bad is going to happen to Sora’s mama.”

  Tatsuo came out from the front office, the keys for the company car in his hands. “Let’s go.”

  Sticking his bare feet into some plastic slippers at the genkan, Mas realized that he was still in his pajamas. Shikataganai. That was the least of his worries.

  They got into the car, the boy in the passenger seat next to Tatsuo. “The shore, not far from the A-bomb garden,” he said.

  What the hell was going on? Mas’s heart pounded. Neither Tatsuo nor he asked any questions. They both knew that whatever it was, it was serious.

  “Here, here!” the boy called out, and Tatsuo parked the car on the side of the road. They were on a hill overlooking the ocean, the oyster farm barely visible at high tide. There was a full moon, and its light reflected off the water, rippling and undulating.

  Mas saw something round and almost luminescent, halfway to the oyster farm. The boy pointed to it, and Mas knew it before he said, “That’s her.”

  Tatsuo was the first to rush over and jump in, followed by Mas. The boy hesitated, as if he were afraid of the sea.

  The water was cold, but in the midnight warmth, it felt more bracing than shocking. Where was Rei? Something brushed his leg and he jumped up in response, almost taking a tumble in the water.

  Tatsuo had already reached Rei and she moved—she was alive! Then she was resisting his help, thrashing like a caught animal. Mas knew such fighting was dangerous, not only for the victim but also the rescuer.